Universal York

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New Freedom Archives

I started working on my April York Sunday News column, which you can read below, about two months ago.  We were just starting to hear more about COVID-19 then.  By the time it was finished and published in the paper a couple of weeks ago, it became even more relevant. 

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

I often use newspapers of the past to look into the lives of those who have proceeded us. The York County History Center has local newspapers on microfilm from the late 1700s up to the present. In addition, the YCHC Library/Archives now has a subscription for Pennsylvania newspapers at newspapers.com

Sources say that about 350,000 women served in the United States armed forces during World War II. WACS (Women’s Army Corps), WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service in the Navy, women in the Coast Guard (SPARS) and Women Marines served as nurses, administrators, instructors, office workers and in many

We take potatoes for granted, consuming copious amounts of the fried, baked, mashed and chipped vegetable. York County growers have produced untold numbers of these staple tubers over the years. While transcribing my father’s diaries from his farming years, I realized how much work and care went into planting, cultivating,

It was March 7, 1914. The scene was Fayetteville, N.C., where Baltimore Orioles pitchers and catchers had been sent for “pre-spring training drills.” One of the rookies was the “brash left-handed pitcher, George Herman Ruth, fresh from St. Mary’s Industrial school in Baltimore.” Another was pitcher J. Ervin “Willie” LaMotte

Bakery ad from 1916 York Hospital Auxiliary Cookbook We tend to romanticize “the good old days” when Mom, or Grandma, or Great-grandma, lovingly baked wonderful breads and cakes, all from scratch. If those fine ladies were doing all the baking, why then are there so many ads for local bakeries