National aspirations, local ties

As four rambunctious Republicans vie for their party's presidential nomination, Lancaster attorney Will Campbell's thoughts turn to past campaigns.

Six people with Lancaster County associations have been nominated for president or vice president over the past two centuries, according to information Campbell has gathered from a variety of sources.

All but one was a lawyer.

Lancaster attorney and longtime Washington bureaucrat James Buchanan was nominated by the Democrats for president in 1856. He was the only one of the six Lancastrians who won.

Enough said.

The first of the six, Amos Ellmaker, hailed from New Holland. He had served in several state offices before the Anti-Masonic Party nominated him for vice president in 1831. He considered victory "an event manifestly impossible."

In fact, he and William Wirt received only 101,051 popular votes and seven electoral votes — from Vermont — in the 1832 election.

Four years later, the Whig Party nominated Hugh L. White, a U.S. senator from Tennessee, as one of four regional candidates for president.

White attracted 146,107 voters. Democrat Martin Van Buren gathered more votes than White and the other three Whigs put together.

White had studied law for a year under Lancaster attorney James Hopkins, apparently his primary association with Lancaster County.

James Black lived in Lancaster City and Fulton Township and was active in the temperance movement and formation of the Prohibition Party. He was that party's candidate for president in 1893, winning 5,608 votes in six states.

Anne Goeke, the only non-attorney on this list, lived in Lancaster from 1981 to 2002. A former fashion model, she long has been active in environmental issues.

Goeke helped found the Green Party. She served as Ralph Nader's vice presidential running mate on the Green Party ticket in Pennsylvania and several other states in 1996. Nationally, Nader won less than 1 percent of the vote.

James Clymer served temporarily as vice presidential candidate for the Constitution Party in 2004. Presidential candidate Michael Peroutka used Clymer's name when he filed for the office but replaced him with Chuck Baldwin when he actually ran.

If you could assemble in one place all of the Americans who ever voted for Lancaster County's candidates for president or vice president, with the exception of Buchanan, they could fill a mid-sized American city.

That city might be called Futility.

Urban's stone cemetery arch

Add to famed Lancaster architect C. Emlen Urban's many accomplishments the design for Lancaster Cemetery's elegant entranceway at Lemon and Lime streets.

Cynthia Roth found a story about the project in the Lancaster New Era of April 9, 1902.

"I was rather excited because the Lancaster Cemetery entrance is not listed in the booklet on Urban that was done by Lancaster City," Roth says.

Suzanne Stallings, the city's historic preservation specialist, who helped prepare the booklet, says Urban's association with the distinctive entrance is news to her.

According to the 1902 story, the cemetery's directors decided to do away with the old entrance and a chapel and erect a new stone arch based on plans submitted by "Architect Urban."

"The material in the [arch's] piers will be Indiana limestone," the story said, "and the gates will be of iron with ornamental design."

Nearly 110 years later, Urban's creation remains intact.

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