Category: Uncategorized

Columbia’s Storied Places

Uncover Columbia’s many stories in our new exhibit at Columbia Crossing River Trails Center. Historic photographs, postcards, and newspaper clippings make up a scrap book of our town. We’ve covered Columbia first 200 years, but we need you to share your memories of the last century. Did your grandfather remember construction of the Veterans Memorial arch bridge? Did you attend Manor or Poplar Street Schools? Maybe your parents remember JFK giving a speech near the Rising Sun. Come read and contribute to the stories of Columbia.

Each generation of Columbia residents has transformed the town to meet their own needs. Thousands of Columbians have left their marks, large and small. Susquehanna National Heritage Area’s new exhibit at Columbia Crossing, created with the support of the Columbia Historic Preservation Society and Lancaster History, is a celebration of Columbia’s “storied places.” We explore how the borough’s iconic locations, from the industrial riverfront to the ornate but ill-fated opera house, evolved and changed over Columbia’s long history.

The first part of the exhibit focuses on two areas of Columbia: the riverfront and the center of town. Each generation used these spaces differently. In the late 18th century, the ferry, lumbering, and shad fishing were the primary riverfront activities. Before the Civil War, the railroad and canal industries made Columbia a hub for the transportation of raw and consumer goods. In the early 20th century, the Pennsylvania Railroad opened a Recreation Park at the riverfront, complete with a floating water slide!

The center of town became the cross of 3rd and Locust Streets. The first town hall and market opened there in 1814. After the Civil War, the booming city of Columbia decided to award building contracts for a new Town Hall and Market House. These were to be a showcase of Columbia’s great prosperity – and they were. The Market House stands at nearly 10,000 square feet because of the amazing curved Howe trusses in the roof. The three story Town Hall with a 140 foot tall clock tower was the real showpiece. It had retail space, town government offices, and a 1,000 seat opera house. Actors and plays from New York City regularly visited. Only 75 years later, it succumbed to a tragic fire.

There are two other long-standing edifices in the town of Columbia: churches and schools. These buildings have been central to the community since its founding. The Old Columbia Public Grounds Company used land rents to fund education for Columbia’s children as early as 1837. Although the first church of Columbia – a Meeting House – no longer exists. The second church of Columbia built in 1807 still stands between 3rd and 4th on Walnut Street. The diversity of the churches in Columbia truly showcases the great diversity of our community for nearly 300 years.

But, we can only scratch the surface; to really tell the stories of this place, we need your help. We invite you to add your story about a special building or place in Columbia. We will display the stories in the public exhibit and then in a digital map once the exhibit closes.

Columbia Crossing owned by the Borough of Columbia and is managed by Susquehanna National Heritage Area (SNHA). SNHA works to showcase the river’s natural, recreation, and history stories to make this region a national destination for outdoor fun and cultural discovery. Visitor hours of the center are Tuesday – Saturday 10 AM – 4 PM, Sundays 12 PM to 4 PM through Memorial Day.

Submit your own story about Columbia digitally

River Roots: Pontiac’s War & The Paxton Boys

River Roots is Susquehanna NHA’s blog series featuring history from York and Lancaster Counties that showcases the Susquehanna River’s historic, cultural, and natural resource contributions to our nation’s heritage.

RiverRoots Heritage Blog

On December 14, 1763, 56 vigilantes brutally murdered and mutilated six Conestoga Indian women and children. The mob, known as the Paxton Boys, rode into the small village east of Turkey Hill intending to murder all twenty residents.

About fourteen people, mostly men, had happened to be away from the village during the massacre. They were were taken to the Lancaster workhouse for their safety. But, on December 27th, while the people of Lancaster were in church holding a Christmas service, the Paxton Boys broke in and murdered them.

It can be easy to become numb to such atrocities when studying American history, to write it off as another example of frontier violence. However, the Paxton Boys Massacre was the result of a complicated web of social, religious, financial, and cultural tension. By studying it, we can better understand just how turbulent life was in central Pennsylvania on the eve of the American Revolution.

