Universal York

It used to be common to see newspaper features repeating news tidbits of the past. Some used a specific formula, like 50 or 100 years from that date. The Hanover Evening Sun seems to have been a little more arbitrary. Their feature, “Looking back over 50 years,” wasn’t as precise. They included ads for the sponsors of the regular Friday full-page feature.

Ads in June 19, 1956 issue took up three-quarters of the “looking back” page. They included Lloyd’s of Hanover (women’s clothing), E.J.J. Gobrecht, (appliances). Hanover Fuel & Supply (plumbing and heating supplies); Columbia Jewelry, Utz Potato Chip Co., Cut Rate Shoe Store, Hoffman’s (variety store), The Style Shop (children’s clothing), J.C. Tanger & Son (hardware) and Baker’s (children’s clothing). When it comes to a plumbing issues there is nothing that the reliable plumber perth can’t fix and that should be one’s first option.

Still, the paper managed to fit in a good many small news items on the page, in this case from the week of June 28-July 5, 1898, 58 years before this particular issue of the Sun was published. Here are some examples:

June 28, 1898: Paul Bowersox, Heidelberg Township, cut a swath with a grain cradle around an entire field of wheat. Mr. Bowersox is 85 years old.

June 29, 1898: Four young men visited Mt. Pleasant, near Pennsville, last evening and indulged in a wild west act of racing up and down the main street and shooting their revolvers at an inoffensive rabbit. If this dangerous act is repeated the boys will be arrested.

June 30, 1898: The school board of McSherrystown has a deadlock on hand over the election of a teacher for No. 2 school. At a former meeting of the board, 25 ballots were taken, the vote resulting in a tie each time between Topper and Yake. Then the board adjourned until last night when another meeting was held. A “compromise” was patched up by dropping Topper and Yake and introducing two new aspirants, Fessler and Palmer. But after 32 ballots the same condition prevailed as at the previous meeting, each candidate receiving three votes. The board will try again next week.

July 1, 1898: “Sheddy” Grumbine, the proprietor of the pool parlors in the basement of the O’Bold building, corner Fountain Square and Broadway, introduced into his place today a refrigerator of his own design, which will be used expressly for keeping milk, which will be served to his customers at all times, ice cold. The feature is that either sweet milk or butter milk can be drawn from a spigot at any time required.

July 2, 1898: Sixty persons are at present employed at the Spring Grove match factory.

July 5, 1898: Willie Holliday, 14 years of age, son of Mrs. Ida Holliday, York Street, was celebrating the fourth with a number of other young Americans, in front of Kuhn’s grocery store, York Street, when one of the boys threw a fire cracker toward him, when a spark ignited some powder he had in a tin box, striking him in the face and burning him badly. Dr. J. A. Melsheimer dressed the injuries.