Over the years, someone with excess white paint camouflaged the 1880s-vintage red brick Loucks School. That plus other alterations has made the West Manchester Township building hard to identify as a former one-room school
That’s not the only way the building and its surroundings have changed.
Town squares have been known to move in York County.
Take the focal point in Shiloh, for example.
While the trolley rattled through West Manchester Township, the village’s center point fell at Broad Street and Church Road. Now, it's the intersection of Carlisle and Church roads... .
YorkCounts' new Web site earns accolades as York Town Square's noteworthy Web site of the fortnight, or as often as I bestow this award. www.yorkcounts.org
This local group has packed its site with quality of life indicators in graphic form that tell how York County's doing.
The York Daily Record/Sunday News is publishing these indicators each week, probably on Saturdays.
This past Sunday, the indicator measured voter turnout in gubernatorial races from 1994-2002. Glass half full: Voter turnout increased slightly between 1998 and the 2002 elections. Half empty: Less than half of the county's registered voters cast ballots in each election.
One graphic in the YorkCounts list continues to fascinate: According to 2000 census figures, one out of five York countians does not hold a high school diploma. The numbers in all regions of the county are up since 1990... .
Golf courses in York County will soon turn from green to black, as in asphalt.
Residential builders want to cover over some or all of Copper Beach, Heritage Hills, Springwood, Honey Run and Hawk Lake courses. This isn’t the first time that development has sprouted up on a York County golf course.
In fact, it happened to the county’s first course. The Springdale section of York and York College of Pennsylvania cover the county's initial course dating back to the 1890s — or perhaps before. Then as now, the sand traps gave way to the cement mixer because a growing population made the land more valuable for other purposes.
The names of luminaries Grier Hersh and A.B. Farquhar were connected with this south York course, as the following excerpt from “Never to be Forgotten" points out:
St. Paul’s Lutheran Church rekindled its cross atop its towering steeple Sunday night.
The illuminated cross might be visible from as far away as Interstate 83.
The lighting spotlights a church with a history that connects with many things from York's past.
The York congregation’s longtime King and Beaver Street home burned down in 1939... .
A nice-sized audience at the Red Lion Historical Society persevered through my presentation on York’s County’s role in World War II.
Three members of the audience came to my rescue after I called on them to tell some impromptu stories. All three told of the county’s contributions toward the Allied war efforts.
First, I picked on Betty Baldwin to tell about Camp Stewartstown, a prisoner of war camp in that southeastern York County town, that housed about 2,000 German prisoners in the summers of 1944 and 1945. ...
Photographer Paul Kuehnel shows how Shane Speal turns old cigar boxes, part of Red Lion's cigarmaking heritage, into guitars.
Two interesting stats popped out in my reading about Red Lion this week. (When you speak to a Red Lion audience as I will do Thursday night, you better know your history because Red Lioners know their history.)
Red Lion earns honors with the highest elevation of any borough in York County. It's 911 feet above sea level, beating neighboring Dallastown by 11 feet.
Stone Head, 3.5 miles southwest of Dillsburg, is the highest point in the county at 1,384 feet. The lowest is 109 feet above sea level at the Susquehanna River, at the Mason-Dixon Line, a long way from Dillsburg.
The elevation at the steps of the former York County Courthouse is 392.975.
OK, enough numbers.
A second point is that Red Lion was considered the capital of cigarmaking in York County at the turn of the 19th century. This was a robust countywide industry that produced 573 million cigars in 1920, 20 percent of all American-made cigars.
In reading up on Red Lion for a speech this week, I ran across one of my favorite York County stories.
The story, pregnant with meaning, is told about Dr. John M. Hyson, 1850-1931, commonly known as the father of Red Lion... .
The York Daily Record/Sunday News has run occasional articles over the years about the popularity of genealogical research locally.
Genealogists love York County because its crossroads nature meant that many people passed through here on there way to a faraway destination. Many people who ended up in North and South Carolina rolled or walked Wrightsville, York and Hanover after disembarking at Philadelphia. Some stayed awhile, and then moved on. President William McKinley’s family is such an example, finally ending up in Ohio.
Family researchers, by the hundreds each month, also are in awe of the county’s vast family archives.
It’s a white-glove event that intrigues every year. The York County Heritage Trust’s “Treasures of the Trust" brings to public view items from its collection not currently on display.
It featured a range of items, including stuffed animals sent by Harold E. Miller to his daughter, Jean, shortly before the soldier was killed in World War II Europe.
Roy Young, a former York Safe and Lock worker, had donated a 37 mm M-51 tank shell manufactured at this major World War II defense plant, now home to Harley-Davidson.
Those attending also saw Fiebing’s Saddle Soap, used to care for saddles and harnesses of horses used to pull fire equipment in turn-of-the-20th-century York. The soap kept the leather from drying out.
And all kinds of other neat stuff, plus tours of storage areas. ...
Just off York’s Roosevelt Avenue at Fahs Street, people today reside in two-story government-type housing.
The houses clash with the style of their single-unit neighbors in the Fireside area, but motorists passing by have probably grown accustomed to them.
But these houses were anything but nondescript when introduced to York in 1943... .
The Crispus Attucks Association was formed in 1931 as a social and recreational center for black people in segregated York.
Today, its $6 million budget covers education, recreation and employment programs for a diverse community.
We’ll tell CA’s story, these past 75 years, in a series of profiles to run in our York Sunday News Viewpoints section for the next 30 weeks. For a preview ...
An e-mailer was curious about the history of a friend's house.
How could she determine who previously lived in the house? she wondered. ...
