It was an ordinary day. Preparing to post my second story about Long's Park which is located on the west side of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. My story today was not written by me, but a very talented fellow named John Earl Hambright who posts stories on the Facebook Page known as "The Lancastrian." John originally lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but now resides in Newton, Massachusetts. His Facebook Page tells that he is now an "Historian and Writer." I love his style of writing and the method he uses to capture...and keep your attention. He recently posted a story titled "WHAT'S SO LONG ABOUT LONG'S PARK?" I so much enjoyed it that I posted a comment on his story asking if I may use it on my blog. Perhaps if you read my story yesterday about Long's Park, you may know a bit more about the park and will appreciate John's story. Thank you John for allowing me to publish your prose for all the world to read. I'm sure they will enjoy it just as I did. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
WHAT'S SO LONG ABOUT LONG'S PARK? by John Earl Hambright
The wind came sweeping down the upper Lancaster plain the other day and scores of trees, we're told, were toppled in our beloved Long's Park. The news got me thinking.
Long's Park sits at the edge of what was once called Long Swamp. In my boyhood at the middle of the last century, it was still impressively prehistoric -- a vast expanse of unproductive flatland northwest of the city bordered on the southwest by the railroad coming up out of Lancaster on a beeline for Harrisburg.
To the north, the Manheim Pike edged the undeveloped flats with warehouses and a car dealership or two. Long-haul trucks were parked at the Lancaster Transportation Company.
An LTC supervisor was our New Street neighbor, Harry Maloney. His son Ronnie, my playmate -- he's exactly the same age as Bob Dylan -- was the luckiest kid I knew at the age of seven.
In 1948, every corner store and eatery in Lancaster had the same sign in its front window: a huge number "8" and above it, in smaller print, JUNE. Below that was a picture of a tiger leaping through a flaming hoop.
On June 8, 1948, said the sign, the broad open Long Swamp field behind Harry Maloney's truck depot would be home for one day and one night to Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus. Ronnie and his family were given free tickets -- what the circus world calls "Annie Oakleys" -- named for a famous woman who had once slept up at the very top of our New Street row houses in the Fulton Hotel.
Way before that, Lancaster's Long Swamp in marshier times had attracted annual migrations of larks and other birds we no longer hear about. Streams ran off it in two directions toward the Conestoga.
One coursed south as what our ancestors called Roaring Brook. It swift course carried off the Water Street waste from tanneries, factories and homes down to Groff's Landing, later Engleside.
The other creek draining the swamp swept through the valley below what would become Lancaster's North End neighborhood. Once the migratory Nanticokes had followed the shad up from the Chesapeake every spring and planted their gardens here. Later, it was the George Ross family farm.
By our day, that water -- long since diverted, piped and sewered beneath East Ross Street -- ran unseen between Stehli's Silk Mill and the Sixth Ward Playground. The rivulet slipped under New Holland Avenue and seeped to its Conestoga outlet at a spot once known as The Old Doctor's Ford. My great-grandfather Charles Hambright farmed there at what the family called "The Waterworks Farm."
What's left of Long Swamp now? Within most of our lifetimes, the great marsh has year by year disappeared beneath sprawling industrial establishments like ALCOA and shopping malls like Park City. And no larks any longer make it a pit stop between Mexico and Maine. As usually happens, only stories remain.
Let's tell a few.
Long's Park was named not for Long Swamp, once its near neighbor, but for a man -- its lover and friend. The man was Judge Henry G. Long (1804-1884).
Long's gift to us all -- children of all ages -- still provides memories of Sunday School picnics, sibling birthday parties and autumn walks with Sweetie. We loved the brook. The bridge.
And all those trees.
Born just after the Louisiana Purchase, Henry Long was the book-loving smart-as-a-whip son of Jacob Long, a Revolutionary War era sergeant and Lancaster merchant, who could never understand why his boy didn't want to come stand with him at the store on North Queen Street.
Henry always preferred the Courthouse.
