York Town Square

Part of the USAToday Network

Who are these York County, Pa., people in silhouette?

Jim Rudisill’s artwork

York County, Pa., artist/historian Jim Rudisill’s silhouette artwork will appear on the cover of York County, Pa., Heritage Trust scholarly historical journal set for publication in September. Can you tell the prominent local folks the artist captured in silhouette? (Answers below.) Also of interest: York County artist/historian Jim Rudisill: “History is really ‘His Story,’ the story of people… “ and Whose sculpted faces are those poking from the old Spring Grove school? and Northern York area strawberry part of Neapolitan county.
The rise of photographers in the 1800s pushed silhouette artists into the shadows.
York, Pa., schoolboy Jim Rudisill became intrigued with this art form in the 1940s after finding a silhouette stored in an attic and began cutting profiles of people he knew.
Part of his silhouette work, first published in the York Sunday News in 1971, courtesy of the York County Heritage Trust Library and Archives, will appear on the cover of the trust’s upcoming scholarly journal… .


The last-known such publication put forth by the Pennsylvania organization or its predecessors came out in 1941.
The trust’s publication committee is working on the journal, which will feature articles by three local scholars and a sampling of rare letters penned by York, Pa.’s Declaration of Independence signer James Smith. (For disclosure, I am on the editing team.)
OK, now for the figures on this cover, designed by York Daily Record/Sunday News artist Samantha Dellinger:
Shown, clockwise, from top left: Antiquarian Joe Kindig Jr., York Barbell’s Bob Hoffman, Judge Ray P. Sherwood, Historian Landon Reisinger, the Rev. Daniel Batwell, Mrs. Horace (Mary Schmidt) Keesey, The Rev. Thomas Montouth. Mrs. William (Mary Schmidt) Kurtz.
The Rev. Batwell is shown landing in the Codorus Creek after Patriots threw him in because of his British loyalties during the American Revolution.
Details about the availability of the journal will be forthcoming.
All York Town Square posts from the start.