From One War to Another

When the French and Indian War* ended in early 1763, many British colonists would have celebrated. The French had lost all their North American claims. The British empire had also defeated the Native Americans, who had largely allied with the French after decades of trading with them. As far as the colonists cared, the door to the Ohio Valley and the rest of the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains was now wide open. After all, many men who had fought for wealthy land speculators under the impression that they would receive western lands after the war.

British colonists began streaming west, eager to enjoy what they thought of as the spoils of war. However, the Native people (and, to a lesser extent, French settlers) wanted to fight back against British colonization. A mere three months after the Treaty of Paris, Ottawa, Huron, Pottawatomi, and Ojibwa warriors organized by an Ottawa warrior named Pontiac attacked Fort Detroit. Over the next few months, the Native tribes and nations took several forts in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley regions and besieged others. 

This confederation of tribes that fought in this conflict (which has come to be known as Pontiac’s War or Pontiac’s Rebellion) was one of the first and most wide-reaching inter-tribal alliances in the history of North America. Native tribes did not act as monoliths; for example, some Ottawa leaders chose to join Pontiac, but not all. But, huge percentages of Native America did join together against British colonization. Ottawas, Hurons, Ojibwes, and Potawatomis from the Great Lakes, Miamis, Weas, Kickapoos, Mascoutens, and Piankashaws from the Illinois Country, and Lenape, Shawnees, Wyandots, and Mingos from Pennsylvania and Ohio all attacked the British backcountry. Even some Seneca, who were part of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy alliance with Great Britain, supported Pontiac’s War. 

After the French and Indian War, many Native people were done with European alliances. After all, their long-standing relationships with France had meant nothing when France gave England huge swaths of Native land in the Treaty of Paris. Even those who had allied with Great Britain, like the Haudenosaunee, were losing more and more land. In addition to the political and economic pressure to ally with each other against Europe, many Native groups were experiencing religious revivals. Leaders and prophets were urging their followers to embrace traditional spirituality and to reject European goods (especially alcohol), beliefs, and practices.

Instead of peace, the end of the French and Indian War brought increased frontier violence. Native people attacked settlers to deter westward colonization and to support their tribes through taking and selling captives. Settlers, in turn, attacked Native people indiscriminately. Many found it easier and easier to dehumanize Native people and to see them as little more than a barrier to westward expansion. 

1763 Proclamation Line

However, the British government did not need western settlement in 1763. Unlike France, who mostly wanted natural resources from the interior, Great Britain wanted her colonies to be a ready market for British goods. Self-sufficient homesteaders, far from ports and harbors weren’t a priority for parliament. Britain was also keen to avoid another expensive war in North America. The National Debt had ballooned from £75 million in 1756 to £133 million at the end of the war.

Hoping to kill two birds with one signature, King George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763. It stated, explicitly, that Native peoples were the original owners of all land in North America, and that only the Crown could buy it from them. The document also banned British settlement west of the Appalachians.

King’s proclamation angered colonists. Pennsylvanians, in particular, chafed at the thought of limiting westward settlement. The Ohio Country was one of the biggest prizes of the French and Indian War. Plus, the Proclamation Line effectively cut Pennsylvania in half.

As Pontiac’s War waged in the backcountry, the mostly Scotch-Irish, Presbyterian settlers of western PA grew angry when the pacifist Quakers refused to create a standing army to fight against Native attacks. On the other hand, the Scot-Irish refugees who were streaming east to avoid the violence on the frontier frightened the Philadelphians. Instead of joining the settlers in their war, many of the Quakers in power wanted to focus on ending the conflict by placating Native people. The settlers felt that the British and the Pennsylvanian governments had both abandoned them.

Conestoga Indian Town

In the 1680s, about 200 Susquehannock people founded Conestoga Indian Town. These people, the Conestogas, initially lived under the protection of the Penn family. As Pennsylvania became increasingly settled and that protection waned, the Conestogas largely assimilated into the local, dominant German and English cultures. By the 1760s, even though the Conestogas were technically protected by the Quaker government, Conestoga Indian Town looked very much like other Christian, Euro-American towns in the area.

