Many of you might know that Adams County was created from the western part of York County in 1800. It was named for the sitting United States president at the time, John Adams. If some local state lawmakers would have had their way in the 1830s, then-president Andrew Jackson would
Some months ago I wrote about the Pennsylvania German Birth and Baptismal certificates (often known as Taufscheine or Fraktur) that were produced in the Hanover print shop of Wilhelm Daniel Lepper and Samuel Endredy Stettinius. These two printers established Hanover’s first newspaper Die Pennsylvanische Wochenschrift, in 1797 and issued their
Earlier this year I wrote about Daniel May, printer and newspaper publisher in York from about 1829 to 1843. He was one of several York County printers to produce Taufscheine, or baptismal certificates, also known as Fraktur. These colorful certificates, popular from about 1770 to 1870, recorded the birth and
My last month’s York Sunday News column condensed some of the eight-part Gazette and Daily series that ran in the spring of 1940 on the thriving amateur baseball leagues of York County. Besides an introductory article on the clubs that had come and gone before then, the first four columns
I admit I know only the basics of baseball, but I might be in the minority in York County. For as long as I can remember, family members followed their favorite major league teams on radio and television, as well occasionally trips to the ball park to see the action
It used to be common to see newspaper features repeating news tidbits of the past. Some used a specific formula, like 50 or 100 years from that date. The Hanover Evening Sun seems to have been a little more arbitrary. Their feature, “Looking back over 50 years,” wasn’t as
Leafing through a recent issue of a magazine for tractor collectors called Antique Power, I found an article “Resurrecting a Pioneer Diesel” by Dave Gerlach. The photos show a gleaming orange farm tractor with a bold nameplate reading “Sheppard Diesel.” The article relates that in 1933,
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
The first reported sighting of a flying saucer was in the state of Washington in late June 1947. In less than two weeks reports were pouring in, including from our area. I looked at a sampling of local newspapers on microfilm and at newspapers.com, both accessible at the York County
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: