I purchased a Lucky canning house ledger covering September through November, 1943 at a yard sale a few years ago and donated it to the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives. The ledger shows that they were canning corn and tomatoes then.
Wholesale customers for canned corn included Daugherty & Ward, Crisfield, Del.; Fulton, Mehring & Hauser, York; Oriental Paper & Bag Co.; District Wholesale Grocery Co. and Sprague, Warner, Kenny Co., all of Washington, D.C.; Maryland Gro. Co. Baltimore, Md. and Audment Bros., Lancaster, Pa. The U.S. Government purchased both 1,500 cases of corn and 3,750 cases of tomatoes, perhaps to feed World War II troops.

See below for my recent York Sunday News column on York County canners and vegetable pickers and also a photo of the Lucky cannery workers.

Hanover Foods has carried on that tradition in the county, becoming a big contender in food processing, as has Knouse Foods in nearby Adams County, but the smaller neighborhood canneries are long gone. They dotted the countryside, especially across southern York County, perhaps because of the ease of shipping from there to Baltimore and further points, first by train and then by truck.

Successful preservation of cooked food in sealed bottles and cans is said to date back to the time of Napoleon, when chef Nicholas Appert answered the general's call for a way to keep food safe to feed French armies.

Commercial canning in York County is traced back to 1874 when D. E. Winebrenner left his father's tanning business to start a canning house. Winebrenner urged local farmers to raise enough vegetables to keep the cannery supplied.

Soon other canneries sprung up, providing a close market to which farmers could quickly transport their fragile crops. Canners sometimes contracted with the farmers in the spring for their later harvest, at times not charging for seed until it could be deducted from the price paid the farmer for the delivered crop.

I'm not certain how many canning houses there were in York County. The 1920 Industrial Directory of Pennsylvania listed fifteen, but there were many more. The 1948 articles mention Spring Grove, Codorus, Airville, Hanover, Delta, Stewartstown, Laurel, Fawn Grove, New Freedom, Woodbine, High Rock, and Hungerford. Some of the smaller canning houses subcontracted for larger firms, such as the one at Shenk's Ferry in Chanceford Township, which canned for Flinchbaugh & Leber, Red Lion. Labels still exist for tomatoes the little Shenk's Ferry canning house canned, under the "Avondale" brand, for the Kroger Foods chain of the Midwest.
One of my childhood memories is the distinctive odor of piles of discarded tomato skins outside the Brogue canning house. It is gone but still commemorated by Canning House Road. My father's diaries from the 1940s show that he trucked many a load of tomatoes out that road to the canning house. Accounts for individuals in a ledger from the Lucky canning house and general store, now at the York County Heritage Trust, mixes crops sold, seeds and canned vegetables bought and necessities, such as shoes, underwear and gasoline purchased, on one page.

Some canning businesses grew to substantial size. The Chas. G. Summers Canning Co. in New Freedom was one of the largest in Pennsylvania in the mid-1940s, canning
peas, green & wax beans, tomatoes, baby limas, corn, mixed vegetables, onions and dried beans. Their "Superfine" label vegetables were distributed in all states east of Mississippi and all major marketing in the west.

A 1963 biography of William A Free, Sr., founder of Hungerford Fine Foods says his firm is "Considered one of the leaders of the canned onion industry." Hungerford Packing Company was among the recipients of the War Food Administration "A" Award and subsequent "star awards" during World War II.

Government bodies were big customers of local canneries, large and small, during wars and peacetime. The writer of one of the 1948 articles felt that quality was somewhat sacrificed for quantity during wartime, but the armed services, government hospitals, state and private institutions meant sales of tons of the big No. 10 cans by the local canners. The 1943 Lucky canning house ledger reflects World War II production and rationing. It lists many thousands of "points" under sales to wholesale distributors such as Fulton, Mehring and Hauser of York and District Wholesale Grocery of Washington, DC, and the notation "Ex of Points" for the 1,500 cases of tomatoes and 3,750 cases of corn sold for a total of $13,439.54 to the U. S. Government that November.

Marketing wasn't too bad those days: The Oct. 28, 1940 issue of Life Magazine carried a two page spread in full color sponsored by the Canned Pea Marketing Institute. It declared October 21 to November 15 as "Canned Pea Carnival," and offered seven tasty recipes for artfully photographed dishes, including "Individual Salmon Mounds with Canned Peas" and "Mushroom Fondue with Canned Peas and Cheese Sauce." A drawing of a smiling boy and girl is captioned "Canned peas are easy to digest and a wholesome source of energy. Children love then." The ad lists 120 top pea processors, including the Summers Co. of New Freedom and the Winebrenner Co. and Hanover Canning of Hanover.

After World War II labor needs were intense. Whole families, often Polish from Baltimore, moved up for the harvesting, often living in plain housing constructed for them. Men, women and children would work in the fields, pooling their earnings by family. Help also came from Puerto Rico, but after 1965, because of mechanization of harvesting and processing, only local people were needed.

The small canneries are gone, but it's nice to know that the tradition of growing and processing quality canned and frozen food is still a large part of the economy of our region, a heritage of which we can be proud.

Lucky canning house workers, probably 1930s.

Many thousands of artifacts were found during the recent archaeological dig at the Schultz House, items such as pieces of pottery and dishes, bottle glass and window glass, animal bones, coal, bricks, mortar, plaster and nails--lots and lots of nails. Even a few Native American items were found. I didn't get to participate in the dig, but I was privileged to be one of the volunteers that spent nearly two weeks cleaning and marking the artifacts. Archaeologist Steve Warfel will spend the winter cataloging the artifacts and present a report to Historic York, Inc., the owner of the house, in the spring. The items will be placed with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, also the custodian of the items found in the 1979 limited dig that identified part of the prisoner of war camp.

The four+ acres on which the Schultz House sits was part of the whole tract of 280 acres owned by David Brubaker during the Revolutionary War. Camp Security was located on about 40 acres of the same tract.

It was somewhat disappointing not to find any military-related artifacts, as Camp Security was just across the field. Maybe we shouldn't be too surprised though. The Shultz House is said to have been a tavern during the Revolutionary period. Even if it was frequented by the guards, they may not have left much behind in the immediate vicinity of the house. The prisoners themselves would have been expected to stay close by the camp. The ones confined in the stockade, which still has not been located, wouldn't have had a choice. The others, those with more freedom, still needed permission to move about.

Still, the importance of the dig was twofold. First, the Schultz House is at least 245 years old. As a historic house, it is significant enough to warrant exploration. Secondly, there was no way to know if any military artifacts were there without doing a dig. To me, that underscores the importance of further exploration of other parts of the original 280 acres. My hope is that owners of the two large remaining tracts, known as the Wiest farm and the Rowe farm, someday give permission for further archaeological exploration.

Click the links below for more on Camp Security's history.

Documenting Camp Security.

Another clue to Camp Security.

Camp Security prisoner numbers hard to pin down.

See below for more photos.

Some of the holes on the western side.

Looking toward the barn from the house.

Looking from the barn toward the area where camp artifacts were found in previous digs