AREA HISTORY:  Dillsburg Borough, York County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Kathy Francis

Copyright 2005.  All rights reserved.
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History of York County, Pennsylvania.  John Gibson, Historical Editor.
Chicago: F. A. Battey Publishing Co., 1886.
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THE BOROUGH OF DILLSBURG – Page 652

This town which bears the honored name of the most prominent Scotch-Irish settler 
of the vicinity, was laid out by one of his descendants in the year 1800.  For 
more than half a century before this event, the immediate vicinity was quite 
densely populated and the home of the Dills and the Presbyterian Church near by, 
were the center of interest to the “Monaghan settlement.”  The town is situated 
on the old Harrisburg and Baltimore road, and consequently at a very early day, 
was on the line of a much traveled route.  There was an Indian trail and trader’s 
route at a still earlier period, extending north and south over nearly the same 
line.  Two miles to the west and northwest of the town at an elevation of 1,000 
feet above the sea level extends the southern ridge of the South Mountains, whose 
picturesque wooded height casts its evening shadow upon the honest villagers at 
an early hour of the winter’s day.  Nature in the long ago, by a great convulsion 
and upheaval, formed this, as it now seems to be, tutelary monitor of the destiny 
of its surroundings, clothed it in vernal beauty and made it the abode of the 
bear, the wolf, the deer, and the wild turkey.  These and the palatable fish that 
swam in Dogwood Run and the Yellow Breeches,* furnished most of the necessary 
food for the red man of the forest, who was the first human inhabitant of this 
region and built his wigwam along these winding streams.  From 1755 to 1758, 
during the French and Indian war, this settlement was several times threatened by 
the invasion of hostile Indians.  As late as 1780, the township assessor reported 
that Elijah Adams, Adam Brunner, John Dickson, Philip King, Robert Moody, William 
McCadger, Alexander Wilson, Peter Brunner and Jacob Brunner who lived along the 
mountains were “drove by the Indians” from their lands which could not be 
assessed for that year.

Dillsburg when first laid out did not grow rapidly yet, it became an important 
stopping place on the routes between York and Carlisle, and Harrisburg and 
Baltimore.  One or two taverns were kept there and the Dills and others conducted 
a mercantile business.  During the Revolutionary period this was a very important 
section of the county.


* The Indian name for Yellow Breeches was Callapasaciuk.  It signified “where-it-
  turns-back-again.”