Recently in genealogy Category

Fig orchard on East King Street

I came across the striking photo above while looking for something else on the database at the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives. Volunteers are loading images from the vast photo collection into the database so that they can be easily viewed without handling the original photographs. I was surprised to see the lush, tropical fig trees growing in York County. How Mr. Cicero accomplished the feat is explained below, transcribed from the September 6, 1946 Gazette and Daily.

Check out this link to Mr. Cicero's Sicilian home town, Cattolica Eraclea. It is still only about 5,000 inhabitants, but it sounds like a great place to visit with lots of history, including a significant archaeological site of Greek ruins. By clicking Local Family Names on the site and doing a search, I found that there are about six people in Cattolica Eraclea now with the surname Cicero. There is also a list of families there with over 100 people per surname. There are some familiar local and national names on that short list.

Subscribers for a cemetery fence in Spring Garden Township

Blake Stough recently shared the above image of a document he had purchased on eBay some time ago. It lists subscribers for a fence to be built around "the old burial ground on the premises of Vincent Keesey, Esq." in Spring Garden Township. The document is transcribed below.

There is no date, but, looking at the 19 listed names, I am guessing around 1850 to 1875. The land is probably now in Springettsbury Township, which was formed from Spring Garden Township in 1891. I don't think it refers to the Erb Cemetery, which I discussed earlier--none of the names match up.

The 1876 Pomeroy, Whitman York County atlas shows V. K. Keesey in Spring Garden Township at the southwest corner of East Market Street and what is now Haines Road. The Springettsbury Township history, published to commemorate the township's 100th anniversary, confirms that East York was originally "the Keesey Tract." Some of the names of leading families in that history also match up with the subscribers.

The cemetery was likely somewhere in on near the area known as Old East York, but I don't know where or what happened to it. We have heard tales that there was a cemetery near York Suburban Middle School. That's in the general area. Does anybody know for sure where the cemetery was and what happened to the people buried there and their gravestones?

The document reads:

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.

The Prince family, that is. A few days ago I wrote and that I thought there were two contemporary David Princes in York. I based that assumption on that two different women married David Prince, and that one David Prince moved to Baltimore and another taught at the York County Academy for around forty-five years.

Click here to read the previous Prince post.

A further search at the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives of transcribed original records shows that they were indeed the same person, and he did all the things listed above.

Among the marriages announced in an April 1837 York newspaper was that of David B. Prince and Elizabeth Sandoe, on April 6th.

The editors remarked that "accompanying this notice was a liberal slice of the most delicious pound cake for the printer. It was the sweetest communication that we have received for many months, and we inserted it with as much pleasure, as we now do the sincere hope that they, who thus remembered the printer, may long enjoy undisturbed and unalloyed connubial felicity."

I was asked, in response to my recent post about the Barnitz brewers of York, if they were related to brewer J. C. Barnitz of Harrisburg. Click here to read about the York brewers.

Good question, and the answer is Yes. It turns out that brewing was a traditional occupation in the Barnitz family during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

We tend to think of our ancestors and their contemporaries as very strait-laced. Sometimes nothing can be farther from the truth. That’s what is so fascinating about using original documents as historical sources. Those letters, diaries, and newspapers they left behind sometime fairly sizzle with crime, intrigue, and scandal.

For example, take a look at the following advertisements from the April 1777 Pennsylvania Gazette.

You know my theory that all roads lead back to York? Here is another example. The small city of Galion, with about 11,500 people, sits in the northern part of Ohio, about half way across the state.

They are on U.S. Route 30, like York. They have an industrial past, like York. In fact, they are known for manufacturing road building machinery, just like we used to be.

Galion, however, has an even closer association with York County.

York County is part of what is known as a “cultural hearth,” an area from which ideas and culture spread throughout much of the country as settlers moved on.

In a recent post, I showed how the Great Wagon road, shown on the 1751 Fry-Jefferson map, carried pioneers to the south and west. Click here for that post.

That was only the beginning.

Click here for the Library of Congress zoomable 1751 Fry-Jefferson map.

I recently wrote about York County residents being recruited to move to Virginia in the 1870s. Click here to read that post.

There were several paths, following very early roads, from South Central Pennsylvania to less populated lands.