From its founding in 1816, Penn Park served as a place that freedmen and women could disembark from their journey to free soil and take the first steps in building new lives. Later, this public commons served as a gathering place for civil rights vigils and protests. Shouts and cries still echo across the green expanse of Penn Park. Long and short, this green space has served as a coming together place since its founding. For years in the 1800s, a resident lived in its expanse - freedman Charles Granger, known as Squire Braxton. At times, Penn Park’s expanse has been indispensable. Other moments, it’s been neglected. Today, the question must be asked: Will Penn Park be rediscovered? In recent years, there have been improvements, and just recently, it gained new pavilions. And more is planned. Jamie and Domi’s Hometown History will tell about the park’s past. And look to its future … .

We might really need a doctor, a lawyer, and a policeman once in a lifetime, the sage says. But every day, you need a farmer. Three times, at least,

Indeed, farming is more than keeping your eyes on the row. Always has been. Farm families have multiple crops to plant. Runs to the mill to take. Machinery to fix. Home remedies to make. Animals to birth. Gardens to weed. And then crops to harvest. If Mother Nature cooperates.

Hometown History’s Jamie Noerpel and Dominish Marie Miller tell stories from the land in York County — about agriculture and farms, rural and urban, of large acreage and Amish sizes. They tell about farmers and their families, with respect. And the recognition, as author Wendell Berry says, “We have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist.”

Two fans talk about Penn Park’s past, present, and future.

Charles 'Chub' Neiman, a retired businessman and York High grad with long-term interest in the park

Jim Gross, retired City Works director

Growing up in York County: ‘Too Much Ice Cream, Not Enough Paint’

It first served as a police outpost and comfort station. Here’s how it got started:

A group of townspeople felt the small shanty used by Patrolman Charles Carr wasn’t adequate. Penn Common Community Association was formed to fund and build a new police station and rest area for the public.

They raised the $20,000 to build and furnish the structure through public fundraising

It’s never too late to right a wrong. This is a single story of Native American history in our area.

Domi and Jamie talk from and about a barn, the restored barn at Wyndridge, that is. Farming was, and in some ways still is, an essential part of York County history. Barns were the lifeblood to the traditional, PA Dutch family: They housed the livestock, their food, and equipment throughout the entire year. No where else in the world is the bank barn a characteristic of the region’s architecture as much as Pennsylvania. And per the format of History Storytellers Night, they find a champ and a foe in our grand barns.

Raine Dawn of the Anishinaabe People lives in Spring Grove. Her family is a part of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe still located in North Dakota. Her mother attended a boarding school from the age of six to graduation at age 16.

“She was not allowed to know or learn our Native traditions,” Raine says. “She lived in the time where natives were being indoctrinated into the American culture.”

"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, the late York County-based archaeologist Barry Kent wrote. “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.”

So begins the story of what would one day become York County. Other American Indian groups would follow. Hometown History’s Jamie Noerpel and Dominish Marie Miller will tell some stories about Native Americans in York County, how they worked, lived and played.

Addressing the century-old impact of American Indian boarding schools to understand traumas of the past.