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This entry is a part of a series celebrating of September’s Save Your Photos Month. Stay tuned for more! Images produced on metal and glass, though revolutionary, were also often costly and difficult to produce. They were direct positive images that required no negative, but they were fragile and needed to be cased. In 1855, […]
Read MoreOn September 11, 1851, a deputy U.S. marshal led a raid in Christiana, Lancaster County to recover four enslaved persons of Edward Gorsuch of Maryland in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Free Blacks and freedom seekers in the surrounding area met this raid with a successful, but deadly, armed resistance. The Fugitive […]
Read MoreThis entry is a part of a series celebrating of September’s Save Your Photos Month. Stay tuned for more! Perhaps the most delicate and difficult to care for among historic photographic images are what are often referred to as “cased images” – Daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes. They’re also some of the oldest types of photographic […]
Read MoreHave you inherited a box of family photographs? Have you cleaned out a closet or your attic and found a few photo albums? Are you the family archivist? If so, September is the month you’ve been waiting for. It’s Save Your Photos Month, a whole month dedicated to the care and preservation of your family […]
Read MoreOf the many doors at Wheatland, the doors to the icehouse and smokehouse catch the eye the most. One door “floats” on the second floor with no visible stairs to access it. The other seems normal enough, but holds a surprise upon opening. These doors typically remained closed, but in today’s blog post, we’re going […]
Read MoreThanks to Louis Daguerre and George Eastman How many of you realize that August 19 is World Photography Day? The day was first observed on August 19, 2010 to commemorate the day in 1839 that the French government recognized Louis Daguerre’s patent for the daguerreotype photographic process. Although not the first individual to capture an […]
Read MoreWhen it comes to the outbuildings at Wheatland, many are familiar with the privy and the icehouse/smokehouse. These original 1828 outbuildings flank both ends of the Wheatland mansion from the back. But a few more outbuildings stood on the grounds at Wheatland. Though they no longer remain on the property, illustrations, photographs, and descriptions clue […]
Read MoreIntroducing Quaker-Felt Rugs and Floor Coverings Armstrong Cork Company began to produce linoleum flooring in Lancaster in 1908 as a way to use excess cork produced by cutting round corks from rectangular slabs of corkwood. The ingredients of linoleum—oxidized linseed oil, cork dust, and organic resins—were combined to form a uniform layer attached to a […]
Read MoreThe 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition & 1929 Ibero-American Exposition My name is James McMahon and I am a project archivist for LancasterHistory. My responsibilities include cataloguing and digitizing a vast collection of archival materials that document the significant role of the cork industry in the local economy. Recently, I wrote two blogs documenting Armstrong’s participation […]
Read MoreThe LeFevre Bible is one of the most requested items from our collections. The Bible belonged to the French Huguenot family of Isaac LeFevre. These images show the genealogy of Isaac LeFevre, the person to bring this Bible from France to present-day Lancaster County. He survived the massacre of his family and townspeople after the […]
Read MoreLancaster City’s first female police officer, Agnes Ferriter, served on the force from 1923 to 1946.