York County History Center’s new museum reflects change in storytelling about the past

When visitors enter the new York County History Center Museum this summer, Reddy Kilowatt will greet them, all 12 feet of him toting 256 lightbulbs.

The museum’s label tells about Reddy’s work as a mascot promoting electric companies since 1926 and adds a bit of history mystery.

“This sign, or one similar to it, hung on the Edison Building on West Market Street in the 1940s,” the label says. Some county residents remember a similar sign at the Metropolitan Edison headquarters on York’s Parkway Boulevard in the 1960s and 1970s. So its origin remains ungrounded.

The label didn’t get into it, but Reddy’s head — lighted, of course — was affixed to the York Haven Hydropower Plant for many years.

Reddy is fastened to a massive window in the center’s grand meeting hall, the Quaker Meeting House and its cemetery form a background. Two eras of York County history are covered her: a 1920s power company promotion set against a backdrop of a 1760s place of worship.

The story of Reddy and its mysteries and other large artifacts are very much a part of the new museum, which is officially open to the History Center’s members for a weekend in June and formally to the public in August.

Longtime visitors to History Center museums will be gratified to find familiar and iconic objects on display — the Conestoga Wagon, for example. And a wall full of signs from local companies. And a Pullman-made opera car targeted to women made by York workers in 1916.

The stories of many of those icons are more richly explained than in the past, enhanced with refreshed labels, videos and other digital displays.

Changes in storytelling

But here’s the thing that is most noticeable about this new museum. Let’s set Reddy and all these artifacts aside for a moment and take in the emphasis on people — history makers — baked into the exhibit. And the capstone of that theme comes at the end when the level above Reddy’s head — called (Y)our Story — provides an opportunity to tell, yes, your own story.

The way history is told in York County has changed in a big way in the past century and has accelerated, really, in the past 25 years. And the History Center’s museum effectively reflects that change in storytelling.

What is different, in the best of ways?

Let’s use George Prowell’s 1907 history as a benchmark. Prowell wrote the multi-volume general history of York County that is still found in school and public libraries today. Prowell’s work was very much a tops-down history, indicative of those times.

Indeed, you could pay to get your biography in part of it so those highlighted were residents who could afford to be in there. The engravings included in Volume 1 showed about 55 men, mostly businessmen. No women who worked to build families, churches and, as nurses, medical organizations. No farmer who had toiled the small family spread for decades. No African Americans, who had already helped shape the county, enslaved and free.

When you leave the entry hall that Reddy oversees, you’ll enter the main exhibit area, greeted by an array of digital images of diverse York County residents, past and present. Or maybe we should say a stack of pictures because those screens are mounted to the familiar West Philadelphia Street smokestack rising 182 feet through the roof.

The 1916 stack is an artifact in itself, hearkening back to the day of factories and their whistles but crowned today with microwave and other communication equipment. That’s a combination reflected in the museum below with its flashing digital displays and towers telling stories in a former coal-burning plant used to generate electricity for businesses, homes and trolley cars and steam to heat homes.

This expansive thinking of county people is reflected in — or fueled by — the historians throughout York County and the History Center staff. As recently as the 1990s, a handful of historians led the York-area historical community. They served as a kind of filter that researchers seeking to elevate their work to the public had to work through.

Today, scores of historians and family researchers are interacting and making public their work through books, newsletters and social media.

We’ve gone from a hard-wired historical community to an enterprise that, to further the digital example, is open source. It’s a community that respected and valued the work of the late self-taught historian Ray “Pete” Kinard. It’s a community that produced an autobiography of a county resident, Daisy Myers, a national civil rights figure. And it’s a community that supported the work of York County newcomer Scott Mingus on his way to national stature as a Civil War historian.

To adapt what one civic leader has said, this historical community reflects changes in York County as older generations pass on giving room for new leaders to emerge, a younger people who engage more easily and inclusively with the entire York County community.

This energized local history community caught the attention of Neil King Jr., who told about his walk through York County in his 2023 book, “American Ramble.”

He called the history enterprise in York County a “memory boom.” It’s not a quest for nostalgia, he wrote. Just the opposite.

It’s “shaking off its long amnesia,” he writes, remembering the good and bad, comfortable and uncomfortable. It’s an active confronting of the past.

He concluded with a compliment about the history enterprise in York County, spearheaded by those in and around the History Center and other local organizations around the county: “Some national version of this, I thought, would be good for the national psyche.”

Children’s exhibits, too

Anyway, the new History Center’s museum — Exhibit A as evidence of that boom — is about history makers, and here’s what a banner says about those digital images on the stack: “History makers come from different backgrounds across York County. We all make history in our own way.”

So we’ve progressed from the 55 images of prominent people in Prowell to a stack full of images of women and men, all races and people who did not have to pay to be featured. In fact, that option would present ethics issues today.

The framework that features people of different backgrounds is extended throughout the two floors of exhibits. There’s a video on the Underground Railroad. The History Center commissioned noted local artist Rosa Luz Catterall to paint Latino pioneer Paulita Rios and Kayode Malomo to paint 1800s Black master mechanic William Wood.

The museum also offers opportunities for children to learn. For example, one exhibit gives youngsters — and adults — a simulated hands-on experience in tying a pretzel.

All this brings us to the (Y)our Story gallery that reinforces the idea that everyone contributes to history.

One exhibit in this gallery displays simulated gumball machines in which visitors can vote on questions. An early question is expected to tie into York County’s 275th anniversary coming up in August. In fact, the History Center is tying its formal opening with that birthday.

Another display features the holdings and exhibits of historical societies that operate in practically every town in York County. A York County map appears on a screen, which visitors can touch to find, say, the buildings operated by the Hanover Area Historical Society. This shows that the York-centric historical society of 25 or more years ago has evolved into an organization that prizes stories throughout York County.

Another exhibit gives visitors an opportunity to record their own and family oral histories. They can email their audio files to themselves, and their story will be stored in the History Center’s two-floor archives, just down the hall.

The (Y)our Story banner underscores an emphasis throughout the museum: “The story of York County is not complete without individual stories and shared experiences.”

Reddy, the real hot shot

A few words here to allay possible concerns: When you walk into the new museum, it’s not like entering a video game arcade, though the screens give this 11,500 square feet of exhibit space a sense of energy.

Which brings us back to that symbol of energy, Reddy on the floor below the Y(our) exhibit. He was so popular in his cartoon days that someone wrote a song about him that leads with: “I’m a real live wire and I never tire, Yes Sir, I’m a real hot shot.”

Indeed, Reddy gets into the act of making the museum experience accessible to every visitor. Youngsters — and adults — can push a button and Reddy lights up. Every one of his 256 bulbs.

The old electric plant is energizing this real hot shot and ready to do the same for real York countians and visitors who will soon walk through its doors.

Editor’s note: Jim McClure was part of a team of historians who reviewed the exhibit script for the new museum.

Sources: Stephen H. Smith’s “YorksPast” blog on YorkBlog.com, YDR files

York County History Center opening festivities

• June 22: Gala: “A Night to Make History.”

• June 26-28: Member-only sneak peek/open houses.

• Aug.  2-4: Grand public celebration, First Friday through Sunday.

Jim McClure is a retired editor of the York Daily Record and has authored or co-authored nine books on York County history. Reach him at jimmcclure21@outlook.com.