Pennsylvania Dutch Guide-Book

by Pennsylvania Dutch Tourist Bureau

Highlights of Lancaster’s History

By DR. H. M. J. KLEIN

Oftimes referred to as “Mr. Lancaster,” Dr. H. M. J. Klein has made a contribution to virtually every facet of public life. Teacher, minister of the Gospel, and counselor in affairs of City and State.

Lancaster County soil was fertile Indian territory long before the discovery of America. Before the coming of William Penn, French traders bartered with the native Shawanese. In the later days when there was trouble between the French and the English in America, the governor of the province, John Evans, visited these Indian settlements in order to establish their loyalty to Queen Anne.

As early as 1709 a colony of Mennonites came from Switzerland under the leadership of Hans Herr—whose house is still standing, the oldest in the County—and began to make this district the richest agricultural region in the United States. Then came the French Huguenots, the Scotch-Irish, the Quakers, the Welsh, the Palatines.

At the time when Pennsylvania had only three counties, Philadelphia, Bucks and Chester, from the last-named county a section was separated, to which John Wright, a native of Lancaster, England, one of the first settlers in this region, gave the name of Lancaster County. This separation took place in 1729. Out of the original Lancaster County, York, Cumberland, Berks, Northumberland, Dauphin and Lebanon counties have since been taken, leaving Lancaster County today an area of 928 square miles of territory which for beauty, fertility and picturesqueness is unexcelled.

On a plot of ground owned by Andrew Hamilton, and divided by him into town lots, there sprang up two hundred and thirty years ago an embryo village called “Hickory Town” or “Gibson’s Pasture” which was the beginning of what is now known as Lancaster City. When Andrew Hamilton laid out this village in 1730 on the 500-acre tract of land he owned, there were less than two hundred inhabitants in the town. It was through his son, James Hamilton, that the village was turned into a borough in 1742. The first Burgess of Lancaster was Thomas Cookson, an Englishman, whose remains are interred in the church yard of St. James Episcopal Church.

A number of important Indian treaties were made at Lancaster in 1744 between the chiefs of the Six Nations and the rulers of Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland. In the formulation of these treaties, all the disputes between the whites and the Indians came up for discussion.

During the French and Indian War, through the influence of Benjamin Franklin, hundreds of wagons and pack horses were sent from Lancaster to General Braddock. Many officers and soldiers from this section served in the battalions which marched with Forbes and Bouquet to the Ohio. In this list of Lancaster County men who served in the French and Indian Wars are found the names of Shippen, Grubb, Atlee, Hambright, Reynolds and a roll of five Presbyterian clergymen serving as chaplains.

The Indian history of Lancaster County ends in 1763, when a band of sixty men called the Paxton boys came to this city, stormed the jail and workhouse, then located at the northwest corner of West King and Prince Streets, and massacred all the Indians confined there for protection.

In the days of the American Revolution, Lancaster was an important center of patriotic activities. After the closing of Boston Port, a meeting of protest was held in the Lancaster Court House. Her deputies attended the Pennsylvania Convention in Philadelphia and joined in a call for a Colonial Congress. After Lexington, the citizens at a public meeting pledged their lives and fortunes to the cause of all the Colonies, and companies of expert riflemen were organized. William Simpson of Captain Smith’s Lancaster company, was the first Pennsylvania soldier who fell in the Revolutionary War. Many British prisoners were brought to Lancaster, among them being Major Andre, kept for a time at the Cope House, corner of Grant and North Lime Streets.

When the British were on the point of occupying Philadelphia, Continental Congress and the Executive Council of Pennsylvania were removed to Lancaster. The members of Continental Congress arrived here on September 27, 1777, the very day on which General Howe entered Philadelphia. The records and treasury were removed to Lancaster by way of Reading. One session of Congress was held here; but the members, believing that they might be interrupted by the enemy, resolved to remove Congress to York.

