Mount Wolf history mystery – Old black locust log letters puzzles reader: Linked in to York County history, June 8, 2013
Mrs. Smith’s Pies/Jean Stapleton/’Letters from Home’
This old black locust log, with intriguing symbols, comes from the Mount Wolf area. Patricia Fitzpatrick Spencer posted a query on YDR Facebook asking for help in solving this York County, Pa., mystery. ‘My husband found an old black locust log in the woods near our property. It has letters/symbols etched on it. Black locust can last a long time so they could be really old. We thought they might be from somekind of secret alphabet or maybe a message for slaves traveling north.’ Can anyone help with this. Please comment below. Also of interest: History mystery – Where was this old train station located?
Neat stuff from all over … .
Terry Zellers, whose photographs you’ve seen here on yorktownsquare.com, posted a query over on Preserving York’s FB page:
“Looking for a photo of the Quonset hut in York when it was Mrs. Smith Pies. I remember it well but there does not seem to be any photos out there of it.”
That brought forth some leads and a comment from Joe Darrah: “(F)unny you would want pictures of a food place, were you one of them that used to go there and get the rejects, always smelled good. I remember a truck driver Charlie Hancock would always bring us pies from there.”
Interesting, local residents also would go to York Peppermint Patties, also in that sector of York, for broken pieces and seconds of that cool breeze candy.
Does anyone member those days at either Mrs. Smith or York Peppermint Patties? Why is that quonset huts there, in the first place?
Re-enacting field day: Gettysburg 150 will be a field day for the re-enactment community. Who doesn’t admire how today’s living historians persevere in those heavy, wool uniforms. Makes you wonder how the boys of 1863 held up dressed like that on 20-mile marches. For a gallery of photographs on reenacting, check out ydr.com’s Media Center: Re-enactors set up camp in Gettyburg.
Best of blogs: Buffy’s World’s features a yorktownsquare.com post about Ron Hershner’s new Gettysburg150 book “Letters from Home.”
Breaking news on Pinterest: Chambersburg’s Robin Layton created what Public Opinion Editor Becky Bennett called “ a cool Pinterest board” from Public Opinion archives after the death of Jean Stapleton. Stapleton, of TV’s Archie Bunker fame, performed at the Totem Pole Playhouse and other venues in Franklin County. Check out: https://pinterest.com/ponews/remembering-jean-stapleton/.
Mel Miller of the West Manchester Township History Society sent in this fundraising flier.
