Photo from 1928 York Gazette & Daily microfilm at York County Heritage Trust.
O.K., so maybe a lot of moms don’t bake apple pie anymore, but baseball is still big in York County, PA.
Glen Rock native Cliff Heathcote, who played in the major league from 1918 to 1932, shows up in a lot of the record books. In fact, one of his records may never be broken.
Comments (0)
Richard M. Watt, second from left, and the U.S.S. Maine
This week’s Sunday News carried a story about a new book titled What Really Sank the Titanic. The authors came to a different conclusion that that offered by Rear Admiral Richard M. Watt, expert witness and York native, who testified in the 1915 White Star Line liability trial.
Watt, former Chief Constructor in the U.S. Navy faulted the owners, the White Star Line, for not allowing the builders to install longitudinal bulkheads and water-tight doors on the Titanic.
McCall's Ferry (Holtwood) Power Plant Under Construction, ca.1907.
Electric power was on the front page 100 years ago. The Merchants Electric Light, Heat, and Power Company distributed hydroelectricity generated by the York Haven Water and Power Company, which utilized giant Kaplan turbines. These turbines were manufactured in York by the S. Morgan Smith Company.
When York Haven went on line in 1904, they were said to be one of the three largest water powered electric plants in the world. Just three years later, by the fall of 1907, there was a much larger hydro project underway. A 3,000 feet long high dam was being constructed at McCall’s Ferry. A Gazette article of the time reported that it was believed that York, as well as Baltimore, would be receiving electric current from the McCall’s Ferry Power Company by August of 1908.
Two days after the initial article another article appeared in the Gazette that raised doubts about the McCall’s Ferry project:
We didn’t know how bad smoking was for our health 90 years ago, when cigar factories were springing up everywhere. In York County, we knew cigars were very good for our economy. For well over 150 years, processing tobacco into cigars kept many York Countians gainfully employed.
Lewis Miller illustrated a group of youths, himself among them, making cigars in 1811 at the shop of “William Spangler, Tobacconist.” They were Henry Sheffer, John Lehman, Jacob Weiser, Lewis Miller, Daniel Masse, Daniel Wolf, Emanuel Sheffer, John Jones, and Henry Wagner. Miller would have been around 15 at the time. Some of the boys look quite a bit younger.
According to the Red Lion Area Historical Society webpage, in the month of October 1929, 15 million cigars were shipped out of the Red Lion train station on the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad. This wouldn’t have included the millions more made each month in factories large and small in York and just about every community in the county.
My grandfather, Edwin Shelley, converted a three-story house into a cigar factory in Lucky, Chanceford Township. Grandpa wasn’t alone as shown in the following Gazette article from the fall of 1917:
York Mayor Ephraim Hugentugler had his hands full in the fall of 1917. He hauled many locals into his police court for furnishing liquor to soldiers stationed at the temporary training camp at Gettysburg. The soldiers also got themselves arrested for drunkenness or being disorderly, a charge that sometimes meant consorting with the local young women.
Excuses flew liberally: The Gazette reported that one soldier got off with just a $10 fine by explaining that “he never drank before and that the booze went to his head and he did not know what he was doing.”
A 24-year-old soldier “caught spooning” with a 13-year-old girl in Penn Park said he didn’t know she was under 18 because “he did not ask her age.” The mayor didn’t quite believe a group of women, aged 15 to 24, rounded up at Penn Common when many of them said they couldn’t get away from the soldiers. “Huggy” told the girls they should be home after nine and “declared that if they are not permitted to take their soldier friends home to entertain them, they certainly will not be allowed to do so on the streets and public parks.”
The Mayor and Police Chief Kottcamp were both upset when the U.S. District Judge Witmer, who had jurisdiction over the liquor furnishing cases, let seven of what Hugentugler called the “worst characters in York” off with a warning. Hugentugler decided to take matters into his own hands. See my Sunday News column below:
Ninety years ago York Mayor Hugentugler presided over a frequently lively police court: One case involved a “near murder” with a hatchet on the 500 block of Vander Avenue. The York Gazette reported the husband
The Tribute Tree Committee appealed to the patriotism and generosity of York County citizens in this December 1919 York Gazette ad. A neighbor recently asked if I knew anything about the rows of sycamore trees still standing in places on the Susquehanna Trail south of York. She had heard that they were some kind of War Memorial.