However, as tensions increased on the frontier, the Conestogas’ settler neighbors trusted them less and less. Some of those neighbors began to refuse to do business with the Conestogas or to provide them with supplies. They feared that the Conestogas were funneling food or weapons to those fighting with Pontiac in the west. Conestoga leaders petitioned the Quakers for supplies in November of 1763:

To the Honorable John Penn, esquire, lieutenant Governor and Commander-in-chief of the Province of Pennsylvania,

Brother: We (the Conestoga Indians) take the present opportunity, by Captain Montour, to welcome you into this Country by this string of Wampum and as we are settled at this place by an agreement of peace and amity established between your grandfathers and ours, we now promise ourselves your favor and protection, and as we have always lived in peace and quietness with our Brethren and neighbors round us during the last and present Indian Wars, we hope now, as we are deprived from supporting our families by hunting, as we formerly did, you will consider our distressed situation and grant our women and children some clothing to cover them this winter. The government has always been kind enough to allow us some provisions, and did formerly appoint people to take care of us, but as there is no person to take that upon him, and some of our neighbors have encroached upon the tract of land reserved here for our use, we would now beg our brother, the Governor to appoint our friend Captain Thomas McKee, who lives near us and understands our language, to take care and see Justice done us.

SOHAYS, his mark

CUYANGUERRYCOEA, his mark

SAGUYASOTHA (JOHN), his mark (Colonial Records 9:88)

Just a month later, the Paxton Boys destroyed the entire town and massacred all of its residents. It can be tempting to see the attack as just another bloody episode of back-and-forth violence during a particularly bloody year. However, the killings were also unavoidably political. By doing their best to destroy even these “friendly Indians,” the Paxton Boys were sending a message to the Quakers. If Pennsylvania wasn’t going to fight the Indians for the settlers, then the settlers would take matters into their own hands and fight all Native people, no matter their relationship with Quakers.

Aftermath

The Quakers’ disproportionate control over the legislature and their failure to defend the frontier angered backcountry Pennsylvanians. After Paxton Boys’ Massacre of the Conestoga, about 600 armed frontiersmen marched to Philadelphia. A delegation of prominent Philadelphians, including Ben Franklin, met the protesters. They stopped the mob from entering the city by promising them that the legislature would hear their complaints. The assembly offered no redress for the protesters’ main grievances and publicized the incident.

The government issued proclamations ordering the Paxton Boys’ arrest. However, many frontiersmen were sympathetic to their actions. None of the men were arrested and they were so well protected that most of their identities are unknown to this day.

The “Conestoga Indians” descended from the Susquehannock and refugees from other tribes. Historians often use the massacre as a convenient way to end the Susquehannock story. However, other Susquehannock people had spread far and assimilated into the Seneca, Cayuga, and Oneida nations in New York’s Finger Lakes Region. Others married European traders and settlers, entering into the new American culture. John Skenandoa, a noted Oneida pine tree chief more widely known as Shenandoah, was born Susquehannock. A seventh-generation descendant, Joanne Shenandoah, continues the Susquehannock legacy as a Grammy Award-winning singer and composer.

*  The French and Indian War (1754-1763) is the name for the North American phase of a war between France (and French-Allied Native Americans) and Great Britain (and British colonists and some British-Allied Native Americans). It eventually spiraled into a larger conflict involving most of Europe and parts of Asia. This larger war is called the Seven Years War (1756-1763), but the two names are sometimes used interchangeably. Just to make it even more confusing, some historians argue that the entire conflict was just part of the War of Austrian Succession, making it a 23-year-long war, not seven!  

Learn More

Brubaker, Jack. Massacre of the Conestogas: On the Trail of the Paxton Boys in Lancaster County. (Available on the SNHA online store)

Green, John. “The Seven Years War: Crash Course World History #26.” CrashCourse (Youtube Channel) 

RiverRoots: Susquehannock Culture

Sources

“Proclamation Line of 1763, Quebec Act of 1774 and Westward Expansion.” Office of the Historian. 

“Confronting the National Debt: The Aftermath of the French and Indian War.” LumenLearning.

