July 2006 Archives

Stories abound from York County's storied agricultural past.

Many illustrate the conflict when an agricultural county evolves into a major industrial center.

Here's a machine vs. animal story from the Spring Grove Ripplet in 1918... .

The burning of a York County barn scheduled to be part of an agricultural museum might slow down the heritage project. http://www.ydr.com/history/

But it gives good reason to ruminate a bit on the county’s vaunted agricultural past.

Throughout York County’s history, its farmland has been among the most productive in the nation. For example, York has been among the country’s 100 leading counties in value of farm products sold and remains near the top in Pennsylvania in number of farms.

When did agriculture officially lose the majority in York County? ...

A favorite story linked to the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal involves Aquilla Howard, a leader in York's black community in the late-19th and early-20th century.

When Howard, a former slave, passed the Pennsylvania line he jumped off the canal boat full of lime, grabbed a handful of soil and repeatedly kissed it... .

Codorus Navigation and the Conewago Canal might have come earlier, but the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal was the longest waterway and most successful.

It ran along the Susquehanna River’s edge from Wrightsville to the Chesapeake Bay at Havre de Grace.

The canal was in itself a landmark, but part of its support system prompted a major change in river life.

A low-head dam downstream from the bridge at Wrightsville, constructed in 1840, created a slackwater pool for mules to pull boats across the river. The mules walked two newly constructed bridge towpaths, moving boats across the river to canal and railroad points in Columbia.

But the dam caused casualties.. .

Codorus Navigation, the system that made the Codorus navigable in the 1830s, was not York County’s first canal. (See previous post: "York County rail trail extension to follow canal towpath.")

In fact, York County boasted the first canal in Pennsylvania, completed in 1797. That man-made waterway helped rivermen navigate around the tricky Conewago Falls.. .

Many York countians are eagerly looking forward to the opening of the rail trail from York to John Rudy Park.

The land along the Codorus Creek that the trail will follow was graded in the early 1830s to accommodate a tow path for mules to pull canal boats between York and the Susquehanna. A series of dams in the Codorus created slackwater pools making the Codorus navigable... .

Just finished a great vacation read: Jack Brubaker’s “Down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake." (Penn State University Press, 2002.)

Even if you’re not a river enthusiast, the Lancaster New Era journalist/historian brings in history about the communities up and down the river. For example, if you’re interested in logging history, he covers this key 18th century Pennsylvania industry and then relates it to the river.

Some samples, gleaned just from the notes in the back:

It's interesting the work you do on a snowy day can pay off when it's hot months later.

In December, the York Daily Record/Sunday News' Ted Sickler and I went through tubs of material at Crispus Attucks Community Center telling about that organization's 75th anniversary. (If you don't know who Crispus Attucks was, see http://w2.ydr.com/nmf/db-ref/files-db/704.pdf)

We organized the photos and stories into a series of 30 profiles about the organization that has long so successfully served the recreational and social needs of minorities in York.

The profiles have been running in the York Sunday News Viewpoints section since March. They will end in the fall at about the time that CA is planning a major event.

We have the complete set online at http://www.ydr.com/history.

When you add these weekly chunks together, you have a narrative of the organization's 75 years. We'll bring together these weekly bites later in the fall. This will be the first publication that CA's story will be told in such detail.

We'll put that publication online, too.

Those days last December have turned into time well spent.

The new York Revolution minor league baseball team’s association with the county’s rich Revolutionary War past could pique interest in the delegates who fled to York from Philadelphia.

Continental Congress came here in 1777-78 after the British pushed them out of the comforts of Philadelphia.

John Hancock was in York. So was Samuel Adams. And his cousin, John. Virginia’s Richard Henry Lee was here. So was Princeton Prez John Witherspoon.

Some of the 64 delegates who served in York Town, as it was then called, were luminaries. Some are little known today, and not that well known in their day.

To help make them come alive a little more, the following from “Nine Months in York Town" http://w2.ydr.com/news/ninemonths/ might be intrigue you:

York’s association with the American Revolution has been so strong that it was inevitable that its minor league baseball team would be named the "Revolution." Indeed, some even erroneously view its architecture as Colonial.

A few buildings remain from Revolutionary times — the Gates House and Plough Tavern and the Cookes House (See "Vandals strike house where Thomas Paine reportedly labored" entry in York Town Square archives), for example.

And a few 20th-century buildings are designed to bring people back to those days — the Colonial Courthouse replica along the Codorus and Sovereign Bank’s (formerly York Federal’s) downtown office.

But much of York’s building and house stock is predominantly Victorian, meaning late 1800s and early 1900s... .

With the growing fun connected with the newly branded York Revolution minor league baseball team, it's easy to forget the sacrifices that came with the American Revolution.

The best estimate is that 4,000 York County men fought in uniform in the Continental Army. Those left at home - the aged, women and children - had to run businesses, farms and households in times of scarcity.

And even men of privilege in the Continental Congress paid a price... .

The naming of York’s new baseball team the "York Revolution" ties into the community’s most cherished moment — the nine months that the Continental Congress visited York County in 1777-78.

What’s the evidence that York relishes its Revolutionary War past when Congress met in the town's Centre Square Courthouse? Well, count the historical markers downtown. About a dozen tie into the Revolution. Only one, way out in West York, connects with the Civil War... .

When he was growing up, a longtime student of York County history said recently, he never heard about York’s embarrassment after the town’s fathers surrendered to the Confederates before the Battle of Gettysburg in late-June 1863.

He kind of scoffed at the debate about the pros and cons of the surrender going on now in the community.

I told him he was proving my point, that the unpleasantness some felt about the surrender was simply not discussed. York celebrated other kinder and gentler moments. As in many communities, we have a tendency to sublimate unpopular historical moments. But now it's part of community discourse along with the attendant topic of race.

That's healthy... .

Nostalgia about York’s trolleys might obscure memories about their dangers.

Two incidents in Dallastown in 1902, taken here from “Never to be Forgotten," give a glimpse into life along the far-flung lines:

Several reminders of York County's once-far-flung electric trolley network remain.

Former red-brick car shops are hidden on the Avenues in York. Trolley Road runs through West Manchester Township. A former trolley bridge can be seen along Susquehanna Trail in Violet Hill, York Township. And Brookside Park, one of several trolley parks, remains in use near Dover... .

An e-mailer queried us for information on Doctors Row, a couple of blocks on York’s West Market Street that for decades served as offices for medical practitioners.

I sent her several articles from our library system http://www.ydr.com/search?vertical=archive, but one stood out.

Actually, it wasn’t a news article, but an editorial from August 1997 titled “Doctors Row needs preventative medicine:" ...

John Adlum, a diarist, placed the arrival of the Declaration of Independence in York on the evening of July 6, 1776.

James Smith, York's signer, and two other men brought it to York, then called York Town, for a reading.

Just three days earlier, Massachusetts delegate John Adams got it right in a letter to his wife, Abigail: "Yesterday the greatest question was decided, which ever was debated in America, and a greater perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men."

In assessing the crowd in York Town, Adlum did not figure those assembled understood the significance of the event.

"I do not believe that the majority, men and women," Adlum wrote, "knew what independence meant."

The crowd's actions suggestioned otherwise. The Declaration's reading inspired many in the crowd to enlist in the Continental Army.

The following excerpts from "Nine Months in York Town" focus on the Declaration's arrival in York Town: ...