Research led me to an extensive file at the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives. The file contained only a few articles on the Susquehanna Trail sycamores, which were indeed planted as a World War I memorial by the War Mothers organization. The rest of the file was a treasure-trove of information on the York County component of a similar World War I memorial project to line the Lincoln Highway from coast to coast with trees.
The file includes original records, donated around fifty years ago by the Woman’s Club of York, of the Road of Remembrance from Abbottstown to Wrightsville. Records of contributions collected by the very organized group of women are included, as are file cards for each serviceman memorialized. For example:
NAME: William John Feldman
RESIDENCE: 404 W. Market St., York
DEPT OF SERVICE: Artillery
RANK: Private
WHERE DIED: Contrexeville, France.
A number in pencil (S-141) probably refers to the original location of the tree planted in memory of Feldman.
Click here for a previous post on the Woman's Club, sponsors of the memorial tree project.
Why isn’t the Lincoln Highway across the county today an avenue lined with these trees? One reason is probably that instead of the visually distinctive sycamores planted along the Susquehanna Trail, four varieties of trees (oak, sugar maple, elm, and tulip poplar) were planted. These common trees would have blended in more quickly, with their purpose forgotten as memories faded.
The other reason for the Lincoln Highway trees disappearing is quite evident--progress.
The story of the ambitious project itself is absorbing. The full column telling that story follows:
The Woman’s Club of York (yes, it is Woman’s not Women’s) is rededicating its refurbished home this week. The club, in the 200 block of East Market Street, is celebrating its recovery from a disastrous fire a little over six months ago. The club was originally dedicated 90 years ago this week.
While researching the previous owner of the house, Civil War pension attorney Hugh Whiteford McCall, for a York Sunday News column, I became intrigued with the high-style home. I wondered where McCall stopped and the Woman’s Club started in the fabric of the building. An article in the October 20, 1917 York Gazette, describes the Woman’s Club dedication the previous evening and answers a lot of architectural questions.
The renovations, under the direction of architect John B. Hamme, are described in detail: “The interior of the residence has been extensively remodeled, partitions have been removed and new ones have been built. The former parlor and library have been thrown into one, and a wide hall has been built from the front hall to the new assembly hall; the main staircase has been altered and a portion rebuilt. Two new toilet rooms have been placed on the second floor and a new bath room has been built on the third story for the new apartments on that floor. New parquet floors have been laid in the new parlor, portions of the dining room and the new hall to the assembly hall, and all the floors have been gone over, republished and finished.”
The York Gazette & Daily arrived the same day it was printed, via the U.S. mail, in rural York County when I was growing up. That was most certainly the main reason my parents, and many others like them who didn’t agree with the paper’s political views, subscribed to “the morning paper.” They liked their news fresh.
Being a voracious reader from the time I discovered the magic of reading, I remember sitting down with the paper every day and pretty much reading it from cover to cover. That’s a habit I still haven’t broken.
The Gazette & Daily made a liberal out of me, which I am sure my parents never foresaw. Perhaps more importantly, it also deserves credit for my early interest in history, which ultimately became my profession. I never missed the regular feature on what happened in the past--small fascinating snippets of the news of the same day from 25, 50 or more years before.
Since the York Gazette, the York Daily, and the Gazette & Daily, all predecessors of the York Daily Record , are easily accessible on microfilm at the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives, this blog will be looking back to some of those bygone events, along with other tales from York County history and their connections to the larger world out there. Please let me know if you like the look back in time, and if there is anything else you would like to see. The universe is filled with intriguing York County stories from the past. We will do our best to snag them in orbit.
See below to find out the hot news from 50 and 90 years ago:
Expressway (Route 83) under construction in 1957.
