Recently in tobacco Category

We didn’t know how bad smoking was for our health 90 years ago, when cigar factories were springing up everywhere. In York County, we knew cigars were very good for our economy. For well over 150 years, processing tobacco into cigars kept many York Countians gainfully employed.

Lewis Miller illustrated a group of youths, himself among them, making cigars in 1811 at the shop of “William Spangler, Tobacconist.” They were Henry Sheffer, John Lehman, Jacob Weiser, Lewis Miller, Daniel Masse, Daniel Wolf, Emanuel Sheffer, John Jones, and Henry Wagner. Miller would have been around 15 at the time. Some of the boys look quite a bit younger.

According to the Red Lion Area Historical Society webpage, in the month of October 1929, 15 million cigars were shipped out of the Red Lion train station on the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad. This wouldn’t have included the millions more made each month in factories large and small in York and just about every community in the county.

My grandfather, Edwin Shelley, converted a three-story house into a cigar factory in Lucky, Chanceford Township. Grandpa wasn’t alone as shown in the following Gazette article from the fall of 1917:

One hundred and ten years ago this week, the Gazette noted the semi-annual visit of hermit Joel Strong of Hellam township to see his friend, Al Boll, of Ebner's Cafe. It seems Mr. Strong walked the eight miles each way to stock up on his winter's supply of tobacco. The article notes that the "little hermit is away up in years, but his kindly blue eyes are as clear looking as the eyes of a boy."

Records at York County Heritage Trust indicate that Mr. Strong was born on