“Was He Unlucky! I don’t know if legal off-track betting has made “bookie joints” totally obsolete, but they seem to have been a fixture of mid-twentieth century life. A raid on one of those establishments made front page news in the Wednesday, May 1, 1946 Gazette and Daily. (Taken from
In 2006 York Daily Record columnist Jim Hubley wrote that the temperance crusader Carrie Nation was signed as top attraction at Hanover Fair in Sept 1902, speaking between horse races. She was also scheduled to give a lecture, Why I Smash, at the Hanover Opera House. Only 12 people showed
Here is an interesting topic presented to the York Kiwanis club 75 years ago, as reported in the October 27, 1939 Gazette & Daily, quoted below. I guess some things have been around longer than I realized. “MARIHUANA EVIL SUBJECT OF TALK Williamsport Detective Tells Kiwanis Club of Effects
In my recent post on the 1898 dedication of the impressive fountain, I mentioned that it was featured on quite a few post cards that I found at the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives. I’m including three in this post, with more to follow. Speaking of Penn Park, I had
I have done a couple of blog posts on York’s St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, whose congregation is celebrating its 175th Anniversary this month. One of the most horrific, but memorable, events in St. Paul’s history was the January 1939 arson-set fire that destroyed old St. Paul’s, which sat on the
The story of the great 1939 fire at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church of York and the capture of the arsonist reads like a mystery story. From an alert detective’s recognition of a smeared fingerprint left at the scene of a crime the next night to the suspect protesting his innocence
According to a Gazette and Daily clipping I found in the files at York County Heritage .Trust, in 1948 the York Police department was the first in Pennsylvania to acquire a Drunkometer, the predecessor to the Breathalyzer. In 1948 there was as yet no Pennsylvania statute defining the level of
Constables had their hands full a century ago, according to the 1907 York newspaper clipping below. It seems that a constable went to Columbia to arrest an individual wanted in York the same day a Columbia constable came looking for a Yorker. Neither man wanted to come along quietly. The
I love old newspapers. Together with letters and diaries, newspapers really make the people who lived here before us come alive. Two news briefs from the York County Heritage Trust microfilm of the July 26, 1893 York Gazette caught my eye. First, huge camp meetings were very popular, both as
While researching in the 1934 York newspapers, particularly the back page of the Dispatch where they used to gather all the York lead stories, I’ve noticed that drivers were just as careless then as they are now. A few samples, all from the same page on June 20, 1934 are