My last post related the tale of Spoonie Gohn’s encounters with Slaymaker’s ghost at Margaretta Furnace. It was one of the two “Weird York County” stories I shared at the York Daily Record’s recent Unraveling York County History event. My second account that night was “The Headless Horseman of the Codorus Valley.”
The field of folk belief among our Pennsylvania German ancestors is a rich one, replete with words. Certain rituals go along with many practices used for healing known as pow-wow, but the words are also specific for each one. They are readily available in books such as John George Hohman’s
Powwow healing was very much a custom in York County well up into the twentieth century. There still may be some “powwow doctors” in the traditionally Pennsylvania Dutch (Pennsylvania German) counties, including York County. Powwow seems to be a word borrowed from Indians to describe the German Brauche, which means
Fellow blogger Jim McClure just finished a four-part series on whatever happened to the “Hex” murder defendants. Two of those told about paintings by John Curry, one of those convicted in 1929 for the murder of Nelson Rehmeyer. Coincidentally, while researching 1934 newspaper microfilm on another subject for an upcoming
Not having any luck hunting for game? You might want to try the charm above, shared by a friend who found it rolled up and tucked into the stock of his grandfather’s century-old shotgun. His grandfather was born in 1887. He lived in various communities in York County over his