Goode, Michael. “Pontiac’s War and the Paxton Boys.” The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. 

Green, John. “The Seven Years War: Crash Course World History #26.” CrashCourse (Youtube Channel) 

Greenspan, Jesse. “How the Proclamation of 1763 Sparked the American Revolution.” History. 

Kirk, Andrew. “Desperation, Zeal, and Murder: The Paxton Boys.” Pennsylvania Center for the Book.  

Martin, Darvin L. “A History of Conestoga Indiantown.” Digital Paxton. 

McCutchen, Jennifer Monroe. “Proclamation Line of 1763.” George Washington’s Mount Vernon.   

“Royal Proclamation, 1763.” Indigenous Foundations. 

Stewart, Austin. “Proclamation Line of 1763.” The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. 

River Roots: Envisioning the Susquehannock Community

River Roots is Susquehanna NHA’s blog series featuring history from York and Lancaster Counties that showcases the Susquehanna River’s historic, cultural, and natural resource contributions to our nation’s heritage.

RiverRoots Heritage Blog

Visions of a Susquehannock Settlement

Over the past year, Zimmerman Center for Heritage staff have worked to transform one of the center’s galleries into a space honoring and presenting the history of the Susquehannock people. As part of our effort to focus on the people rather than their artifacts, SNHA engaged artist Carol Oldenburg to create a large-scale painting representing how today’s Native Lands County Park may have looked in the late 1670’s, when it was the site of the Susquehannock’s principal community.

Before Native Lands

The Susquehannock had been living in the lower Susquehanna River valley for more than 100 years before coming to Native Lands. From their arrival in the mid-1500s to the mid-1600s, they utilized the fertile land on the Lancaster County side of the river for the extensive fields needed to grow the crops that supported their large communities. Eventually their farmland and nearby resources would become depleted, and their longhouses would be falling into disrepair, so after about 25 years they would create a new community here in their heartland.

Captain John Smith met Susquehannock representatives at the head of the Chesapeake Bay in 1608. Within 50 years, the Susquehannock were experiencing devastating losses. Deaths from epidemics of smallpox and other diseases resulting from contact with Europeans, and conflicts with other Native groups seeking to gain control of the Susquehannock trade route resulted in the loss of 2/3 of their population. They made the decision to create a new settlement across the river in today’s York County, putting distance between themselves and the increasing European presence. The Susquehannock occupied their first York County settlement–referred to archeologically as the Upper Leibhart site — from about 1665 until 1675 when they were forcibly removed by the Seneca. The Susquehannock fled to Maryland and for a time occupied an abandoned Piscataway fort. After being blamed for violence against Virginian colonists, they were given permission in 1676 to return to their Pennsylvania homeland, where they created the community on the hill overlooking the river that is now Native Lands County Park.

Native Lands Pictured

Grounded in information gathered through archeological excavations of the Native Lands settlement conducted by the Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission in 1970, Carol Oldenburg’s painting reveals details of Susquehannock culture that go far beyond what can be gleaned from looking at maps, timelines, and artifacts. Her work is a window into their lifestyle and their Native Lands home.

The Susquehannock community is shown prominently occupying the hill overlooking the Susquehanna River. The 16 longhouses within the stockade are home to approximately 900 people. The town bustles with activity.

In the foreground, women and children are shown tending to perhaps 150 or more acres of farmland that surrounded their settlement. The Susquehannock were of the same culture as the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) of the Finger Lakes region of New York. Within Haudenosaunee culture, women tended the fields and cared for the household. The depiction of the two women and young girl symbolizes the ingenious method of farming practiced by the Susquehannock of growing corn, beans, and squash all together in the same field. Beans fixed nitrogen into the soil, providing an essential nutrient for the corn and squash. The corn provided a stalk for the beans to grow upward towards the sun, and the shade created by the leaves of the squash held moisture in the soil and deterred the growth of weeds. They called these plants “the Three Sisters.” To the left, a child reaches high to pick an ear of corn from the plant he grew.

