A brief historical sketch helps make sense of a complex York County

They are buying candles to prepare for York County’s 275th birthday party in August.

And another event will mark that month: the formal opening of the York County History Center’s new museum at the restored Met-Ed Steam Plant on West Philadelphia Street will come on Aug. 2.

So with the goal of helping folks make sense of a complex county that came into existence in 1749, it’s a good time to go over some ABCs of York County history. Or in this case, some 123s, as in dates of significant events. In this first of two columns, we’ll cover York County from the days that Native Americans lived on the Lower Susquehanna’s banks until the moment that York became a city in 1887.

This timeline is adapted from my soon-to-be-released “Never to be Forgotten,” an expanded and updated version of my 1999 book:

1608: Capt. John Smith meets the Susquehannocks when exploring the Chesapeake Bay. The Susquehannocks and their predecessors have peopled the land, later known as York County, for centuries. This is an early meeting – at least the first recorded gathering – of Europeans and Native Americans linked to future York County. Smith met with Susquehannocks near Port Deposit, Maryland. Archaeologist Barry Kent writes about the Native Americans who predated the Susquehannocks: “At some remote time in the past, perhaps more than twelve thousand years ago, a single human being became the first person to see the Susquehanna River. In all likelihood, he approached the main stem of the river from the west by following the downstream course of one of its tributaries. He did not call it Susquehanna, nor did he stand in awe of its size and beauty. His people and their ancestors had seen and crossed many rivers of this new land.”

1727: Lord Baltimore of Maryland grants John Digges 10,000 acres. Digges Choice grows into Hanover and its surrounding townships.

1728: Pennsylvania's proprietors authorize the first European families to settle west of the Susquehanna River. A great migration of German, English Quakers and Scots-Irish settlers follows. These pioneers, particularly the Scots-Irish bring enslaved people with them and acquire others as the decades pass. Wrightsville becomes the primary town of entry into the county and points far to the west and south.

1731-67: When settlers cross paths with the Pennsylvania and Maryland border in dispute, a war erupts. British surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon lay out the border in 1763-67, and York County shares 65 miles of the line with Maryland. After 1800, York County’s border measured 40 miles. That geographic position with the South helps shape York County. The Mason-Dixon line would become an important marker between North and South in the 19th century and later.

1749: Pleading the need for its own sheriff and court system to battle crime, York County separates from Lancaster County to become the fifth county in Pennsylvania and the first west of the Susquehanna River. County and court business took place in private residences until a brick courthouse went up in the middle of York’s Centre Square in the mid-1750s. Three other courthouses would follow in the next 275 years. The town of York is laid out eight years before the county’s founding where the Monocacy Road, later the Great Wagon Road, crossed the Codorus Creek.

1777-78: British troops force the Continental Congress to flee from Philadelphia to York Town. Here, the nation’s founders adopt the Articles of Confederation, America’s first constitution, and later ratify treaties with France, its new ally. Congressional delegates enter York County struggling, and nine months later, return to Philadelphia with a strut. America could point to a new constitution and powerful ally in Europe.

1787: York Town becomes the borough of York, after the Revolutionary War sparks social and economic change. One scholar has noted that war transforms York from an isolated German village into a mainstream American town. Hanover becomes the second borough in York County in 1815. Jacobus is formed as the last of 36 boroughs in 1929. Springettsbury Township is the newest of 35 townships, formed in 1891.

1803: Black people secretly torch York buildings, possibly in response to the conviction of a Black woman for allegedly trying to poison two white York residents. The plot is discovered. “So secret and artful was the conspiracy, that though the fires were known to be the work of incendiaries, yet no suspicion was for a long time attached to the blacks of the place,” a historian writes. “On nearly every successive day, or night, for about three weeks, they set fire to some part of town … .” This moment, an early protest by Black people, resulted in the court-sentenced imprisonment in Philadelphia of those implicated in setting the fires.

1816: Running spring water reaches York in wooden pipes, suggesting that the local economy has progressed beyond the subsistence level. York now has a ready supply of water to fight fires and boasts of its supply of fresh water. Settlement along the Codorus Creek apparently is making its flow unfit for human use.

1825: Sixty-seven-year-old General Marquis de Lafayette returns to York and a welcome befitting a Revolutionary War hero. The county's proud Revolutionary heritage is alive 50 years after the war and would remain so into the early years of the 21st century.

1822-1865: William C. Goodridge, born into slavery, gains his freedom in York and later, with his wife Evalina, runs a successful York business and operates a station on the Underground Railroad. Goodridge, and countless others, risk their liberty and fortunes in whisking freedom seekers through the county toward Canada.

1838: Rail service, later known as the Northern Central Railway, is authorized to York from Baltimore, developing a ready Southern market for York County's goods. The railroad also extends this Northern county’s family and cultural connections with Baltimore and the South.

1841: An early land-use controversy emerged before and during the demolition of the York County Court House in Centre Square, the county quarters that for nine months housed the Continental Congress in the American Revolution. Some argued against its demolition, but a new courthouse had been erected east on Market Street, perhaps an indication by many residents that government no longer needed to take center stage in a Democratic county that was wary of government. Market sheds in the square would remain, suggesting the primacy of agriculture and commerce over that of government.

1863: The Civil War reaches York County in a new way when Confederate troops occupy York, a town in which civilian leaders sought out the invaders to surrender, on the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg. The invaders extort goods, supplies and money from the town. Defenders under Union command stop the Confederate advance by burning the Susquehanna River Bridge in Wrightsville. Confederate and Union cavalry later clash on Hanover's streets. The Civil War death toll tops more than 600, and causes such family disruption that an orphanage, the Children’s Home of York, is organized.

1880-1930: A healthy industrial climate attracts newcomers from overseas, rural areas in the mid-Atlantic region and the Deep South. York's population diversifies and quadruples. Some York factories become the largest of their kind in the nation and the world.

1887: Farmers sell their goods at the market sheds in York’s Centre Square since the county’s earliest years. But in 1887, with York a newly crowned city, the sheds stand in the way of the movement of goods and workers through this crossroads via trolleys and other conveyances, as the Industrial Revolution buzzed. The development-vs.-agriculture tug of war would continue for decades. In the early 1980s, the amount of developed acreage in the county exceeds that used for agriculture for the first time.

Next week: This is a good moment to pause before embarking on part two of this timeline of York County history, a midway point between York County’s founding and today. The story in brief timeline form of York County from the early 20th century to the current day will continue next week.

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.