Hanover: June 2008 Archives

Henrietta Stroman was born in York, Pennsylvania on August 26, 1830, the daughter of Henry Stroman. At the age of 24 she married Daniel F. Stair and moved across York County to Hanover. He was probably the Daniel F. Stair that served in Company A of the Sixteenth Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers during the Civil War and was a cigar manufacturer after the war.

News of the firing on Fort Sumter, igniting the Civil War, on April 12, 1861 had quickly reached southern Pennsylvania. Henrietta Stair shared her lucid memories of that tense April, and ensuing panic among the citizen of Hanover, in a York Gazette article in 1908.

See below for my recent York Sunday News article based on Mrs. Stair's recollections:

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.