Being both a matriarchal and matrilineal society, women ruled the longhouse. Multiple families would live in one longhouse, and generally were related through the mother’s family line. Sons lived within this extended family household until they married, upon which time they would move to their wife’s family’s longhouse. Men lived in the house at the discretion of the women and could be forced to leave at any time. Women and men had equal say in deciding issues important to the community.

In the background, Susquehannock men are shown on the river attending to their fishing weirs (traps), gathering in the river’s bounty of eels on their fall migration from the river to the bay and open sea. In Haudenosaunee society, men did the hunting and fishing, and facilitated political discourse.

The Native Lands settlement would likely have existed as long as their past settlements. However, in 1680, after living here for only four years, they were forced from this area by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). Many Susquehannock were assimilated into the Seneca, Cayuga, and Oneida nations in New York.

In the early 2000s, the location of the Susquehannock’s last traditional settlement faced the threat of land development. As a result of extensive efforts by Native American groups, archeologists, and conservationists, development plans were thwarted, and in 2009 the site became Native Lands County Park, the only publicly accessible Susquehannock settlement site in the their heartland. SNHA played an important role in preserving this important site, and now helps tell its story. A mile-long interpretative trail through Native Lands begins at the Zimmerman Center. At the trailhead, visitors can pick up a guide keyed to waypoints along the trail to stop and learn the history of this special place.

About the Artist

Carol Oldenburg is known for her award-winning landscapes. Her paintings have been included in curated and juried exhibits in galleries and museums across the country at such places as Sue Greenwood Fine Art in Laguna Beach, CA; Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts; and Carla Massoni Gallery, Chestertown, MD. She currently lives in York, PA where she has established OMG STUDIOS with her daughter, Kara Oldenburg-Gonzales, in downtown York’s Royal Square District. Carol’s art can be found in the permanent collections of the State Museum of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania State University. You can learn more about Carol and view her work at http://www.carololdenburg.com/

To Learn More

A great read for Thanksgiving, Jack Weatherford’s “Indian Givers” tells how contributions of the American Indians transformed the World.

The Zimmerman Center’s Susquehannock Gallery is a great place to learn more about the Susquehannock people. This interactive space tells the story of Susquehannock presence along the lower Susquehanna River valley, their historic 1608 meeting with Captain John Smith, the struggles faced by their community, and their lasting legacy that lives on through Susquehannock descendants. The Zimmerman Center also offers guided tours of Native Lands County Park April – October.

Visit Indian Steps Museum to view thousands of Native American artifacts in a unique setting.

Visit Blue Rock Heritage Center to learn about the Susquehannock settlements in Washington Boro.

Other places to visit include the Conestoga Area Historical Society, the Lancaster Longhouse, and the State Museum of Pennsylvania

Watch the educational video Appreciating the Three Sisters produced by the Jose Barreiro and Rich Brotman for The Indigenous Preservation Center, to learn more about this method of indigenous farming.

Search the Iroquois Museum’s Learning Longhouse resources to learn more about the culture of the Haudenosaunee.

Barry Kent’s “Susquehanna’s Indians” is the authoritative work on the Susquehannock people as viewed from a historical and archaeological perspective. Find it in our Online Store or buy in-person at the Zimmerman Center.

Enjoy a tour of the Chief Uncas with SNHA President Mark Platts

The Chief Uncas is SNHA’s “new” flagship River Discovery Tour Boat! This unique and historic electric boat was built in 1912 for Adolphus Busch, founder of the famous American beer company, to enjoy cruises at his summer estate on Otsego Lake in Cooperstown, NY – the very headwaters of the Susquehanna River. SNHA recently purchased this historic boat from a Busch family descendent and oversaw its loading and transport from Cooperstown to Pennsylvania by Daily Express Inc. of Carlisle. Public tours on the Chief Uncas are expected to begin next summer from our Zimmerman Center for Heritage dock. Acquisition of the Chief Uncas was made possible by generous gifts from Ann B. Barshinger of Lancaster and Doug Hoke and George & Bambi Long of York, with additional support from the National Park Service and PA Department of Conservation & Natural Resources.

