Recently in 1840s Category

Martin Hoke Coverlet

York weaver Martin Hoke was so upset that a thief made off with four of his "coverlids" in 1843 that he offered quite a substantial reward for their return. They wouldn't be too hard to identify as they had both Hoke's name and the name of the client woven into each one.

If you have coverlets of your own, you have an opportunity to register them on Saturday, October 31 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at York County Heritage Trust's first ever coverlet documentation day. Coverlet experts will document the pattern, history and details of the weaver. You can also view the 42 coverlets on display in the From Old Looms to Heirlooms: York County Coverlets exhibit through November 28. The documentation will be held at 250 East Market Street.

See Martin Hoke's descriptive ad from the May 16, 1843 York Gazette below.

Wood's Creek, Jamestown, California.

I just got back from a couple of weeks touring California and want to share one of the highlights of the trip. Of course, it had a York County connection.

Was it visiting Alcatraz? No, the closest tie between York and Alcatraz is some recent suggestions to house the prisoners from Guantanamo at one or the other. Touring Napa Valley vineyards? No, but both California and Pennsylvania are in the top ten lists of wine producing states. Yosemite? We have trees and waterfalls too, but I haven't seen any of either quite as large in Pennsylvania.

San Simeon? Nice house William Randolph Hearst built there, but the closest I can get to his roots is Virginia. Roy Rogers (Leonard Slye) and his footprints in the courtyard at Grauman's Chinese Theater? His ancestry can also be traced to Virginia. Maybe he and Hearst were related? Trigger's hoof prints are there too, and internet sources say Trigger, Jr. was purchased by Rogers from Paul K. Fisher in Souderton, Pa.--at least there is a Pennsylvania connection, however weak. Michael Jackson's nearby star on Hollywood Blvd. was getting a lot of attention last week. I don't know of any local ties there, but who knows?

No, one of my favorite California spots was on Wood's Creek in the small town of Jamestown, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.

Cased photo of Henry L. Smyser, taken by the J. T. Williams Gallery in York, probably not too long after Smyser returned from California.

Not long ago I posted my York Sunday News column on the very organized California Company, which was composed of 16 young men from the York County area who set out to find their fortune in gold. They sailed on the ship Andalusia from Baltimore on April 19, 1849 and arrived at San Francisco on September 21. Click here for that post on their onerous sea voyage.

Did they find their fortune? Afraid not, but they certainly tried. Some of the accounts written back home by several of the company were published in the York newspapers and went into much detail about their quest.

Dr. Henry L. Smyser was perhaps even more candid and detailed, as his letters, now in the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives, were only meant for family. He wrote to his parents only a week after they arrived, while they were still unloading the Andalusia, that he might stay for a while, but not necessarily continuing to look for gold, "if the practice of medicine would be more profitable and less laborious."

Smyser had enough labor already by the time they arrived at Woods Diggings on November 25. He and the others wrote that getting there was the hardest work they had ever done, with mud up to their knees, sometimes having to pull the wagons and mules through themselves. It didn't take him long to relate: "We had a full view of the Elephant."

See below for my follow-up Sunday News column with more details on the California Company, their pursuit of gold and their return home.

Over the years quite a few cemeteries in York County have been built over, paved over or plowed over. Sometimes the inhabitants have been moved to another cemetery, sometimes not. There have been various laws passed over the years in Pennsylvania regarding burial grounds, but, unfortunately, in my opinion, if the owner of the land wants to remove the cemetery and goes through the proper legal channels it could still be approved by the court.

Click here for a link to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission page on cemetery laws.

While looking through the Erb family file at the York County Heritage Trust I came across an inquiry from an Erb from another area wondering what had happened to an Erb Burial Ground in Springettsbury Township.

Brig. General Herman Haupt

I enjoyed the talk on the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Civil War given recently by Ivan E. Frantz, Jr. at the York Civil War Round Table. I was especially impressed by Brig. General Herman Haupt and his fantastic engineering of railroad bridges and the speedy repairs his men made to the bridges destroyed by the Confederate invaders of York County.

Wondering, as always, if he had any other York County area connections, I did a little searching. Turns out, he certainly did.

1864 Bridgen's map of Conestoga Township showing dam.

1860 Shearer & Lake map of Chanceford Township.

A friend recently alerted me to an article about the port of Safe Harbor on the east bank of the Susquehanna River. The article referred to the Conestoga Navigation, which operated from the late 1820s to around 1850. It was an 18-mile-long slack water navigation utilizing the Conestoga Creek with a system of nine locks. It ended at Safe Harbor on the Susquehanna River. Where did the cargo go from there?

One of the colorful patterns from Abraham Serff's pattern book, now in the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives.

Weavers were essential members of the community in 18th and 19th century America. In Pennsylvania before the Industrial Revolution you would raise sheep for wool and cultivate flax for linen fibers. After processing and spinning the raw materials into thread or yarn, you would take them to the local weaver. Well over 500 York County weavers from 1800 to 1860 have been identified, and as I point out below in my recent York Sunday News article, there were probably many more.

The colorful legacy of the weaver lives on in the brightly patterned coverlets produced in quantity from the 1830s through the 1860s. The more intricate patterns were produced with a special Jacquard attachment, which the weaver would purchase to add on to his loom. At least one York County craftsman manufactured the attachments, as advertised in the newspaper add immediately below. It was first published February 11, 1834 and ran for quite some time.

Democratic Press Logo

The York Democratic Press of 1841 was very Democratic, in the political sense of the word. The newspaper was extremely true to the Democratic Party, as you can tell by the way it listed candidates for the upcoming election for governor of Pennsylvania.

Under an image of an eagle with a shield David R. Porter was announced as the DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION FOR GOVERNOR. Immediately below, the Democratic Press described Porter's opponent as:

William Goodridge's advertisement of the public display of a Christmas tree in 1840, fairly rare for that time, has often been repeated at this time of year.

In the hope of adding a new twist, I did an internet search on Goodridge plus Christmas tree and came up with an interesting coincidence. One hundred twenty-seven years after the York, PA Christmas tree exhibit, Edward S. Goodridge of New York state received a patent for a new way of constructing artificial Christmas tree branches.

The original ad and more information on the patent are below.

We are bombarded with ads today for Christmas gifts, in print, on television and online. In 1840 York county residents managed to get their shopping, which was much sparser than ours, done with few ads to entice them.

Still, York entrepreneur William Goodridge managed to cram a lot of merchandise in the brief advertisement he ran in the York Democratic Press during November and December 1840.