Universal York

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genealogy Archives

Our area has a high concentration of descendants of so called “Hessians.” This general term was applied to those soldiers from German-speaking regions whose rulers hired out their regiments to fight on the side of the British during the Revolutionary War. (Germany did not become a confederated nation until 1871,

My last post was on Barbara Smith/Schmidt/Schmith (c.1724-1798), the affluent widow who left nearly her entire estate to the Lutheran congregation [now Christ Lutheran Church] in York, including the funds specifically designated to purchase an organ. That organ, the last organ built by master organ builder David Tannenberg, is now

Seems to be some Irish excitement about President Obama visiting the village of one of his Irish ancestors, but they have nothing on us. As York County Heritage Trust Library Director Lila Fourhman-Shaull pointed out in an article she wrote for Trust Talk, YCHT’s member newsletter, shortly after the president

St. Luke Lutheran cemetery ca.1900 I’m on the Cemetery Committee at my church, St. Luke’s Lutheran in Chanceford Township, where both my husband’s family and mine go back over 200 years. The cemetery was one of about 500 cemeteries in York and Adams counties that were recorded during the 1930s

Pennsylvania German birth/baptismal certificate (Taufschein) for Catharina Stambach, born 1835, by Adam Wuertz Only a few days left to sign up for the Saturday June 5 Pennsylvania Germans in York County seminar sponsored by the South Central Pennsylvania Genealogical Society and York County Heritage Trust. Registration deadline is this Saturday,