York Town Square

Surely, this is York County, Pa., at its best. The community came together for a New Year’s celebration at Central Market. For years, the market’s hours were limited to market day. Now, this gathering place serves as such on other days – and nights. In its early years, 125-plus years ago, it served as a place for conventions and religious services and more. So the recent use of the market house for celebrations – coming together moments – such as this one represents change for the better. This photo, by the YDR’s Jason Plotkin, has served as the cover photo for the York Daily Record’s Facebook page since New Year’s. We realize we posted a ‘York County at its best’ photo in the last YorkTownSquare post. And we might have one next post. When we run across photos that say a lot about York County’s goodness, you’ll find them on this blog.

Veterans World War I are part of this honor roll Ebenezer Church on Fishing Creek Road

This week’s History Mystery quiz focuses on people. It’s amazing – and a bit sad – that once well-known York countians pass from the public scene and blend into history. So consider this quiz – and other YorkTownSquare.com posts an effort to remind folks of those who built this county. (OK, there are a couple of places in here, too.)

It’s interesting how quickly we forget those who have built this community. I regularly put up photographs of these achievers on YDR’s Facebook page. Sometimes, the people of accomplishment receive little recognition. You can tell by the low number of likes, comments and shares on Facebook. Still, it’s important for us to know these greats, so we’ll keep telling their stories on Facebook and on this blog.

Author/educator/storyteller Judy Wolfman was visiting Country Meadows Retirement Community in West Manchester Township recently when someone handed her this compilation of ‘Masonic Articles I Have Written.’ C. Clark Julius wrote this as an author’s preface: ‘I am a historian and enjoy hunting prominent people and finding whether they are Masons. This lead to the 68 articles I have written and have again had many requests to put them in book form.’ Thus, the book

Wrightsville is full of veterans memorials, at least six by one count. And the eastern York County, Pa., borough soon will be home to another one, a marker to honor a black fighting man who died defending Wrightsville and its Susquehanna River bridge from the Confederate onslaught in late-June 1863. That marker will be commemorated Saturday at Mount Pisgah Cemetery in Wrightsville.

This scene from Goldsboro’s square accomplishes a couple of things this Memorial Day. It’s one of the scores of memorials highlighted in this map of York County veterans memorials. And it shows one of two islands in the squares of York County towns. Traffic circulates around this memorial and the grassy square in Jefferson. (Abbottstown and New Oxford, with their traffic circles, are in Adams County.)

The date appears to be 1975. Artist Cliff Satterthwaite gave an glimpse of what young people were doing that summer. On activity: Racing frogs. Interesting, at about that time, a harmful practice concerning frogs became popular in America. Licking them. Anyway, the artist wrote: ‘(N)otice the little boy chasing on.’ He believed the name on the sign is a sponsor of the event. Just another slice of York County life captured by the artist.

This is pretty darn interesting. The Gettysburg Heritage Center, still known to many as the American Civil War Wax Museum, is doing some remodeling so some older exhibits will be auctioned. That includes many wax figures. Those lifelike artifacts would give you pause if you ran across one in somebody’s dark basement. ‘The paraffin soldiers of the American Civil War Wax Museum at the edge of the Gettysburg battlefield have stood stiff guard over the past for more than 50 years,’ the Evening Sun in Hanover report. ‘But the frozen tableaux are melting away, to be auctioned off to make way for the more fluid, interactive history of the 21st century.’

This World War I-era tank, sitting in a military museum in Centre County, has an