Tucked down in the far southeastern corner of York County, Delta has always been pretty quiet. According to the April 10, 1897 Gazette, some would-be bank robbers livened up the town two days before. The front page article in the York paper goes into detail: The writer says that the
I am on a History Channel list that emails me a “This Day in History” tidbit every day. Today’s commemorates the first robbery of a moving train. The robbery was committed on October 6, 1866 by the Reno gang. Click here for the story. It caught my eye because my husband’s
In a recent York Sunday News column I used Lewis Miller’s carpenter work on the 19th century York County Jail, which stood on the northeast corner of George and King streets, to illustrate that you can tie together several sources to paint a more complete picture of the past. When I
My previous two posts concerned a day trip I took a couple of weeks ago to southern Maryland, visiting the homes of two of the convicted Lincoln conspirators, Mary Surratt and Dr. Samuel Mudd. Both sites are well interpreted. I was especially interested in Dr. Mudd’s house, since carpenter Edman
“Was He Unlucky! I don’t know if legal off-track betting has made “bookie joints” totally obsolete, but they seem to have been a fixture of mid-twentieth century life. A raid on one of those establishments made front page news in the Wednesday, May 1, 1946 Gazette and Daily. (Taken from
Below are some items from across the York County, as reported in the February 18, 1873 York Gazette. Each snippet entices you to learn more.
Here is another example that the “good old days” weren’t always that good. There were “wicked and evil disposed persons” in our past history too. (Our forebears did love their adjectives.) The handbill below, from the York County Heritage Trust archives, concerns break-ins and vandalism at Spring Garden Township school
A few months after being released from imprisonment at Fort Jefferson, Florida, native Yorker Edman Spangler’s extensive statement of total innocence concerning the Lincoln assassination appeared in many newspapers. The first half of that statement is the basis of my recent York Sunday News column and it appears below: Edman
Today is the 150th anniversary of the assassination of President Lincoln. After he died the next morning, plans were put in place for the long journey from Washington to Springfield. The funeral train route traced much of the same path of his inaugural train four years earlier in reverse, giving
I enjoyed an interesting talk this evening at the Susquehanna Gateway Heritage Area Zimmerman Center. Lancaster County journalist Jack Brubaker talked about his recent book Massacre of the Conestogas: On the Trail of the Paxton Boys in Lancaster County. I have done some reading on the massacre of the 20