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.
Mennonite Information Center, Library and Archives
215 Mill Stream Road, Lancaster, Pa.
5 mi. E. on U.S. #30 at Mill Stream Road
The Mennonite Library and Archives Building is one of the recent additions to Lancaster County’s cultural and educational facilities. It houses the church’s official information center which seeks to provide visitors with intelligent and accurate answers to their many questions about the Amish and the Mennonites.
The more than forty thousand volumes of the theological and historical library, with the Archives of the Lancaster Mennonite Conference, provide a wealth of material for the serious researcher in the fields of theology, Anabaptist and related church history, state and local history, and genealogy. All these facilities are open to the public with no admission charge.
Farmers’ Markets
By GERALD S. LESTZ
Lancaster New Era staff writer and columnist; publisher of Baer’s Agricultural Almanac.
Farmers’ Markets in historic Lancaster date back to the very beginning of the community, 1730, and are a delight to today’s visitors, many of whom make a special point of “going to market.”
Lancaster City owns and operates two farmers’ markets—the Central, just off Penn Square, and the Southern, one block away at S. Queen and W. Vine Sts.