LOOKING BACK: A lucky unlucky man
Howard Swain considered himself an unlucky man, so much so, that even when he was lucky, he saw it as unlucky. For starters, he was 40-year-old divorced man. It wasn’t a situation he would have wanted, but there you have it. He was unlucky, although the marriage probably wasn’t a happy one, so ending it could have been seen as lucky. Swain was a carpenter by trade, but business was slow so he was forced to live with his sister and brother-in-law in their spare bedroom at their home at 10 N. Pearl Street in York, PA. Again, Swain saw this as unlucky, although he was lucky to have a place to live while he got back on his feet. Then there was the auto accident in August 1925. Swain was driving a car in which his sister and another Read more…
Gettysburg’s Least-Visited Monument
Along the winding Howard Avenue in Gettysburg, you pass monuments that mark the actions of military units such as the 107th Ohio Infantry and the 58th New York Infantry. The monuments sit so close to the road that you don’t even have to leave the comfort of an air-conditioned car to read the inscriptions on the stone blocks. At the crest of the road, a cluster of monuments, statues, cannon, and a flagpole mark the events that took place in July 1863 on Barlow Knoll. From that crest, you can look northeast down the slope of Barlow Knoll to the tree line along Rock Creek. Within those trees is what is arguably the least-visited monument on the Gettysburg Battlefield. Although there are no visitor statistics for monuments, this monument is so isolated that you have to know what you are Read more…
Johnstown stops the unstoppable Yankees
Coming to Johnstown, PA, on July 26, 1927, the New York Yankees were flying high. They had a record at this point in the season of 67-26-1 and had won their previous two games against the Chicago White Sox. The legendary Murderer’s Row, the hard-hitting starting Yankee’s line-up that included Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, Bob Meusel, and Earle Combs, led the team. Ruth would hit 60 home runs in 1927, which is a record that would stand for 34 years. Gehrig would finish the season with 175 runs batted in. Many fans and baseball historians consider the 1927 Yankees the best baseball team of all time. So it was big news when the Yankees arrived in Johnstown to play baseball. “Johnstown baseball fans who attend the big exhibition game between the New York Yankees and the Johnstown Middle Read more…
The circus comes to York, Pa.
Early Wednesday morning, July 19, 1933, a long train arrived in York and stopped near the fairground. The Sam B. Dill Circus had arrived. “Young America, having caught the infectious circus spirit is likely to be in ahead of both morning orb and circus and be on the lot along with enthusiastic adults to greet the show train on its arrival there,” The York Dispatch reported the day before the train’s arrival. The unloading and setting up of the circus tents and shows worked smoothly. All of the performers knew their jobs. They had been doing it multiple times each week since the circus had opened its season in Dallas, Tex., on April 9. Wagons containing the menagerie were rolled down ramps. Trunks were carried off to other areas. Elephants and roustabouts worked to raise the big top as the Read more…
Before the Philadelphia Temple, the early Mormon Church was in Susquehanna County, Pa.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) recently dedicated its first temple in Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, but the church has long had a presence in the commonwealth. In December 1827, years before the church was established, Joseph Smith and his wife, Emma, moved from Palmyra, New York, to Susquehanna County to a place referred to as Harmony in Mormon history. Joseph brought with him golden plates that he said he had been directed to unearth by an angel named Moroni. He and Emma were seeking a peaceful place where he could translate the ancient writings on the plates. The Smiths moved in with Isaac Hale and his wife, Elizabeth. The Hales were Emma’s parents. “The majority of the Book of Mormon was translated here and the priesthood was restored here. These are very significant contributions to the history Read more…
LOOKING BACK 1918: Infant paralysis hits Franklin County, Pa.
At first, parents thought their children had been playing too hard. They developed fevers and some of them got headaches. The symptoms would pass, though, but then a few days later, the children would get stiff necks or backs. Some would experience constipation. If they were lucky, that is all that would happen. Unfortunately, not all the children were lucky. Some of them would be playing and fall over unable to use their legs or arms. Others would wake up in the morning unable to move. A few even died unable to breathe. The disease was called infant paralysis in 1918, though it is now better known as polio. The epidemic in Franklin County began in Waynesboro in June 1918 and continued through the fall. Forty-six cases were reported in the county with six children dying because of the disease. Read more…
Watch my Festival of Books in the Alleghenies presentation
The COVID craziness has led to a cancellation of just about every event I had scheduled this year. One of those events, the Festival of Books in the Alleghenies, decided to go digital and offered authors the chance to do a digital presentation to viewers. I was lucky enough to be selected, and my interview was last night on Zoom and Facebook Live. The topic was the Spanish Flu, which I wrote about in my novel October Mourning. I must of done something right because I was told it was their most-viewed presentation, so far (and before you ask, no, I wasn’t the first presentation). Here’s the link to the presentation. I begins around the 2 minute mark. As always, let me know what you think.
The Spanish Flu hits Adams County (Part 3)
The second wave of Spanish Flu hit Adams County particularly hard in the Fairfield area and the eastern part of the county. One doctor was quoted in the Star and Sentinel as saying, “I have just come from four homes. Three or four people were sick in every one of them. One of the families had both parents and the two children ill. I have another family in which there were six cases.” Reports said the second outbreak wasn’t as pervasive, but it could still be deadly. This is typical of locations where there was a second outbreak. I have a theory about that. In the early part of 1918, the world experienced a typical flu outbreak. It wasn’t deadly, but what was discovered by researchers was that people who had that flu fared much better during the Spanish Flu Read more…
The Spanish Flu hits Adams County (Part 2)
Spanish Flu first appeared in Adams County around the end of September 1918. It almost always it made its first appearance in any community during the last week of September, whether it was here or in Europe where there was fighting. This could indicate that that there wasn’t a flash point location so much as this was the strain that had developed in 1918 and mutated. That is a point that is argued, though. Some have tried to set an origin point. Boston and in Kansas are the most-common locations suggested. The Gettysburg Compiler reported on Sept. 28 that the flu had broken out in Camp Colt, Gettysburg’s army training camp. At this point, they believed that it had come from soldiers who had been exposed to it in Camp Devens in Massachusetts, which is one of the places in Read more…
The Spanish Flu hits Adams County (Part 1)
In 1918, the world was at war. Though it was a different war and a different century, Gettysburg found itself once again occupied by an army. Young men were sent there to learn to fight the Germans in World War I. They trained to fight the enemy using a piece of state-of-the-art military technology called the tank. The problem was that no one could see their enemy that they were fighting in Gettysburg. It moved indiscriminately through camps and communities injuring and killing men, women, soldier, children. It made no difference. This war waged for about a year until the enemy retreated and hid but not before killing, by the worst estimate, about 50 million people or more than 4 times the population of Pennsylvania died. It was not World War I that killed all those people. It was the Read more…
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