Universal York

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Philadelphia Archives

We sometimes seem to have a love/hate relationship with old buildings.  We act like we would love to save them for their historical ties or architectural significance.  On the other hand we often seem to hate committing funds to preserve them.  This isn’t a new problem. There have always been

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

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. There are many websites that discuss the proclamation, looking at why it was important and what it did and did not do. The National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C. holds the original hand-written proclamation. While it is

Happy 249th birthday to one of my favorites, English-American architect and engineer Benjamin Henry Latrobe. His mother, Margaret Antes of Germantown, Pennsylvania, had been sent to England to further her education. There she met Moravian minister Benjamin Latrobe, and their son Benjamin Henry was born May 1, 1764 near Leeds,

Masthead of a York-printed Pennsylvania Gazette. The Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper is an extremely important source of information on the Revolutionary War era. Besides carrying general news of the war, the Gazette disseminated official proceedings of Continental Congress. The publishers, Hall and Sellers, were also authorized by Congress to issue broadsides