Universal York

York County folk artist Lewis Miller illustrated his 1810 visit the Geiger farm in Windsor Township in 1810.

Pennsylvania German food is captured in Lewis Miller’s drawing and text on early 20th century York tavern life.

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,

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

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

My previous post told how researchers connected U.S. presidents Barack Obama, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and William McKinley with their York County, Pa. roots. Below are a couple more presidents and a vice president whose families have been traced back to York County. I didn’t do any original research on

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

As I indicated in my recent post on Lewis Miller’s drawing of the Seifert family, there is more going on here than just the very early depiction of an American Christmas tree. That post addressed why a blue dyer was an important 18th and early 19th century occupation. Friend Jo

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,