AREA HISTORY:  McCall’s Ferry, Lower Chanceford Township, York County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Kathy Francis

Copyright 2006.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/york/
_______________________________________________ 

History of York County, Pennsylvania.  John Gibson, Historical Editor.
Chicago: F. A. Battey Publishing Co., 1886.
_______________________________________________

McCall’s Ferry – Page 744

Early in our colonial history, this ferry was a prominent crossing place.  Many of 
the first settlers came over the Susquehanna here, and later, as described in the 
chapter on “Early Roads” in this book, it was on the line of a leading highway from 
Philadelphia to the south and west.  The shad fishing interest was very extensive at 
one time.  William Kirkpatrick & Co., May 20, 1820, purchased a tannery and currying 
establishment near the river, which did a large business for many years.  There is 
now a hamlet, with two stores and a hotel.  The ferry is owned by Elias Fry.  
Richard Porter, on the 4th of March, 1816, advertised at private sale his “noted 
stand, in Lower Chanceford, on the great road leading from Philadelphia to the 
Western country, via McCall’s bridge, about four miles from said bridge, seventy 
miles from Philadelphia and forty miles from Baltimore.  The tract of land contains 
160 acres, on which is a valuable store and tavern which has been in use twenty 
years.”

An act of the legislature approved April 2, 1811, appropriated money to, companies 
thereafter to be formed, to build bridges across the Susquehanna at Harrisburg, 
Northumberland and McCall’s Ferry.  A company was formed and the bridge was built 
here, between the beginning of the year 1815 and the close of the year 1816.  In the 
fall of the last-named year, Thaddeus Stevens, then a young man on his way from Bel 
Air to Lancaster, narrowly escaped drowning by his horse taking fright while 
crossing the bridge, “the superstructure of which was not quite finished.”  A flood, 
during the following year, took away the bridge and it was never rebuilt.  The 
bridge property was sold by the sheriff in November, 1819.