Recently in 1890s Category

The Rewalt house now and in the late 19th century.

The first time John B. Gordon came to York, in late June 1863, he had an occupying army with him. He returned unarmed in 1894 and received a much warmer welcome.

By then Gordon was a U. S. Senator from Georgia, serving a reunited nation. The occasion was a stop on his popular lecture tour on The Last Days of the Confedercy. Newspaper accounts relate that the enthusiastic audience at the York Opera House had paid from 25 to 75 cents to hear Gordon's reminiscences.

In the presentation, Gordon addressed his earlier visit to York County, including his encounter with Mary Jane Magee Rewalt of Wrightsville: "He paid a warm tribute to the spirit of the 'heroine of the Susquehanna' whose house he had saved from burning at Wrightsville, and who courteously entertained him and his staff but who did not hesitate (to prevent her act from being misunderstood) to assert in the midst of the confederate officers her devotion to the Union cause, telling them of a husband...in the Union army."

Gordon also fondly remembered Mrs. Rewalt in his Reminiscences of the Civil War, published in 1903: "There was one point especially at which my soldiers combated the fire's progress with immense energy, and with great difficulty saved an attractive home from burning. It chanced to be the home of one of the most superb women it was my fortune to meet during the four years of war."

To read more about the General and the Wrightsville lady see my column below, previously published in the York Sunday News.

Lewis Miller drawing of a 600 pound York hog.

Shooting matches have been popular in York County for many years. The prizes have changed somewhat--I don't think anyone gives a live big fat pig like they did in the 1892 article below. That would be fun to haul home.

If you are interested in participating in an upcoming clay shoot, it's not too late. As a member of the Board of Directors of the Farm and Natural Lands Trust of York County, I am pleased that the Leadership York 2009 Class is holding a clay shoot fundraiser on April 3 to benefit FNLT. The Leadership York class has extended the registration deadline. Click here for registration information.

See below for the news from the February 13, 1892 York Gazette.

Illustration from York Wood Choppers charter, 1898.

I was recently asked about an 1899 York Press reference to Foresters and Wood Choppers. Sound like people connected to lumbering, right? Not when you consider the popularity of fraternal organizations in that era. Men really seemed to like to get out to the lodge hall once a week. The local city directories abound with Knights, Odd Fellows, Red Men, Eagles, Heptasophs, and, yes, Foresters and Wood Choppers.

While I was helping to sort books for the annual York County Heritage Trust Book Blast, one of the other volunteers mentioned that she recently discovered that a best-selling author of horror novels lives in York County.

(Plug for book sale: Many thousands of books of all kinds for extremely low prices, August 14 & 15 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and August 16 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is held at YCHT's Agricultural & Industrial Museum, 217 W. Princess Street. Everyone is welcome.)

Other nationally known authors also have York County connections. Rita Mae Brown, who writes the mysteries with the helpful cats, was born near Hanover. When he spoke here a few years ago, David McCullough mentioned that he had ancestors in the Peach
Bottom area.

One of my favorites is Hanover native John Luther Long, whose novella Madame Butterfly was the basis for the Puccini opera, as well as the play Miss Saigon. See below for more on Long from my previous Sunday News column:

Dr. William Bigler stars in one of my favorite examples of how easy it was to get just about anywhere from here with the public transportation of over a century ago. At 2:30 p.m. February 5, 1890, Dr. Bigler simply stepped on the train near his home in Springvale (Windsor Township). A few days later he arrived at his son’s residence in Orlando, Florida. Simple, huh?

(See below for my previous Sunday News column on the multi-talented Bigler family.)

The “RAILROAD TIME TABLE” below from the November 20, 1877 Gazette shows how often trains left and arrived at York on the several railroads that connected here. That doesn’t even begin to address the multitude of stops made at every little hamlet along the way.

A recent newspaper article said there is a shortage of court stenographers. It reminded me of Henry Clay Demming, official York County court stenographer for nearly 45 years.

Demming was born in Geneva, NY, but came to Harrisburg to learn printing at the Patriot and Union newspaper as a young man. He served in the Civil War and eventually reached the military rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Before becoming a professional court stenographer, Demming served on the editorial staff of the Harrisburg Daily Telegraph and a verbatim reporter for the Legislative Record.

His friendship with Thomas Edison probably came about because of Colonel Demming’s interest in science, including rocks and minerals, judging by his position as State Geologist in the early 1900s. Edison’s shared interest in minerals, especially iron ore, led to the great inventor’s biggest failure.

Hartman Building Revealed March 2008
Miller View With Spectators in the Cupola

You can’t miss the news that the Hartman Building in the Square of York is going to get a drastic facelift. It has been reported in print, on TV and online. I also whipped out my camera when I walked by the other day, struck by the sight of the impressive stone keystone lintels and sturdy bricks that had been covered by metal siding all those years.

I read the news stories that the owner, commendably, plans to restore the building. But then I started to look at the various incarnations and wonder which one will be chosen. Six stories or seven? Cupola or no cupola?

The site has been drawn, photographed, and made into postcards as much as any in York County over the past 200 years. I picked six out of the many views available to share with you. See below for more.

Which Hartman building do you like best?

1876 Pomeroy, Whitman map of York Township showing the paper mill/shinnerhannes site.

It seems like I’ve been writing a lot about ailing or dead large animals in York County. When you think about it, there were a whole lot of large animals living amongst the people of York County 100 or so years ago. Even if you weren’t a farmer, you would often have your own cow for milk, even in town.

Click here to read about York Cattle Doctor's cure.

And horses--horses were transportation, horses were tractors, horses were necessities. Cattle could be turned into roasts before they got too old, but even cows came down with fatal illnesses.

All those horses are another matter--this is York County, Pennsylvania, not France. That’s where the rendering plants came in. Rendering plants basically recycled dead animals--hides, tallow, bone meal....

Click here to read about Earnest Dempwolf's plan to build a horse and dog hospital next to his York Rendering Works.

Rendering plants, however, were subject to the NIMBY (not in my back yard) syndrome, with good reason, according to the following December 1897 York Gazette news item from Tilden [Longstown area]:

One hundred and ten years ago an article on the front page of the Gazette starts out: "A gang of burglars raided the post offices at Dallastown and Red Lion sometime Monday night and succeeded in making a fairly good haul."

The first robbery was in Red Lion. The article states: "About 12 o'clock that night [Monday] a number of residents in the vicinity of the post office were awakened by the noise of an explosion. A family named Spangler residing in the office building, on hearing the explosion made an investigation of every room but the post office, and finding everything all right, retired to bed. At Hildebrand's hotel on the opposite side of the street the explosion awakened occupants of the house."

It goes on to say that:

One hundred and ten years ago, most folks, especially in rural areas didn't have telephones. That wonderous invention was only 21 years old in 1897. As far as other media, Heinrich Hertz has only discovered radio waves ten years before and television was way in the future.

The way to keep up with news of your neighbors was to read the newspaper. Each small community had a stringer, and no event was too small to report, especially since those free-lance reporters were reportedly paid according to the length of their column. This practice continued well into the mid-twentieth century. I remember, when I was a child, reading in the Gazette & Daily that my parents, grandparents, and I were entertained by my aunt and uncle for Christmas dinner. (My aunt happened to be the stringer for the New Bridgeville area.)

In early December, 1897 the special correnspondent of the Gazette "Jacobus Notes" column reported that: