This is my favorite time of year. One big reason is the abundance of locally grown fruits and vegetables. My mother was a very active gardener nearly all her life. One on my first memories is awakening at a very young age and going out to find her in the
Over the years I heard of the “Hermit of the Hellam Hills,” and came across a couple late 19th century newspaper articles that mentioned Joel Strong, the hermit. When I started digging in the files at the York County History Center and perusing newspapers.com (available to use at the YCHC
Even if you are not a die-hard fan of Civil War history, you might have heard of the Battle of Cold Harbor, fought in Hanover County, Virginia, not far northeast of Richmond. The conflict, fought June 1-3, 1864, resulted in extremely heavy causalities to Grant’s Union forces. Click here for
Hanover Lutheran pastor Frederick Valentine Melsheimer has been called the father of American entomology (insects). He was also a “Hessian,” who came to America with troops fighting on the British side during the Revolutionary War. If you have Melsheimers in your ancestry, there is a good chance that you descend
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,
One of the things of which we York countians are proud is that the Articles of Confederation, our nation’s first constitution, was approved right here 239 years ago today, on November 15, 1777. The Articles served the nation well through the Revolutionary War and beyond, until replaced by the stronger
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
We probably have all known local people who bravely served in the military during World War II. During that time the home front was also very busy. I have written columns and blog posts about the York Plan, the system of cooperatively switching our factories from peacetime to wartime production
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