York’s Bullfrog Alley (part of East King Street) had a distinct personality over the years. It was famed as the home of “gypsies” who went out traveling each summer and for basket making, some of which seem to be in same families. It was also the home of a gang
Family history research is so absorbing because you never run out of relatives, and you sometimes find some surprising ones. For example, I am distantly related to President Dwight Eisenhower. We both descend from immigrant Hans Nicholas Eisenhauer, (b. 1691), but our lines split way back. See below for my
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,
You might be familiar with two books featuring drawings of Lewis Miller published by The Historical Society of York County/York County Heritage Trust/York County History Center over the years. Lewis Miller, Sketches and Chronicles: The Reflections of a Nineteenth Century Pennsylvania German Folk Artist (1966) is out of print; Lewis
Most of us probably think of African American persecution when we hear Ku Klux Klan. The haters cast a broader net in York County in the first half of the twentieth century. Anyone not a white protestant was fair game to be threatened by these men who hid their identities
This is the second on my series on the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission markers in York’s Continental/Center Square. It marks the site of the Black Horse Tavern, one of the earliest buildings in York, The proprietor, Baltzer Spengler, was one of York’s very early leading citizens. The marker, in
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
Philip A. Small examining Christian Roth’s wheat Whenever I start researching some York County history, it seems like someone from the Small family turns up. Pennsylvania German immigrant Lorentz Small settled in Windsor Township in 1743, but soon the family became involved in carpentry, building, mills, iron furnaces, retail and
It was 1908. Although their families had been immigrants only a hundred years or so before, some York County people weren’t too sure about the new immigrants coming in to work at plants, mills and quarries or to build roads. These new arrivals weren’t of German, English and Scots-Irish stock