You can enjoy a Victorian Christmas at the Bonham House, 152 East Market Street, York from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, December 2. The free family event, presented by the York County History Center as part of Light Up York, offers costumed house tours, crafts, games, live music,
In the 1970s the York County Bicentennial Commission painstakingly researched the dimensions of the first York County courthouse, which stood in the center of York’s square from 1754 to 1841. This was the building that housed the Continental Congress from September 1777 to June 1778, when the British occupied the former capital,
Some time ago I wrote a York Sunday News column on Dr. William Bigler’s 1890 trip to Florida to visit his son. In those days of railroads snaking all over the county, it might have been easier to travel from here to many other parts of the United States than
Politics could be rough in the past, but the Hanover Democrats were pretty civil in celebrating the party’s win in the November 1882 Pennsylvania election for Governor. Here is the story from the November 28, 1882 York Dispatch, picked up from the Hanover Citizen:
In honor of those brave patriots who put their life on the line signing the Declaration of Independence, my previous York Sunday News column on “our signer,” James Smith, is repeated below: Who Was James Smith? You might know that James Smith was York County’s signer of the Declaration of
I found an account in the November 24, 1907 York Gazette of the original dedication of the Civil War plaque that is now in front of the Dover Fire Company. I checked to see if friend and Civil War expert Scott Mingus had written about it on his Cannonball blog.
Here are some more local news items, this time from Shrewsbury in December 1889. This time I didn’t even have to go to the newspaper microfilms at York County Heritage Trust myself. Friend, relative and Dallastown native, Apyrl Zarfos Anderson, who now lives in France, has been in York County
The very ornate silk-fringed holiday cards of the late 1800s into the early 1900s weren’t made in York, but they were popular with local residents. There are quite a few, donated over the years by York countians, in the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives collections. These are two of my
When planning for the recent Unraveling York County’s History: An Evening with the YDR’s History Bloggers event earlier this month, each of the five bloggers (Jim McClure, Scott Mingus, Stephen H. Smith, Joan Concilo and me) was asked to choose a local history topic that tends to generate discussion. I
In my first post on the cigar store figure Punch I shared his first known photo, dated from around 1870, and a current photo of him at York County Heritage Trust. My second post showed more of Punch’s stops around York’s Centre/Continental Square in the 1880s and 1890s. The photos