Special Thanks to York Daily Record and Paul Kuehnel for the video. Check out York Daily Record’s full gallery of images here.

River Roots: Searching for Moses

River Roots is Susquehanna NHA’s blog series featuring history from York and Lancaster Counties that showcases the Susquehanna River’s historic, cultural, and natural resource contributions to our nation’s heritage.

RiverRoots Heritage Blog

Here in Pennsylvania, slavery can feel very distant from our local histories. We think of slavery as a Southern institution that had no place here. After all, Quakers founded Pennsylvania, and they were some of the earliest abolitionists. However, slavery is absolutely part of our local heritage. The last enslaved Pennsylvania was not freed until 1847, a mere 14 years before the Civil War began. If we continue to distance ourselves from this shameful part of our past, we will never really understand our history. Without a complete picture of our past, we will always have trouble moving forward.

Finding Moses in the Will of Jacob Dritt

The elegant mid-1700s mansion at 1706 Long Level Road was once the home of Jacob Dritt and his family. It now houses the Zimmerman Center for Heritage. Susquehanna National Heritage Area’s staff tell the tales of those who used to live in the house. 

Our staff studies both primary and secondary sources about the Dritt family.  Lately, we have focused our research efforts on a man that Jacob Dritt mentioned in his will.  Dritt was a prominent York County citizen who owned the Zimmerman property from 1783 until his death in 1817.  His family continued to own the estate until 1851. In his will, Dritt bequeathed a person named Moses twenty dollars for “a suit of clothes.”  

Finding the Purchase Document

The bill of sale we discovered proves that Dritt bought a ten-year-old child named Moses on March 5, 1795. By the time that Dritt purchased Moses, people had lived in slavery here in PA for over 150 years. Nearly 160,000 people (including Moses) were in legal bondage in the Chesapeake area.

Five years before Moses was born, the Colony of Pennsylvania passed the Gradual Abolition of Slavery Act of 1780. It was one of the abolitionist movement’s earliest successes. As the name suggests, the Act did not end slavery in PA overnight. Instead, it started a gradual process to end slavery over a long period of time.  It mandated that anyone born to an enslaved woman after 1780 would be manumitted (freed) at the age of 28. Previously, any child born to an enslaved mother would have lived in slavery until they died.  Since Moses was born around 1803, the Act freed him in 1813, 18 years after Dritt bought him. The Act also required official sales records, known as “purchase documents.” These documents recorded the enslaved person’s birth year. This is why the proof that Jacob Dritt bought Moses in 1795 exists.

What else can we learn from documents?

Each document about Moses that we discover inspires more questions and answers about his life. The bill of sale tells us that Dritt bought Moses from another local, John Laird, who regularly sold enslaved people. The Laird estate was about seven miles from Jacob Dritt’s property. How did Dritt learn that Moses was for sale? Was he aware of the child before 1795? Were Dritt and John Laird acquaintances?

It is unclear if Moses was born and raised on Laird’s land. Did Moses’ mother still live there after 1795, or did Laird’s administrators sell her as well as her son? Dritt and Laird’s properties were within the ten-miles of each other. Moses, therefore, could have traveled between the two estates without a pass under Pennsylvania law. If he had a family on the Laird property, was he permitted to visit them? Research into the Laird estate and will could shed light Moses’s life before Dritt bought him.

We also continue to search for information about Moses’s life at the Dritt Mansion. What motivated Jacob Dritt to buy a child? What tasks did Jacob Dritt assign a ten-year-old boy? He paid 80 pounds in Pennsylvania currency for Moses. How did the value of this sale compare to others at the time? What happened between Moses’s dictated manumission (1813) and Dritt’s death (1817). For these four years, was Moses a paid employee at the Dritt Mansion? Did he work on Dritt’s ferry? Did he have his own boat?  Did he cross the river and attend the African Methodist Evangelical Church in Lancaster County? We do not know yet. Dritt’s will stated Moses would inherit twenty dollars for a suit of clothes. Did he ever buy his suit?

