Nearly a year ago I did a blog post on four dedicated local men, members of Canadochly Lutheran Church, who were diligently working to restore the oldest part of Canadochly cemetery in Lower Windsor Township. Area resident Gene Schenck noticed them at work last year and wrote an article about
Some months ago I wrote about the Pennsylvania German Birth and Baptismal certificates (often known as Taufscheine or Fraktur) that were produced in the Hanover print shop of Wilhelm Daniel Lepper and Samuel Endredy Stettinius. These two printers established Hanover’s first newspaper Die Pennsylvanische Wochenschrift, in 1797 and issued their
I became interested in Meyer and other York County printers because several also printed Taufscheine, the birth and baptismal certificates that I have been researching for years. Most of them were also very interesting individuals, especially as they used their newspapers as a political platform. One good example is Solomon
Earlier this year I wrote about Daniel May, printer and newspaper publisher in York from about 1829 to 1843. He was one of several York County printers to produce Taufscheine, or baptismal certificates, also known as Fraktur. These colorful certificates, popular from about 1770 to 1870, recorded the birth and
It is almost time for the Fifth Annual York County History Storytellers Night at 7 p.m. next Tuesday, December 10 at the Appell Center’s Capitol Theater, a beautiful historic site in its own right. We have had great turnouts in the past and expect the same this year, so we
Over the years the York County History Center Library and Archives has collected many plans for preservation of our local historical architecture and other resources. Most of them are full of good ideas on how not to lose those valuable resources. Unfortunately, many have not been implemented at all, and
Suppose you were ready to spread your toast and the margarine was white instead of yellow. It is not very appealing, is it? Some of you might remember when margarine came packaged with a capsule of yellow food coloring; it was mixed in at home to make the spread look
Harry Houdini (Ehrich Weiss) and his wife Bess (Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner) were young circus performers in 1898. They came to York County with the Welsh Brothers circus in September of that year. The show set up at Poplar and Edgar Streets with two performances each day for several days. The
This is the second in a series of posts reviewing the history and significance of Camp Security. As far as we know the site, just east of York, is the only remaining Revolutionary of War prisoner-of-war camp that hasn’t been pretty well completely developed over. The Friends of Camp Security
For my December York Sunday News column I looked at the claim by some that York was the nation’s first capital, usually citing the adoption of the Articles of Confederation by the Continental Congress while meeting here from September 1777 to June 1778. (See below for a repeat of that