The Southern Lancaster County Historical Society will host a celebration of Robert Fulton on Saturday, Sept. 26, at the Robert Fulton Birthplace on Route 222, six miles south of Quarryville.
The event, celebrating Fulton’s 1807 trip up the Hudson River on the steamboat “Clermont,” will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It will  include music, food, reenactments, […]

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As you probably know, the Intelligencer Journal and New Era will merge on Monday.
You can read today’s story, with the details and historical context, by clicking here.
The Eras Past column will continue, under the new title Flashback Lancaster. It will draw on the archives of both newspapers and run on page B1 on Mondays.

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Clair Omar Musser (1901-1998) was born on a farm in Rapho Township, here in Lancaster County, but his love of the marimba took him around the world. He led large marimba orchestras and headed the Northwestern University Marimba Department for 10 years. 
His love of percussion also led him to found a company, Musser Mallets, which opened in 1948 and continues to […]

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As I recounted in this week’s Era’s Past column, Bruce Springsteen paid a surprise visit to The Village nightclub in downtown Lancaster in the early morning hours of June 22, 1984.
I was an intern at the Intelligencer Journal that summer. And as luck would have it, an Intell reporter got the tip, shortly after the […]

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My, my, how the downtown Lancaster retail scene has changed in 75 years.
At right is a list of stores participating in “Lancaster Sales Day” in 1934. The list was published in the New Era on Jan. 22 of that year. It’s a nice Who’s Who from the retail landscape of that day.
But only a few of the […]

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Last week, I wrote about electric cars that were sold at a downtown Lancaster dealership in 1909.
Today, I learned that old electric cars will be a major feature of this year’s Kutztown Folk Festival in Berks County, from June 27 to July 5.
A number of early electric vehicles will be on display at the festival. Many […]

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The little town of Stevens, in northern Lancaster County, is throwing a birthday party Saturday for its namesake _ Thaddeus Stevens (right).
The event, sponsored by the Thaddeus Stevens Society, will be held at 2 p.m. in the town’s firehall, at 91 Stevens Road. You can read the society’s announcement here.
It may be news to some […]

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As the nation inaugurates Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States, let’s take a look back at some scenes from previous inaugurations.
The Associated Press moved a number of historic photos on the wire in the past week, so I thought I’d post some of them here. Enjoy.
Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1997, and […]

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Last week, I wrote about the retirement of the Ferdinand Magellan, the rail car used by Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.
I thought the item was timely, due to President-elect Barack Obama’s rail trip Saturday from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., for his inauguration.
But I couldn’t find much information last week on the rail car that Obama […]

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Here’s a holiday cartoon that greeted readers of the New Era 100 years ago, on Jan. 1, 1909:

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