The Executive Council of Pennsylvania met here on October 1, 1777 and its sessions continued to be held in this city for nearly nine months, during which time the President of the Council, the Hon. Thomas J. Wharton, Jr., died, and was interred in Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Lancaster furnished a signer of the Declaration of Independence in the person of George Ross. Another son of Lancaster, who brought distinction to his native soil, was David Ramsay, the historian of the Revolution. William Henry conducted a gun factory to manufacture and repair arms for the Continental army. His son, John Joseph Henry, took part in the expedition against Quebec and immortalized the campaign by his accurate and interesting account of the hardships and sufferings of that band of heroes who traversed the wilderness in an attempt to take Canada for the Colonial cause.

ROCK FORD
Restored Home of General Edward Hand
Open to Visitors Built 1796

The greatest military hero of Lancaster during the Revolution was General Edward Hand, one of Washington’s most trusted aides, who fought in the battles of Trenton and Long Island, succeeded Stark in command at Albany, and accompanied Sullivan’s Expedition against the Six Nations in 1779. His home “Rock Ford” still stands along the Conestoga River in the southeastern part of the city. Under the roof of this hospitable mansion, General Washington, Lady Washington and many soldiers and civilians famous in the early annals of our nation found shelter and congenial companionship.

In Revolutionary days the Moravian brethren at Lititz cared for many wounded soldiers, Continental, British, and Hessian, in a building that is still standing. Peter Miller among the Brothers and Sisters in the Ephrata Cloister translated the Declaration of Independence into many foreign tongues.

Lancaster is the home of Franklin and Marshall College. This institution developed out of what was originally Franklin College, founded at the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin. The Legislature of Pennsylvania granted the College its first charter in 1787. Among the first trustees were four signers of the Declaration of Independence and seven officers of the Revolutionary Army.

George Washington visited Lancaster on several occasions, the most notable of which fell on the fifteenth anniversary of American Independence, July 4, 1791.

Lancaster was the capital of Pennsylvania from 1799 to 1812, when the state capital was removed to Harrisburg. The State Legislature met in the Court House, which at that time was known as the State House, and stood in the center of the square, where the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument now stands.

Old Lancaster, with its Conestoga wagons, its story-and-a-half buildings, its colonial architecture, its historic associations, was the largest inland town in the colonies up to the time of the formation of the nation. It had 678 houses and 4,200 inhabitants in 1786. On its streets Robert Fulton played as a boy. The original Fulton birthplace is still standing in southern Lancaster County. The oldest continuous business firm in the county was the Steinman Hardware Company established in 1744 and closing in 1964. It was the oldest hardware store in the United States. The Demuth Tobacco Shop on East King Street, established in 1770, is the oldest tobacco shop in the United States. The Hager store is the oldest department store in America continuing on the same site and operated by the Hager family throughout the whole period of its history. One of Lancaster’s daily newspapers has been in existence for over a hundred and sixty-nine years.

Old Lancaster became New Lancaster when, after a period of seventy-six years under burgess rule, the town was incorporated as a city by a charter granted in 1818. John Passmore became the first Mayor of the city.

In the hundred and forty-eight years since its formation as a city, Lancaster has been the scene of widespread activities. It has developed into a progressive modern city under the leadership of men, many of whom have exerted a nation-wide influence. Foremost among these men was President James Buchanan, who first came into prominence as a young Lancaster lawyer in 1814, through a speech he delivered at a public meeting in this city after the city of Washington had been captured by the British. He was among the first to register as a volunteer with a company of dragoons, who marched from here for the defense of Baltimore. He represented this community in Congress when he was barely 29 years of age. From here he went to St. Petersburg under an appointment of President Jackson as Minister to Russia. Upon his return, he was chosen United States Senator and filled that office for ten years, after which he became Secretary of State under President Polk and later United States Minister to England under President Pierce. At the time of his election as the 15th President of the United States, he lived in the fine old colonial mansion known as “Wheatland” built in the suburbs of Lancaster. Few persons visit Lancaster for the first time without getting a glimpse of this historic spot, which has lost none of its generous hospitality. In Woodward Hill Cemetery, South Queen Street, five blocks from Penn Square, rests the remains of James Buchanan. The recently restored gravesite includes an exact replica of the marble tomb in granite. It is now a worthy shrine for Pennsylvania’s only native President. School children throughout the State contributed to the restoration, which was sponsored by the Pilot Club.

