On October 19, 1781, British General Charles Cornwallis’s army surrendered his army at Yorktown, Virginia. That American victory effectively ended the Revolutionary War, although it was not official until nearly two years later, when the Treaty of Paris was ratified in September 1783. Camp Security, York County’s prisoner of war
The November 20, 1917 York Daily tells the story of a very eager World War I recruit from Dover. The article begins: ENTHUSIASTIC RECRUIT Dover Boy Anxious to Get to France “Now That Corn Husking is Over” Edward Stubbins told the Daily reporter “Every able bodied young man in America
Hanover Lutheran pastor Frederick Valentine Melsheimer has been called the father of American entomology (insects). He was also a “Hessian,” who came to America with troops fighting on the British side during the Revolutionary War. If you have Melsheimers in your ancestry, there is a good chance that you descend
Our area has a high concentration of descendants of so called “Hessians.” This general term was applied to those soldiers from German-speaking regions whose rulers hired out their regiments to fight on the side of the British during the Revolutionary War. (Germany did not become a confederated nation until 1871,
My previous post shared a July 21, 1905 article from the York Daily about Dr. Reed of Lancaster coming to look for the camp where his grandfather guarded Revolutionary War prisoners. We know the site today as Camp Security. Dr. Reed’s visit must have been important in the news of
I found this article from the July 21, 1905 York newspaper, probably the York Daily, in the Jere Carl scrapbooks at the York County History Center. Little articles about Camp Security pop up every now and then in the old newspapers. Even though these articles might not be completely accurate, as
Some of you might remember the Victory Gardens of World War II, when everyone was urged to grow as much food as they could to feed their families. This would free up commercially grown vegetables to be canned to feed our troops fighting overseas and training here. The movement didn’t start with World
My last blog post noted that the book featuring York folk artist Lewis Miller’s drawings of “Hessians” that settled in York County after the Revolutionary War is once again available at the York County History Center, long after it was thought out of print. The book features 22 full page portraits, each
You might be familiar with two books featuring drawings of Lewis Miller published by The Historical Society of York County/York County Heritage Trust/York County History Center over the years. Lewis Miller, Sketches and Chronicles: The Reflections of a Nineteenth Century Pennsylvania German Folk Artist (1966) is out of print; Lewis
My recent post shared some of the World War II related items from one page of the Gazette and Daily of October 1943. The rest are transcribed below. We might tend today to forget how such a major conflict affects just about all of those left back home, whether missing