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Nagasaki Destruction, August 1945

I am continuing to read through the Red Lion Echoes newsletters from World War II. Previous posts told of two Colonels from Yoe, Red Lion man present at Tojo's attempted suicide and the quiet heroism of a Red Lion sailor.

The photos above are four of a dozen published in the January 1946 issue of Red Lion Echoes. These scenes of the horrible devastation at Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 were loaned to the Echoes editor by Sgt. Joe Tyson, 7th Combat Cargo Sqdn., 2nd Combat Cargo Group.

I assume they were taken by Sgt. Tyson soon after the bombing. One photo seems to show servicemen riding in an open truck as a lone bicyclist passes by.

They really do underscore the hell of war.

The editor of Red Lion Echoes wrote:

It's amazing where York County people turn up.

As I posted earlier, a friend gave me some original copies of Red Lion Echoes, a small paper meant for the service people from the Red Lion area during World War II to keep them up to date on local happenings. The men and women who received the paper would write back to let everyone know what they were doing overseas.

Click here for pervious Echoes post.

Below is an excerpt of a letter from Captain C. William Trout to his parents in Red Lion. Captain Trout was serving in Japan, just after Japanese surrender, with the 441st Counter Intelligence Corps.

A friend recently gave me a some copies of Red Lion Echoes to pass on to the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives. Her father-in-law was the editor of the newsletter, which was: "Published monthly by the Citizens of Red Lion and Vicinity" during World War II. It was send to the servicemen and women of the Red Lion area and also kept local citizens up-to-date on those troops.

I couldn't let these pieces of local history pass through my hands without reading them They bring home how the war affected just about everyone in some way.

Anyone familiar with Yoe knows it still isn't very big, somewhere around 1,000 residents now, probably a good many less in 1945. Still, as the item below from Red Lion Echoes shows, leaders can, and do, come from very small towns. It was published shortly after the war was officially over.

The Rewalt house now and in the late 19th century.

The first time John B. Gordon came to York, in late June 1863, he had an occupying army with him. He returned unarmed in 1894 and received a much warmer welcome.

By then Gordon was a U. S. Senator from Georgia, serving a reunited nation. The occasion was a stop on his popular lecture tour on The Last Days of the Confedercy. Newspaper accounts relate that the enthusiastic audience at the York Opera House had paid from 25 to 75 cents to hear Gordon's reminiscences.

In the presentation, Gordon addressed his earlier visit to York County, including his encounter with Mary Jane Magee Rewalt of Wrightsville: "He paid a warm tribute to the spirit of the 'heroine of the Susquehanna' whose house he had saved from burning at Wrightsville, and who courteously entertained him and his staff but who did not hesitate (to prevent her act from being misunderstood) to assert in the midst of the confederate officers her devotion to the Union cause, telling them of a husband...in the Union army."

Gordon also fondly remembered Mrs. Rewalt in his Reminiscences of the Civil War, published in 1903: "There was one point especially at which my soldiers combated the fire's progress with immense energy, and with great difficulty saved an attractive home from burning. It chanced to be the home of one of the most superb women it was my fortune to meet during the four years of war."

To read more about the General and the Wrightsville lady see my column below, previously published in the York Sunday News.

Lewis Miller drawing of the Confederate invasion of York, June 1863.

Cassandra Small's vivid letters to cousin Lissie Latimer, describing the Confederate invasion of York during the end of June 1863, are often quoted. Cassandra was the daughter of Philip A. Small, a leading businessman or York at the time, and his wife, Sarah Bartow Latimer.

In one letter Cassandra relates: "George Latimer was with General Gordon's Division; happily we didn't see him, as we should not have spoken to him. Some of his Copperhead friends shook hands with him, and he begged them not to tell us, but they couldn't keep it to themselves. We all respect him a great deal more than we do them."

Cassandra's first cousin, James William Latimer of York, wrote to his brother Bartow Latimer that, during the occupation, "Most ladies had sense to stay home. Men went about freely. I spoke to one of the Rebs once. Others talked and questioned them, but I did not feel like it. Heard nothing of Geo. Latimer or Tom."

Who were George and Tom?

Researching history is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. You take little odd-shaped pieces and try to fit them together to create a complete picture.

Along with others, I have been gathering information for years on Camp Security, where British prisoners of war were detained from 1781 to 1783.

Click here for background on Camp Security.

The camp was located on part of David Brubaker's 280 acres, about four and a half miles east of York in the area of Stony Brook. That land has been subdivided since, with the two largest remaining parcels known as the Wiest and Rowe properties.

Some previously untapped sources have recently come to light.

A 1917 newspaper account captured some reminiscences of David Sloat, who at 90 was one of the last three Civil War veterans in Wrightsville.

After the war Sloat had moved to Ohio and lived there for fifty years, but he retired back to Wrightsville. There he shared his vivid memories, as a boy of 16, of the Confederate invasion of York County. The account states:

Order to register prisoners paroled to Yorkers

I gave a brief overview in my recent York Sunday News column of Camp Security, the 1781-1783 Revolutionary War prisoner of war camp just east of York. The whole column is at the end of this post.

Camp Security is the last remaining prisoner of war camp in the United States that has not been swallowed up by development. The site is considered to be at the highest priority risk by the National Trust of Historic Preservation and the National Park Service. Only a few of the approximately 40 acres of the camp have been subject to full archaeological exploration.

Estimates of the number of British Prisoners interned at Camp Security vary. Records are rather sketchy in comparison with statistics we keep today, and the existing records can be interpreted differently. Some sources say many died or deserted before and after they arrived in York. Other sources say deaths and desertions have been exaggerated. As more catalogs of document collections and documents themselves become accessible online, more statistics may surface.

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:

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.