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Lancaster County, PA
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Created on May 10, 1729 from part of Chester County and
named for Lancashire, England. Lancaster, the county
seat, also named for its English counterpart, was laid
out in 1730. It was chartered as a borough on May 1,
1742 and as a city on March 10, 1818.
 The
area was rapidly settled after 1709 by a mix of peoples:
Swiss Mennonites, Huguenots, Scotch-Irish, English,
Welsh, and Rhineland Germans. This was the first new
county since the original three of 1682. Its rich
limestone soil meant farming had to prosper. Coupled
with the charitable humanitarianism of its religious
values there developed a tradition that the poor could
find opportunity here—“the buttermilk way.” Before 1776,
Lancaster was the largest inland city in Britain’s
American colonies. The decade 1800–1810 was stagnant,
but then new enterprises began: gristmills, limeburning,
and iron. A turnpike linked Lancaster to Philadelphia in
1800, and the Columbia and Philadelphia Railroad opened
in 1834. The Conestoga Slackwater Canal facilitated
trade with Baltimore. In the late nineteenth century
there was a manufacturing take off including: cigars,
cotton and silk cloth, beer, stoves, watches and clocks,
and farm tools. The county ceasedmanufacturing iron. In
this century, Armstrong Cork, R.C.A., Raybestos,
Sperry-Rand, and Kerr Glass Company prospered, and some
of the garments industry continues. Always
Pennsylvania’s most prolific agricultural county,
two-thirds of Lancaster County is farmland; animal
products make up over 90 percent of farm cash receipts.
Only the high prices paid for Chester County’s mushrooms
compete with the cash returns from Lancaster’s harvests.
The Christiana Riots against slavery in 1851. Lancaster
was the home of Congressman Thaddeus Stevens who led the
movement for justice for African Americans. |
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