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In the 1970s the York County Bicentennial Commission painstakingly researched the dimensions of the first York County courthouse, which stood in the center of York’s square from 1754 to 1841. This was the building that housed the Continental Congress from September 1777 to June 1778, when the British occupied the former capital,

I recently took a field trip that I had been thinking about for some time. For several years I have been researching and writing about Edman “Ned” Spangler, the native Yorker who was a carpenter and stagehand at Ford’s Theater, working there shifting scenery on April 14, 1865, the night

I have always been intrigued by the large and colorful Punch cigar store figure in the York County Heritage Trust collections. As I relate in my recent York Sunday News column, it is especially interesting that he “moved” around Centre/Continental Square in York over the years. In this and the

Edman “Ned” Spangler wrote letters to friends and relatives describing his experiences while a prisoner from 1865 to 1869 at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. Spangler was sent there after being found guilty of helping John Wilkes Booth escape from Ford’s Theater, a charge he vehemently denied the rest