Old Testament Place Names In Lancaster County
By SAMSON A. SHAIN, D.D.
Rabbi, Shaarai Shomayim
The Founding Fathers of communities in Lancaster County, as the Founding Fathers of our Country at large, cherished the Bible as a guide in their search for equal rights and justice, and especially freedom to worship God as they had learned to worship Him in the privacy of their homes and houses of worship. Giving scriptural names to their home and church communities, accordingly, served to symbolize for them, the attachment they felt for the liberty they were helping to proclaim in all the land.
Hence, one place our county pioneers called Goshen, land of plenty to which God had led them. Another place they called Bethel, House of God, wherein they could freely pour out their hearts in thanks and praise and petition. Still another they named Mount Nebo, mountain peak with an all-embracing view of their new Land of Promise. Another, Elim, place of rest in the shade of one’s tree with none to make man afraid. Still another, Eden, new garden home of delight planted by them in partnership with God. Yet another, Ephrata, shrine of freedom paid for by the labors of pioneer men and women, patriarchs and matriarchs of God’s newly chosen people planted in the New Zion he had appointed for them. In this same spirit, one, John Patton, gave the name Judea to the hill plantation straddling West Hempfield and Manor Townships on the banks of the Susquehanna, between Columbia Borough on the north and Washington Borough on the south, and warranted to him in 1774.
Lancaster County settlers, thus, chose Biblical names for their communities in the spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers before them, as a way of expressing thanks to God for leading them safely to these shores of freedom; as a way of affirming faith that unless God built a house of liberty, they labor in vain that build it, and as a way of making a promise to labor mightily to preserve that freedom and bequeath it unsullied to their descendants.