Moses Receives his Suit

We asked the York County History Center to help us answer this last question. We requested the 1821 last will distribution record of Jacob Dritt, and they graciously provided it to us.  Moses received part of his inheritance between Dritt’s death in 1817 and the distribution in 1821. Adam Klinefelter, a tailor in York, received ten dollars on Moses’s behalf. That was half the money promised to Moses.

A master often promised an indentured servant a suit at the end of their indenture to help them in the next stage of life. This could have applied to people in term slavery. A prominent business owner in York, William Goodrich, received manumission at 28 and got a Bible and a suit to mark this transition to freedom. Pre-Civil War slave narratives show how a suit discouraged kidnappers who seized people of color and illegally sold them. A suit would have helped ease interactions with local patrols seeking passes or manumission papers. For these reasons, a suit would have been valuable to Moses.

We continue searching for Moses in more documents. Our first task is to search for a record that will tell us the surname he chose after his manumission. No one has found him yet in tax records as a free man. We have not located him in the burial records of York County. We will look for his name in church records, death records, administrative records, and tax records and even illegal sale records. These sources might help us learn about what happened to him after his manumission date. Moses lived during dangerous times when bounty hunters kidnapped free blacks and sold them to Southern slaveholders. He lived here for decades on the shores of the Susquehanna. The documents place him here in the historic home that is now the Zimmerman Center for Heritage.

We want to find more information about Moses and his life, so we can continue to tell his story. As we continue to research Moses’s life, we will invite collaborators to help us.

When we tell stories about the people of our heritage, we learn a bit more about ourselves. We invite you to visit our facilities soon and find out what we have learned lately. You are also welcome to share any documents you have found that can help us as in our search for Moses.

Learn More

Resources

Tritt, R. L., et al.  Tritt Family History Ancestry, Volume 1, Ancestry, Life and Times of Brothers Hans Peter and Christian Tritt, immigrants to Pennsylvania in 1739, and their children Tritt Family Research, Inc., 1999

Baptist, E. E., The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and The Making of American Capitalism, Basic Books, New York, 2014

Bell, R., Stolen: Five free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home, 37INK/Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, New York, 2019

McClure, J., Almost Forgotten: A glimpse at black history in York County, Pa., York Daily Record/York Newspaper Co., 2002

Schick, J., Slavery in Pennsylvania, Friends Journal, September 1, 2012

Columbia & Susquehanna
Through the Lens of John Reitzel

Now on display at Columbia Crossing River Trails Center, Susquehanna NHA presents: “Columbia & Susquehanna: Through the Lens of John Reitzel.” Reitzel is a Columbia native and amateur photographer. Visitors to this brand-new exhibit will see his photography of scenes from around Columbia and along the lower Susquehanna River in handmade frames.

John Reitzel is an Air Force veteran and has 35 years of experience as a color analyst in the catalog and magazine printing industry. He has captured the river and the town in a variety of forms, colors, and seasons. Enjoy some of his favorite works alongside a brief historical note related to the view. Reitzel’s talent extends beyond the camera to woodworking, which he has been doing for nearly 30 years. All the photo frames in this exhibit are handmade by John.

“My passion for photography started 2 years ago when my wife and I went on a trip to Yosemite. I bought a camera to document the trip and realized how enjoyable it can be to take pictures. I’ve always felt a close connection to nature, and being a lifelong resident of Columbia, photography helped me discover the amazing things we have right in our backyard.” – John Reitzel

Enjoy Reitzel’s perspective of his hometown, Veterans Memorial Bridge, and Susquehanna River wildlife. Recently Reitzel was recognized in the Susquehanna Greenway Photo Contest, in which he won first place in the River Towns category and second place in the Susquehanna Adventures category. “Columbia & Susquehanna: Through the Lens of John Reitzel” will be on display at the Columbia Crossing River Trails Center through November. Visitors are welcome during operating hours: 10 am – 4 pm Tuesday through Saturday and 12 pm – 4 pm on Sundays. The exhibit is free, but donations are appreciated. Order forms are available in the exhibit at Columbia Crossing for those who wish to purchase any of Reitzel’s artwork.