Place:Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States

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Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, known as the Garden Spot of America since the 18th century, is located in the southeastern part of the state of Pennsylvania, in the United States. With an estimated 2005 population of 490,562 Lancastrians, Lancaster County forms the Lancaster Metropolitan Statistical Area, the 99th largest of 361 MSAs in the U.S. The city of Lancaster is the county seat.

Lancaster County is a popular tourist destination, due mostly to the many plain sect residents, known as the Amish or Pennsylvania Dutch. The term 'Pennsylvania Dutch' comes from the earlier use of "Dutch" to apply to all immigrants from middle Europe. They are the descendants of Germans who immigrated in the 18th and 19th centuries for the freedom of religion offered by William Penn, and were attracted by the rich soil and mild climate of the area.

Lancastrians can easily spot a visitor to the area by how they pronounce the word Lancaster. Locals and people from nearby counties in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware pronounce Lancaster as LANK-ister. This is unusual as most Lancasters in the United States are pronounced as LAN-cast-er, though Lancashire, England, and Lancasters in Texas, Ohio, and South Carolina also use the LANK-ister pronunciation.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Indigenous Peoples

The first recorded inhabitants of the Susquehanna River valley were the Iroquoian speaking Susquehannocks, whose name meant "people of the muddy river" in Algonquin. They were also known as the Conestoga, from their principal village, Kanestoge, known to the English as Indiantown. They were viewed by European settlers as a friendly tribe, converted to Christianity, who made brooms and baskets for sale, and named children after their favorite neighbors.

However, the outbreak of Pontiac's War in the summer of 1763, coupled with the conciliatory but militarily ineffective policies of the provincial government, aroused widespread suspicion and hatred against all Indians in the frontier counties of the state. Rumors spread that the Conestoga were harboring strange and hostile Indians in their village. On December 14 1763, the Paxton Boys, led by Matthew Smith and Capt. Lazarus Stewart, descended upon the village, slaughtered the six Indians present at the time, and burned their houses. The fourteen survivors of the tribe were placed in protective custody in the county workhouse, but the Paxton Boys returned on December 27, broke into the workhouse, and butchered the remaining Susquehannocks. The widespread sympathy in the frontier counties for the perpetrators of these acts made their discovery and arrest futile.

Other tribes in the area included the Shawnee, Gawanese, Lenape (or Delaware), and Nanticokes.

Boundaries

The area that became Lancaster County was part of William Penn's 1681 charter, and John Kennerly received the first recorded deed from Penn in 1691. Although Matthias Kreider was said to have been in the area as early as 1691, there is no evidence that anyone actually settled in Lancaster County before 1710.

Lancaster County was part of Chester County, Pennsylvania until May 10 1729 when it became the fourth county in the state. Lancaster County was named after the city of Lancaster in the county of Lancashire in England, the native home of John Wright, one of the early settlers. Six other counties were subsequently formed from territory directly taken, in all or in part, from Lancaster County: Berks (1752), Cumberland (1750), Dauphin (1785), Lebanon (1813), Northumberland (1772), and York (1749).^[1] Many other counties were in turn formed from these six.

The southern boundary of Pennsylvania, and thus of Lancaster County, was in dispute for years. Lord Baltimore believed that his grant to Maryland extended to the 40th parallel — about halfway between Lancaster and Willow Street. Starting in 1730, Thomas Cresap started Cresap's War by confiscating farms near Peach Bottom and Wrightsville, establishing ferries there. He started vandalizing farms, killing livestock and driving away settlers in southern York and Lancaster counties, giving those lands to his followers. When a follower was arrested, the Marylanders broke him out of the Lancaster lockup. Lord Baltimore negotiated a compromise in 1733, but Cresap ignored it, and continued his raids. When an attempt was made to arrest him in 1734, he killed a deputy at his door. The Pennsylvania governor demanded Maryland arrest Cresap for murder; the Maryland governor named him a captain in their militia instead. In 1736, he was finally arrested, and jailed until 1737 when the King intervened. In 1750, a court decided that Lord Baltimore had forfeited his rights to a twenty-mile swath of land.^[2] The new Pennsylvania-Maryland border was properly established by the Mason-Dixon line in 1767.

The names of the original Lancaster County townships reflect the diverse array of settlers in the new county: two had Welsh names (Caernarvon and Lampeter), three had Native American names (Cocalico, Conestoga and Peshtank or Paxton), six were English (Warwick, Lancaster, Martic, Sadsbury, Salisbury and Hempfield); four were Irish (Donegal, Drumore, Derry, and Leacock), Manheim was German, Lebanon came from the Bible, and Earl the anglicization of the German surname of Graf or Groff.

