West Pennsboro Township

John James Trumbull Arnold

Portrait of Miss Margaret Ramsey Woods (1823-1895) ca.1855, by John James Trumbull Arnold.

John James Trumbull Arnold was an itinerant portrait artist who painted the likenesses of people who lived in the York Springs area in the 1840s.  He was born in Latimer Township, York County, the son of Dr. John B. Arnold and his wife, the former Rachel Weakley. The last known dated portrait by Arnold was painted in 1853. The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum lists John James Arnold as a ‘Professor of Penmanship and Portrait and Miniatures Painter’.[1]

Greason, West Pennsboro Township: The Village Next to the Railroad 1860-1880

The village of Greason is unknown to most people traveling on Cumberland County's major roads. It sits between Newville Road in the north and Ritner Highway (Rt. 11) in the south. It is less than one mile south of Plainfield and grew up along the old Cumberland Valley Railroad line. Approaching the village today, the first thing you notice is the abandoned warehouse. Vines cover the gable end of the warehouse and cling to its board walls that show little of the paint that once covered them. The railroad tracks are gone, and their route is now part of the Rail Trail walking path. The Station Depot is gone, the Greason Academy building, with its many additions, is a private home, but many of the dozen or so houses remain and evoke an image of what the village was like in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Indentured Servants

1775 advertisement in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Gazette

Indentured servants were men and women who agreed to work for a master without pay for a specified number of years, usually in return for having their passages to America paid. This 1775 advertisement in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Gazette announced that the ship Hawke had just arrived from London and was lying off the Market Street wharf with a shipment of “a few likely healthy servants” of many different trades “whose times are to be disposed of.”

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