York: October 2008 Archives

Lewis Miller Drawing of "Some Wicked Boys at the Market House, 1804"

Folk artist and chronicler Lewis Miller doesn't say if the prank illustrated above occurred on Halloween or not, but it certainly would have been a fitting one for the tricky holiday.

Some young Yorkers had some time on their hands in 1804 and put themselves to work taking apart and reconstructing a wagon in its new location.

Miller's caption reads:

What did young people do for fun on Halloween week 99 years ago?

According to the York Daily of October 30, 1909, there was some giggling going on. The article reads:

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.

Lewis Miller drawing of 1840 W.H.Harrison campaign headquarters.
In 1840 Democrats derisively campaigned that the Whig candidate for President, William Henry Harrison, would be more at home in a log cabin. The Whigs seized the idea and used it as a symbol, giving the idea that Harrison was one of the common people.

That wasn't exactly correct, seeing that Harrison was the son of a Virginia planter, college educated and a career army officer before he got into politics.

The log cabin image was so striking, however, that Whigs all over the country built log cabins to use as campaign headquarters. Did York?