BRIEF HISTORY OF DOVER
CANAL RD.

Canal Road.  On motion of James Smith, Esq., on behalf of Caleb Lowe and others, viewers were appointed April, 1768, to open a road from Lowe’s ferry (now York Haven) to intersect the road leading from York to Carlisle.  This afterward was known as the “Canal road.”

The petition of sundry inhabitants of Newberry and Dover, July, 1768 apprehended that “a road from James Rankin’s house to Great Conewago, at or near a place called the wolf pit, and from thence to a ferry on the Susquehanna would be useful.”  Whereupon the court appointed James Welsh, Exq., John Garretson, Sr., Henry Entzminger, Joseph Hutton, Peter Sneider, and Ellis Lewis to open the road.  It was laid out in October.  Its length was sixteen miles.”  It began at Lewisberry and ended at New Holland, on the Susquehanna.

Petitions in 1769 from a number of “Quakers of the townships of Newberry, Warrington, Huntingdon, Tyrone and Menallen, were presented for a road leading westward through the different townships mention, for them to pass and repass to and from their different places of worship; to begin at McGraw’s mill, thence along by the meeting houses at Huntingdon (York Springs), and Warrington, and to intersect the road leading from Lowe’s ferry to Carlisle, at or near the Newberry meeting house.”  This road was opened by John Blackburn, Ellis Lewis, Charles Coleson, Robert Nelson, and James Rankin:  It terminated near the present village of Newberry.  A petition of sundry inhabitants of York County was presented to court, January, 1769, for a road “for the passage of large wagons from Tate’s ferry and William Willis’ mill into the great road from Carlisle to York near Widow Noblet’s house, which would be some miles nearer for the Baltimore trade.”

In April, 1769, the inhabitants of Hellam, Windsor and Chanceford requested that a road be made from Hellam Forge, at the mouth of the Codorus, across said townships toward Rock Run and Baltimore and join the road already laid out to John Finley’s tavern.  Viewers were appointed and the road opened.  It is still known as the “old Baltimore road.”

In 1769 citizens of York and surrounding townships asked for the opening of a road in behalf of Thomas Usher and Joseph Donaldson, who, “at great expense, had erected a merchant mill on the land formerly owned by Zachariah Shugart, near lands of David Jameson, Esq., Henry Spangler and Michael Hanks.  This road would be of great advantage to the town of York.  The road was opened.

In 1769, in answer to many petitions in behalf of James Cooper, who had built a merchant mill near Peach Bottom, a road was opened from the ferry to said mill.

James Dickson, at April session, 1769, stated that “he had contracted with commissioners and built a bridge across the Little Conewago, at Henry Sturgeon’s house, for 100 pounds, and to uphold the same for seven years; at the same time had the verbal promise of the commissioners that they would not see him at a loss, for they said that it would be wrong to let one man suffer by the county.  Accordingly they told him to lay his bill of expenses before the grand jury; that nevertheless he had not yet obtained redress:  The court appointed six men to view the bridge, whose report was favorable to the contractor, and the court ordered the county to relieve him.  It is doubtful if a contractor would be so favored now.

In July, 1770, a road was opened from Yonerstown (Dover) to George Ilgenfritz’s mill, in Dover Township, by Michael Quickel and others.

The same year a road was opened from Hellam iron works, at the mouth of the Codorus, to York.

History of York County, PA

Prowell  Volume 1  1907