19th century statesmen

Lancaster County's native son James Buchanan, a Democrat, was elected as the 15th President of the United States in 1856, the only Pennsylvanian to hold the presidency. His home, Wheatland, is now a museum in Lancaster. Thaddeus Stevens, the noted Radical Republican, served Lancaster County in the United States House of Representatives from 1849-1853 and from 1859 until his death in 1868. Stevens left a $50,000 bequest to start an orphanage that eventually became the state-owned Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology. Both men are buried in Lancaster.

Slavery and the Christiana incident

Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1780, although in a slow manner.^[3] The existing 6000 slaves in Pennsylvania remained slaves, and the registered children of those slaves were slaves until their 28th birthday. The last slave child registered in Pennsylvania was Haley, born in 1811, and a freedman no later than 1839. Thus Pennsylvania was legally a free state when the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was passed as part of the Compromise of 1850.

Being immediately north of the Mason-Dixon line, Lancaster County was an important stop on the Underground Railway. Charles Spotts found 17 stations; including ones with trap doors, hidden vaults, an underground cave and one with a brick tunnel leading to Octorara Creek.

As slaveowners go, 51-year-old Edward Gorsuch was probably one of the best. He did not beat his slaves, and as a rich Maryland wheat farmer, he could afford to manumit slaves in their 20s. He allowed his slaves to work for cash elsewhere during the slow season. There was wheat missing, though, sold to a local farmer by his slaves, and he thought a former slave was responsible for this dishonesty. As he had a bad temper, slaves Noah Buley, Nelson Ford, George Ford, and Joshua Hammond became afraid, and fled to the farm of William Parker, a mulatto who lived in Christiana, Pennsylvania. Parker, 29, was a member of the Lancaster Black Self-Protection Society, and known to use violence.

Honor was at stake. Having slaves run away made him look disreputable, so Gorsuch obtained four warrants, and organized four parties which set out separately to recover his property. He died in the attempt, though, and others were wounded. Although Gorsuch was legally entitled to recover his slaves, it is not clear who precipitated the violence. The incident — variously called the "Christiana Riot", the "Christiana Outrage", and the "Christiana Tragedy", depending on one's political and religious leanings — became a national controversy. In September, 1851, the grand jury returned a true bill against 38 individuals who were then held in Moyamensing Prison in Philadelphia to await trial. The only one who was ever tried was Castner Hanway.

It's not clear that Castner Hanway was responsible in any way for what happened. He was a white man, one of the first on the scene. On the other hand, Hanway and his horse provided cover for Joshua Gorsuch and Dr. Pearce, who were wounded. Hanway was tried in federal court in Philadelphia on November 15 1851 for liberating slaves taken into custody by US Marshal Kline, for resisting arrest, for conspiracy, and for treason. The jury returned a Not Guilty verdict in only 15 minutes. Among the five defense lawyers was congressman Thaddeus Stevens.

(For further reading, see Resistance at Christiana: The Fugitive Slave Rebellion, Christiana, Pennsylvania, 1851, by Jonathan Ned Katz, T.Y. Crowell, New York, 1974.) also 'Treason at Christiana: September 11, 1851' by L.D. "Bud" Rettew, 2006

Religious history

Not only did religious differences spur early growth of Pennsylvania and Lancaster County, but Lancaster County gave birth to many religious bodies as well. The oldest surviving dwelling for European immigrants in the county is that of Bishop Hans Herr, a Mennonite. In 1989, Donald Kraybill counted 37 distinct religious bodies/organizations, with 289 congregations and 41,600 baptized members, among the plain sects who are descendents of the Anabaptist Mennonite immigrants to Lancaster County. The Mennonite Central Committee in Akron is often among the first to arrive at a disaster scene, quietly providing manpower and materiel to local organizations that better understand where relief should be directed.

The town of Lititz is a planned community built by members of the Moravian Church beginning in the 1740s. Linden Hall school there is one of the earliest educational institutions for girls in the country.

In addition to the Ephrata Cloister, the United Brethren in Christ and the Evangelical United Brethren (EUB) trace their beginnings to a 1767 meeting at the Isaac Long barn, near the hamlet of Oregon, in West Lampeter Township. The EUB, a German methodist church, merged with the traditionally-English Methodist church to become the United Methodist Church in 1968,

Innovations

Lancaster County's innovators have given the world: