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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 years ago, in the fall of 1907, the Gazette ran the following article:

“A horse and dog hospital and a horse ambulance are new things promised for York. The York Rendering Works, of which E. A. Dempwolf is manager, is trying to interest local members of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and others in the matter of raising a fund for the purchase of an ambulance which can be used to haul sick horses to a hospital which will be established in this city.”

The proposal goes on to say that as the horses recuperate,