Lancaster County (; ), sometimes nicknamed the Garden Spot of America or Pennsylvania Dutch Country, is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States.
As of the 2020 census, the population was 552,984, making it Pennsylvania's sixth-most populous county. Its county seat is also Lancaster. Lancaster County comprises the Lancaster metropolitan statistical area. Lancaster County is a tourist destination with its Amish community being a major attraction. The ancestors of the Amish began to immigrate to colonial Pennsylvania in the early 18th century to take advantage of the religious freedom offered by William Penn,Introduction . Xroads.virginia.edu. Retrieved December 23, 2010. as well as the area's rich soil and mild climate.lancaster, pa. Web.archive.org (March 11, 2007; retrieved December 23, 2010.) They were joined by French Huguenots fleeing the religious persecution of Louis XIV.THE PENNSYLVANIA LEFEVRES. History and Genealogy Book accessed May 31, 2009"Historical papers and addresses of the Lancaster County Historical Society" County Historical Society pages 101–124. pub 1917 There were also significant numbers of English, Welsh and Ulster Scots (also known as the Scotch-Irish in the colonies). The county is part of the South Central region of the commonwealth.
History The area that became Lancaster County was part of William Penn's 1681 charter.The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy . Yale.edu. Retrieved December 23, 2010. 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 any Europeans settled in Lancaster County before 1710.Martic Township. Horseshoe.cc. Retrieved December 23, 2010.
Lancaster County was part of Chester County, Pennsylvania, until May 10, 1729, when it was organized as the colony's fourth county. It was named after the city of Lancaster in the county of Lancashire in England, the native home of John Wright, an early settler.Petition for the Establishment of Lancaster County , 6 February 1728/9 As settlement increased, 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). Many other counties were in turn formed from these six.
Indigenous peoples Indigenous peoples had occupied the areas along the waterways for thousands of years, and established varying cultures. Historic Native American tribes in the area at the time of European encounter included the Shawnee, Susquehannock, Gawanese, Lenape (or Delaware), and Nanticoke peoples, who were from different language families and had distinct cultures.A Brief History of Lancaster County. Web.archive.org (February 3, 1999; retrieved December 23, 2010.)
Among the earliest recorded inhabitants of the Susquehanna River valley were the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannock, whose name was derived from the Lenape term for "Oyster River People". (The Lenape spoke an Algonquian language.)Brinton, Daniel G., C.F. Denke, and Albert Anthony. A Lenâpé – English Dictionary. Biblio Bazaar, 2009. , pp. 81, 85, 132. The English called them the Conestoga, after the name of their principal village, Gan'ochs'a'go'jat'ga ("Roof-place" or "town"), anglicized as "Conestoga."Zeisberger, David. Indian Dictionary: English, German, Iroquois—The Onondaga and Algonquin—The Delaware, Harvard University Press, 1887. , p. 161. The Conestoga never developed a writing system for their language; by 1700 they were defeated and absorbed by larger tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy. Their language is close to that of the Onondaga people of the Iroquois. They are believed to have migrated south from the Great Lakes region centuries before, as did the Cherokee, who occupied areas further to the South. Other places occupied by the Susquehannock were Ka'ot'sch'ie'ra ("Place-crawfish"), where present-day Chickisalunga developed, and Gasch'guch'sa ("Great-fall-in-river"), now called Conewago Falls, Lancaster County.Zeisberger (1887), Indian Dictionary, pp. 48, 222
Other Native tribes, as well as early European settlers, considered the Susquehannock a mighty nation, experts in war and trade. They were beaten only by the combined power of the Five Nation Iroquois Confederacy, after colonial Maryland withdrew its support. After 1675, the Susquehannock were totally absorbed by the Iroquois. A handful were settled at "New Conestoga," located along the south bank of the Conestoga River in Conestoga Township of the county. They helped staff an Iroquois consulate to the English in Maryland and Virginia (and later, Pennsylvania). By the 1720s, the colonists considered the Conestoga Indians as a "civilized" or "friendly tribe," having been converted in large part to Christianity, speaking English as a second language, making brooms and baskets for sale, and naming children after their favorite neighbors.
The outbreak of Pontiac's War in the summer of 1763, coupled with the ineffective policies of the provincial government, aroused widespread settler suspicion and hatred against all Indians in the frontier counties, without distinguishing among hostile and friendly peoples. On December 14, 1763, the Paxton Boys, led by Matthew Smith and Capt. Lazarus Stewart, attacked Conestoga, killing the six Indians present, and burning all the houses. Officials sheltered the tribe's fourteen survivors in protective custody in the county jail, but the Paxton Boys returned on December 27, broke into the jail, and massacred the remaining natives. The lack of effective government control and widespread sympathy in the frontier counties for the murderers meant they were never discovered or brought to justice.
Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary dispute
Pennsylvania had a longstanding dispute with Maryland about the southern border of the province and Lancaster County. Nine years of armed clashes accompanied the Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary dispute, which began soon after the 1730 establishment of Wright's Ferry across the Susquehanna River. Lord Baltimore believed that his grantThe Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy . Yale.edu. Retrieved December 23, 2010. to Maryland extended to the 40th parallel.CECIL COUNTY MARYLAND: Where Our Mothers and Fathers Lie Buried. Freepages.history.rootsweb.com. Retrieved December 23, 2010. This was about halfway between present-day Lancaster and the town of Willow Street, Pennsylvania. This line of demarcation would have resulted in Philadelphia being included in Maryland.
New settlers began to cross the Susquehanna. In 1730, the Wright's Ferry services were licensed and officially begun. Starting in mid-1730, Thomas Cresap, acting as an agent of Lord Baltimore, began confiscating the newly settled farms near present-day Peach Bottom and Columbia, Pennsylvania, which at the time this was not named but was later called Wright's Ferry. Believing he controlled this land under his grant, Lord Baltimore wanted the income from the lands. He believed he had a defensible claim established on the west bank of the Susquehanna River since 1721, and that his demesne and grant extended to forty degrees north. If he allowed Pennsylvanians to settle his lands without reacting, he believed, their squatting would constitute a counter claim.
Cresap established a second ferry in the upper Conejohela downriver from John Wright's, near Peach Bottom. He demanded that settlers either move out or pay Maryland for the right-bank lands. Settlers believed they already had rights to these under Pennsylvania grants. Cresap drove off settlers by vandalizing farms and killing livestock; he pushed out settlers from southern York and Lancaster counties. He gave the abandoned lands to his followers. If a follower was arrested by Lancaster authorities, the Marylanders would break him out of the lockup.
Lord Baltimore negotiated a compromise in 1733, but Cresap ignored it and continued his raids. A deputy was sent to arrest him in 1734, and Cresap killed him at the door. The Pennsylvania governor demanded that Maryland arrest Cresap for murder; the Maryland governor instead commissioned him as a captain in the militia. In 1736, Cresap was finally arrested; he was jailed until 1737 when the King intervened. In 1750, a court decided that, by failing to develop the land with settlers, Lord Baltimore had forfeited his rights to a twenty-mile (32 km) swath of land. In 1767, a new Pennsylvania-Maryland border was officially established by the Mason–Dixon line.
Diversity of settlers
The names of the original Lancaster County townships reflect the diverse national origins of settlers in the new county:Lancaster County Townships . Pa-roots.com. Retrieved December 23, 2010. 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), reflecting mostly Scots-Irish (or Ulster Scots) from Ulster, a province in the north of Ireland; Manheim was German, Lebanon came from the Bible, a basis of all the European cultures; and Earl was a translation of the German surname of Graf or Groff.Lancaster County Historical Society. Web.archive.org (January 5, 2008; retrieved December 23, 2010.)
19th-century statesmen Lancaster County's native son James Buchanan, a Democrat, was elected as the 15th President of the United States in 1856,James Buchanan | The White House. Whitehouse.gov (December 17, 2010; retrieved December 23, 2010.) the first Pennsylvania native to hold the presidency. His home Wheatland is now operated as a house museum in Lancaster.Welcome to LancasterHistory.org . Wheatland.org. Retrieved December 23, 2010.
Thaddeus Stevens, the noted Radical Republican, represented Lancaster County in the United States House of Representatives from 1849 to 1853 and from 1859 until his death in 1868.STEVENS, Thaddeus – Biographical Information. Bioguide.congress.gov. Retrieved December 23, 2010. Stevens left a $50,000 (~$1,000,000 in ) bequest to establish an orphanage. This property eventually was developed as the state-owned Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology. Stevens and Buchanan were both buried in Lancaster.see :File:Thad Stevens grave.JPG and :File:Buchanan grave.JPG
Slavery and the Christiana incident
Pennsylvania passed its gradual abolition law in 1780.Introduction , Millersville University. Retrieved December 23, 2010. The law, which freed the children of duly registered enslaved women at the age of twenty-eight, was a compromise between anti-slavery conviction and respect for white property rights."Slavery in Pennsylvania", Slavery in the North website. Retrieved December 23, 2010. By the time the U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Pennsylvania was effectively a free state, although it did not formally abolish slavery completely until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. It did, however, pass a personal liberty law in 1847 that made it difficult for southerners to recover any enslaved persons who made their way into Pennsylvania.
Lying just north of the Mason–Dixon line and bordered by the Susquehanna River, which had been a traditional route from the Chesapeake Bay watershed into the heart of what became Pennsylvania, Lancaster County was a significant destination of the Underground Railroad in the antebellum years. Many residents of German descent opposed slavery and cooperated in aiding fugitive slaves. Local Lancaster County resident Charles Spotts found 17 stations.pilpath . Muweb.millersville.edu. Retrieved December 23, 2010. They included hiding places with trap doors, hidden vaults, a cave, and one with a brick tunnel leading to Octoraro Creek, a tributary of the Susquehanna.