A reader pointed out an intriguing Web site http://www.eawebview.com/masondixon/StoneMarkerSearch.cfm detailing extensive research on extant Mason-Dixon Line markers.
Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon undertook their famous survey between 1763-1767. They worked on the section near Delta, in southeast York County, in 1765. They laid their line setting York County's southern boundary after that.
They put down their markers this way: Their imported stone markers were placed every mile with “M" for Maryland chiseled on one side and “P" for Pennsylvania chiseled on the other. Larger five-mile markers bear the arms of the families of Lord Baltimore and the Penns.
About 40 stones still stand in York County today... .
I had one of those magic moments when everything I was reading converged.
Within a short period, I read about swimming elephants in two far different types of writing.
A York Daily Record article reported speculations that the Loch Ness Monster might have been an elephant that escaped from a traveling circus that visited that area of Scotland in the 1930s. The article explained when an elephant swims, it flattens out with its trunk above water — similar to photographs of Nessie... .
Helen Thackston Memorial Park sits obscurely between West Princess and West College near the Codorus Creek in York.
Not many people know where the park is, much less the woman whose name is on its sign.
But even a cursory reading through Crispus Attucks Community Center history brings Helen Reeves Thackston’s name to the forefront. She touched the lives of virtually every senior leader in the black community today.
She did this by directing the center’s preschool program from 1932 until 1964. For many years, she volunteered her services.
Her community peers and former students speak of her with awe:
‘Helen didn’t just teach children, she taught them to be proud,’ Sylvia Newcombe, retired York Recreation Commission head, stated in 1979.
Community leader Ray Crenshaw described Helen Thackston in 1969, the year she died. An edited version follows:
The aftermath of the Dover intelligent design trial continues to create issues that demand news coverage. This week, the Christian group Repent America is handing out fliers advertising an upcoming creationism vs. evolution event at Dover's high school. http://www.ydr.com/doverbiology/ci_3557843
And the impact of the local decision is being felt in courts and school districts in Ohio and elsewhere.
And other intriguing details are coming to light, too. Personal type of stuff.
Joe Maldonado, a York Daily Record/Sunday News freelancer called to testify by the plaintiffs attorneys and ACLU in the federal court case, has penned some heartfelt poems written in the middle of the flurry of subpoenas that compelled his testimony.
You might remember that Joe and fellow correspondent Heidi Bernhard-Bubb risked jail time and fines by staring down subpoenas for full testimony about their coverage of the then pro-ID Dover school board. They took the stand after the judge agreed to restrict their testimony to what was published. (See "Reporters emerge as heroes in Dover ID trial" in the York Town Square archives.)
Anyway, the prospect of jail weighed heavily on Joe and his family. Witness the following from his new poetry collection, "The 3 a.m. Journal of Joseph S. Maldonado." ...
A story on some rehab work planned for Holtwood Dam in the Susquehanna River sparked discussion in our afternoon news meeting Monday.
Where exactly is Holtwood Dam in relation to the other impoundments holding back water between York and Lancaster counties? Well, this isn't exact, but it's a couple of miles north of the Norman Wood Bridge and a couple of miles downstream from the former McCall's Ferry crossing.
Someone once told me an easy way to remember the dams. Start at Conowingo, the southernmost dam, and work deeper into the alphabet as you go north. So, it's Conowingo, Holtwood, Safe Harbor and York Haven.
The first river dam - an impoundment for the canal system built in 1840 - spanned the Susquehanna between Wrightsville and Columbia. I've never heard a name for this low-head dam. But if it was called the "Wrightsville Dam," then it would also fit into this alphabetical scheme. Information from "Never to be Forgotten" on the 1840 dam follows:
I’ve run across some interesting stuff in preparing a series of vignettes telling the larger story of York’s Crispus Attucks Association.
First, I didn’t know other Crispus Attucks groups existed at the time of the local center’s founding. Lancaster, for example, had such a center named after the martyr - a black man - who died with four others in the Boston Massacre, in the years leading up to the American Revolution.
And I had never heard the genesis of York's CA center. Before the center was founded in 1931, two struggling charitable groups were devoted to the needs of the black community. That community was growing because Southerners were coming north for jobs in pre-Depression America.
Back on the Lions Club beat. (See Feb. 24 post, "Susquehanna Lions fight to keep streak going in Mount Wolf.")
This time, I traveled to Hanover to present York County’s World War II story to members.
Hanover is an appropriate place for such a presentation because the death toll from that town alone topped 40 men in uniform. One Hanover-area family — the family of John Bennett — sent eight sons off to war and a ninth son served after the war ended.
The war drew the Hanover community together, and several Hanover Lions members were among those who served.
The current Hanover club president, Roger Leister, was one of those. He flew 35 bomber combat missions over Europe. He survived two crash landings. He knows he was fortunate. Many of his crew members didn’t come back.
He told me that he always paused for prayer before each mission, and he’s not a bit reluctant to say so.
Moments such as that with Roger Leister make long evenings on the speaking circuit worthwhile... .
King Solomon “Sol" White, a former minor leaguer who played in York, has scored a place in the baseball Hall of Fame. http://www.ydr.com/search/ci_3557882
This second baseman’s connection with York was little known here prior to the Hall of Fame’s calling.
York County’s sports history is a fertile ground for further research and writing. Former Major League baseball player Jim Spencer’s from here. So is Greg Gross. Woody Bennett. Scott Fitzkee. Brooks Robinson started his minor league career here. And now Sol White.
Here’s the piece I wrote on the Monarchs for “Never to be Forgotten."
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