WHEATLAND
Restored Home of President Buchanan
A National Historic Landmark
Open to Visitors Built 1828

Lancaster has many associations with the Civil War. The first bloodshed in the United States caused by the Fugitive Slave Law, occurred in Christiana, Lancaster County.

President Lincoln, on his way to the White House from Springfield, stopped at Lancaster and delivered an address from the balcony of the Caldwell House, now the site of the Hilton Inn. When he passed through this city again on April 21, 1865, Lincoln’s body rested in a heavily-draped funeral car, and the sorrowing crowds stood with uncovered heads while the train passed. But between these two events, Lancaster showed its loyalty to Lincoln and his cause by a remarkable response to the call of the Union for troops in the war of the Rebellion. Soldiers from Lancaster County were found in sixty regiments of Pennsylvania. The well-known seventy-ninth regiment commanded by Colonel Hambright was composed wholly of volunteers. Shortly before the battle of Gettysburg, when General Early reached York and the brigade was sent to hold the bridge at Columbia, and the bridge was set on fire in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Southern Army, long lines of refugees passed through Lancaster. At Gettysburg, Major General John Fulton Reynolds, worthy son of Lancaster, commanding the Pennsylvania reserves, was among the first to lay down his life on his country’s altar. His body was carried to Lancaster and lies buried in the family enclosure in the Lancaster Cemetery. Every visitor to Gettysburg knows of the handsome statue erected to the memory of General Reynolds on that immortal battlefield.

On the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, now standing in Center Square, the names of the following battlefields are carved in high relief: Gettysburg, Antietam, Malvern Hill, Vicksburg, Wilderness, Chaplin Hills, Chickamauga, Petersburg. These names are a testimony to the martial valor of Lancaster County in the Civil War.

Lancaster has furnished many notable men and women to our national life. Thaddeus Stevens, the Great Commoner, lived in this city during the greater portion of his life. He was elected by the Whig Party to Congress in 1848, and threw himself into the arena as the aggressive foe of slavery. Throughout the Civil War he was one of the most strenuous advocates of emancipation and an able counsellor of President Lincoln. After his death in 1868, a noted historian said, “In the Congress of the United States from the time of its first officer, Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, to this day, there was just one man who when he occupied a seat in that body held more power than any man in the government, and that man was a citizen of Lancaster County, Thaddeus Stevens.”

Among the many other notable personages associated with Lancaster were Benjamin West, the famous painter; Lindley Murray, America’s foremost grammarian; Lloyd Mifflin, one of the finest sonneteers of modern times, and Barbara Frietchie, who was born here.

To education, Lancaster has given the services of three State Superintendents of Public Instruction, James P. Wickersham, E. E. Higbee and Nathan C. Schaeffer; also Thomas W. Burrowes, the father of the free school system of Pennsylvania. In art, Lancaster has contributed the portrait painter, Jacob Eichholtz, who painted more than two hundred and fifty portraits, among his subjects being Chief Justice Marshall and many others of the foremost people of his day. The well-known Baron Stiegel was for many years a resident of Lancaster County and established in the town of Manheim a glass factory, the wares of which are highly cherished by antiquarians.

There is a remarkable mingling in Lancaster County of the old and the new—an atmosphere of quaintness, friendliness and cordiality. The county is full of the beauty and bounty of God, as the old of yesterday and the new of tomorrow meet in the Lancaster area whose influence reaches far and wide in the shaping of the larger life of the nation.