At the age of only 17, clever Henry was appointed clerk in the prothonotary’s office, under Dr. F. A. Muhlenberg. Doc Muhlenberg, like all the many Muhlenbergs of Pennsylvania, was a busy man and his teenaged assistant soon found himself saddled with great responsibility.
Just ask Lancaster historian Jack Loose when you see him what the duties of a prothonotary are. Jack was prothonotary for a term or two -- a century after Doc Muhlenberg held the position with help from young Henry Long.
Like Jack Loose, Henry Long endeared folk to him with great wit and keen wisdom. By the time he was 20, Henry was on the move. He quickly attracted the notice of Lancaster's top lawyer -- a man on the move himself.
Everyone in our fair city -- including young James Buchanan -- believed handsome and capable George Bryan Porter would be President of the United States one day in the not too distant future. His good friend, onetime Lancaster County Sheriff, Frederick Hambright, was eager to be his campaign manager. Henry Long, Porter's apprentice -- his George Stephanopoulos -- would have made a good White House Chief of Staff.
George Porter did in fact go on to become territorial governor of Michigan, but Lancastrians were soon floored by the news their hero had died, tragically, two days after being cheered for his ringing oration at Fort Detroit's Fourth of July celebration in 1834.
Porter's lovely young widow returned to Lancaster and moved into the handsome North Duke Street brick row beyond the Old Barracks. Her neighbors would include Lancaster attorney Sam Reynolds -- Buchanan's protege -- and his wife Mary Fordney. The third address became the Iris Club founded by Alice Nevin and her friends.
Meanwhile, Major Frederick Hambright continued his then current project of building the new Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad from the Conestoga into Chestnut Street.
And Henry Long married the love of his life, beautiful and brainy Catharine Haldeman.
Long was a rising star at the Courthouse by that time -- popular with all his fellow barristers on North Duke Street's Lawyers' Row. Little wonder, he soon was tapped on the eve of the Civil War for his first Lancaster County judgeship. He served many years on the bench, admired by rich and poor alike as "fair and impartial."
Judge Long had only recently retired from his quarter century on the bench when he was hit hard by the death of his beloved Catharine, who died -- as she had lived -- with a book in her hand.
Her unmarried namesake, young Catharine, remained as Judge Long's hostess and companion and it was her idea to distract Papa with a new project. They would build a handsome modern home together up on Orange Street at the top of Lawyer's Row within an easy walk of the Courthouse her father adored.
They had barely moved into their turreted stone mansion at the corner of Duke and Orange before Henry himself, coming back in a sudden rain from a heated trial in the Court of Common Pleas, collapsed and died on his new marble doorstep.
Rather than a housewarming, Miss Catharine's first big at-home event was a funeral. George Porter's widow, still alive in 1888, was among the first to arrive. She came with her neighbors, Sam and Mary Reynolds. Within days, Lancaster was again stunned when young Sam suddenly died -- some said from the sorrow of losing Judge Long.
Others blamed the still new and untrusted city sanitation system.
Kate Long quickly came to find 106 East Orange Street too big for her alone. But there were buyers out there among friends in Lancaster's social elite who were more than willing to take the imposing stone edifice off her hands.
Her dream home for Papa's old age became The Hamilton Club.
Why wasn't it called The Long Club?
There was no need. Judge Long's will had already provided two significant bequests that bear his name to this day. One was the Long Home intended for the genteel elderly on West End Avenue behind Hamilton Watch. The other was Henry's country estate across from the Christian Bomberger farm -- my great-great-great Grandfather Bomberger's place -- on the Old Harrisburg Pike.
Long Swamp is long gone. And our Bomberger green acres long ago vanished under the parking lot of Toys R US. Where my great-great-grandmother's farmhouse kitchen once stood, this past Wednesday the big storm made mincemeat of a sizable construction trailer.
But you never walk alone.
Just across the road from Bombergers-Were-Us is the Welcome sign for Long's Park. Henry Long's country place, we trust -- far into the future -- will continue to host Lancastrians for a grill and a chill, games and great music.
The trees will grow back.
And perhaps we'll hear a lark.
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