Second Saturday Series

The Second Saturday Series is presented on the second Saturday of each month. Speakers present on a wide variety of topics from York County’s 270 years of history including people, places, and events that have had local, regional, or national impact. Most programs are held in the Meeting Hall at the Historical Society Museum and begin at 10:30. If any program is at a different location or time that will be noted under the title of the program. Attending any of these presentations is free and open to the public.
June’s speaker will be Jaime Noerpel. After earning a B.A. in history and secondary education from York College in 2012, Jamie Noerpel landed her dream job at Milton Hershey School where she teaches history to 9th and 10th graders. Since then, she’s earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in American studies from Penn State with a focus on agriculture, environmental studies, African American literature, and folklore. In her free time, she builds on the public history of YoCo. She co-founded a website called Witnessing York, writes a local history blog for YDR called Wandering in York County, films videos through a series called Hometown History, and launched Project Penny Heaven – an initiative to install a permanent monument in York’s potter’s field.

Close to 800 bodies rest under the surface of a grassy field in North York— a cemetery for the unknown or poor people. When the deceased had no family, no financial means, or were unidentified, they would be interred in the City Cemetery, also known as potter’s field and Penny Heaven. Their names meant little, buried anonymously in a remote area and segregated from people who paid for their plots, save Clashay Johnson, the only name on the only gravestone. In this presentation, Jamie Noerpel will teach you about the history of Penny Heaven, including the stories of people interred there such as P.T. Barnum’s Figi cannibal. Her talk will dive deeper into conversations surrounding the intersection of class and race, as well as current efforts to raise money for a permanent monument to recognize those previously unrecognized.