1870s: January 2008 Archives

You may have heard of Bull Frog Alley and wondered where it was. The following 1878 York Gazette article tells about the basket makers living there.

An Earlier View of Market and Beaver Streets by William Wagner with National House on Left.

I recently wrote about a rowdy York citizen swinging a Civil War cavalry sword around a local cigar store in 1877.

Click here to read about the sword incident.

That York Gazette article referred to even more excitement the previous week in the same neighborhood at Market and Beaver Streets.

A while ago I wrote about how we like to impress others with what we have--the biggest and best.

Click here to read about giant pumpkins and corn.

The Hanover newspapers reported on the really big black snakes seen in that part of the county in May of 1878.

I recently wrote about a Confederate sword that a farmer plowed up near Hanover in 1882, nearly 20 years after it had fallen in a skirmish there.

Click here to read about sword on Forney farm.

There were probably a lot of swords around York County in the years after the Civil War, brought home as souvenirs of that dreadful conflict.

Drinking and weapons of any kind shouldn’t go together, as we can see in the following article from the October 30, 1877 Gazette. (The anonymous reporter had a rather droll sense of humor--a 19th century Mike Argento?)

Lewis Miller drawing of the new courthouse, 1839.

I recently wrote about a thief stealing the copper spouting off the York County courthouse in 1874. That was the York County’s second courthouse, completed in 1840.

Click here to read about the spouting heist.

York County residents, as always, had plenty of opinions where that new courthouse should be and kept a keen eye on the cost. The first courthouse, the one in which Continental Congress met, had to go, they said, because it sat in the middle of Center Square, and traffic was picking up.

I'll tell you more about the cost of the 1840 building itself in a future post, but for now, I’ll quote the Gazette editorial of February 13, 1838 when, after much wrangling, a site was finally chosen:

Duke Street Methodist Church Shortly after Completion

1876 Map Showing Duke Street M.E. Opposite York Collegiate Institute

Anyone associated with a non-profit institution knows that fundraising is a continuing necessity. It was the same in the past. York County churches were very good at coming up with new ways to raise cash. In a previous post I wrote about the York Moravians charging ten cents in 1867 to see their illuminated Christmas tree.

Click here to read about the Moravian Christmas tree.

Giving a donation to have your name embroidered on a quilt was also popular. I’ll go into that in a later post.

I recently came across “jug breaking," a new one to me, but it was certainly a hit at the Duke Street Methodist Church in 1877. My recent York Sunday News column relates the details:

This map, from the 1876 Pomeroy, Whitman Atlas of York County shows the location of the Lutheran Burial Ground.

Sounds like familiar headlines from today’s papers, doesn’t it? Unfortunately stealing for the salvage value is nothing new. In fact, the following article from December 29, 1874 Gazette reports that the York County Courthouse was the victim: