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What has been the religious meaning of our 200 years? Religious fervor, transplauted here, flowered out into religious freedom-religious love, ripened into religious liberty. Bruised by the barbarous iron heel of an arrogant state church-filled with the horrors of religious bigotry-satiate with, and stung by the memory of the traditions and trials and turmoils and torments and the tortures, suffered by themselves and their ancestors for centuries, for conscience sake, these pious pioneers would not deny to any other soul, an equal freedom with their own, to worship God. And thus all creeds took root, at once, and flourished here. An English visitor to our country in its very infancy in 1744 wrote, "The religious that prevail here are hardly to be numbered" (An. Susq., p. 344).
The Mennonites planted their religion here in 1710-the Presbyterians, Quakers and Episcopalians theirs in 1719-the Reformed theirs in 1722 at Hellers-the Ephrata Dunkers, theirs in 1726-the Amish, theirs before 1730-the Lutherans, theirs in 1733-the Catholics, theirs In 1740-(9 L., 213 et. seq,)-the Jews, theirs in 1742, (3 L., 165)-the Moravians theirs the same year (9 L., 226)-Dunkards and Baptists, theirs equally early as most these-the Methodists, theirs some time afterwards -The United Brethern, the Reformed Mennonites, the Evangelical, United Evangelical, the Church of God, the Swedenborgen and a score of others, theirs in quick succession, until in modern times three dozen different creeds flourish here. And all, from the beginning, prospered and now prosper in peace and harmony together.
From first to last, ours have been a reverential, religious people. And thus today within this confines there is a higher percentage of communicants than in any other section of America and a far greater number of active religious creeds and sects than in any other equal area on the face of the earth. While in our country as a whole, about one-third of the population are churchmen-in this county the proportion is nearly half. While in all America there are 186 religious denominations, Lancaster county alone has 35 of them (U.S. Bulletin of Religions-1906). Those whose views did not and do not now coincide with the creeds of their own- deeply religious and their religious craving must be satisfied. Thus practically all here, "belong to the church."
From their earliest days the religious forces of this county have made themselves a center of Gospel radiation to other fields-a motherland of church power and influence throughout wide regions. The Mennonites quickly spread their faith and creed across the Susquehanna into the Cumberland and down the Shenandoah; and before the Revolution established the Virginia church. In the early days of the nineteenth century, from this county they went and planted their standard in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois and over wide fields in Canada, and after the Civil War, established their phase of the doctrine of peace in Kansas and the West.
The Presbyterians of Donegal early carried the Gospel beyond the Alleghenies-the Presbyterians of Octoraro planted their banners in Catholic Maryland-the Presbyterians of Pequea flanked out to Leacock and Little Britain and became the field where Rev. Robert Smith in his 42 years of preaching and teaching became the theological giant and the first great peer of Presbyterianism in this region of America. Through Robert Smith, "Old Pequea" sent forth a score of Presbyterian preachers, east and west, among them Waddell McMillan and the Junior Smiths, who also preached and taught and developed religious schools and laid the foundations of Jefferson, Sydney, Unton and Princeton Colleges, (9 L. 252).
The Reformed and Lutherans, long before the Revolution founded different German religious schools, made scores of ministers and by that means laid the foundation on which to erect at the close of that war, Franklin and later Marshall College, the busy breeder of a yearly score or two of powerful preachers throughout more than a century, bringing the bread of life to thousands throughout Eastern America.
The Moravians missionized whites and Indians alike from the earliest days. Other churches also flung out their powers far and wide beyond the county. Thus through all her history Lancaster county has stood in conspicuous preeminence for religious activity and earnestness-religious radiation and energy.
Of religious Lancaster county as a whole we may observe that, the great body of its Christians were and are today believers in the literal meaning of the Bible; accept in a simplicity its humble, homely teachings and give no ear to the "new thought," the higher criticism or the higher cults and culture. They have never tried to explain away the Gospel or make a pleasant or only probabale Hell.
Again observe that practically the whole of our people are still wedded to the belief not only that religion is part of the common law of the land, but that God ought ot be in all our political constitutions and that belief in the Saviour ought to be one of the qualifications in all who hold public office and discharge public trusts as in the ancient times of Penn. It is not the law today. But Lancaster countywould vote onthat it should be the law, seeing the onslaught made against the Gospel in the schools and the lowering by the law of the religious qualifications, in those to whom the people delegate high trusts.
And again observe, in all our numerous religious sects that while Lutheran, Reformed, Catholics, Mennonites were enemies of one another in Switzerland and Germany and some of them delighted in the blood and torture of the others there, the moment they landed here they all dwelt inpeace and ever since have so dwelt. Toleration rules on every hand; and its brightening dawn, apace is growing toward the coming rising sunburst of a universal church.
Then, too, a great tenet of our early pioneers was that religion should be free from any sort of governmental interference - that church must be separate from state. So determined were they in this that they even held for that a true churchman may not take part in affairs of state. They, had seen and felt the horrors of the state favoring one church and punishing another and they would have none of. it. They would not agree that any but God should be obeyed in religious affairs. This belief they have held through neaxly 400 years, from the time their remote ancestors in Switzerland in 1532 asserted it against the government, 250 years before the doctrine appeared in our Federal and State Constitutions. (Ernst Muller's Bernischen Taufer, P. 34).
Finally. meditate upon the marvel (hat the despised doctrine of non-resistance, a corner stone of the belief of four great rural Lancaster county churches, for centuries thought to be a doctrine 100 years behind the times, is now recognized as an ideal 50 years ahead of the times and the glorious goal toward which all the giant nations of. our world are bending their most conscientious and anxious energies today. Such is the religious meaning of Lancaster county's history.
Our country has held on to agriculture. The first settlers did not take up little lots or gardens and cultivate them; they took up great tracts and made them huge gardens-a community of them took up whole valleys-they made the horizon their boundary line. The Swiss and Germans quickly took up the good land of Lancaster county-the Scotch-Irish were too busy holding the frontier and holding office. In the first four years 60,000 acres or nearly 100 square miles of land were surveyed for applicants on the Pequea and the Conestoga(Taylor Papers, 3,323); and in 1719 before the end of ten years the proprietary surveyors reported that there was very little land left on Conestoga and Pequea (Do. 2,920 and 2,932). Swiss and Germans came to the Lancaster regions thick and fast. By 1724 there were over 1,200 in the Conestoga section alone, (9 L., 151). So many of these transforming farmers came here that by 1718 the Quaker authorities at Philadelphia were jealous and fearful of them overwhelming all others and carrying the province away from England and putting it under the dominion of the German empire (2 V., 217 and 220).
Our county for about 150 years has been known as the garden spot of America. Eighty odd years ago a careful writer declared that this county was even then "proverbial in Pennsylvania for fertility of soil and excellence of tillage," (4 H, p.50). All thanks to the careful early German farmer.
Agricultural development by 1781 had brought the assessed value of Lancaster county about $700,000 (2 H., 78), to $6,700,000 in 1814, (2 H., 12), and to $28,700,000 (Gord. Gaz.) in 1830, or double that of Bucks county, mopre than double that of Chester, three times that of Montgomery or four times that of York at the same time (Do.) It was valued that year atone-sixth of all Pennsylvania exclusive of Philadelphia, at over one-half of all the state west of the Susquehana and was equal to all of the state west of that river, excepting York, Adams, Huntingdon, Fayette, Westmoreland and Washington counties (Do.)This wealth was largely cultivated land and this is largely true today. Therefore, our imperial county, through all this time has been supreme mistress of agriculture in America, excelling all other counties today in that particular.
In her agricultural crops and dairy products in our modern day this county holds the banner, standing first in amout and variety in all America with an annual value of over $17,000,000, of which her tobacco is worth over three million dollars,her corn four millions and her wheat nearly half as much. And this monumental year of 1910 her crop is nearly $20.000,000 on her $73,250,000 rural land and live stock valuation; a gross Income of 27 per cent. (Assessment for 1910). Her produce market is the most famous in any rural section of our nation and has been so since the days of Witham Marshe in 1744. Her cattle market ranks next only to those of Baltimore, Philadelphia, Buffalo and New York in all Eastern United States.
Our county stands for ownership of farms as against the tenant system. This alone will maintain the dignity of farming. Yet that love of the native acres of our childhood, that patriotism for the homestead, has lately sufferell here In common with the general trend of agrarian tenancy, so general In the South,and so growing In the West. We are far behind New England farmers in their tenacious hold and their happy homing upon, and their loving hope for the land upon which they were born and upon whose bosomthey expect to die. But nowhere, in the New England or any other section have we stronger love of and fidelity to the ancestral home than here on this remarkable ten square miles of land making up the original settlement, which we celebrate today. And this ancient patrimony of the pioneers belting five miles across two townships sending from one side of its civilization a blazing beam of advice and example today like a mighty search light to us on the other side across 200 years of experience, of toil and and of progress, should renew in us our love and determination to hold, possess and pass on to our line and kin, the acres that come to us from goodly Godly ancestors.
Three-fifths of our farms in Lancaster county are yet farmed by the owners who live on them. This still ranks higher than in the central states where more than half of the farms are in tenants' hands, or in the South where less than one-third of them are farmed by owners. When the West and South shall be as old as Lancaster county, at the rate tenants are now taking hold In those states, they will not be able to show a record of nearly two-thirds of their farms operated by the owners as we do now. But while our county has a large percentage of her farms in tenants' hands, it wisely has only 12 per cent rented out to tenants for money rent, who pay the rent and then frequently ruin the farm by robbing it; while the counties of Berks and Bucks and Chester Nd Montgomery and Delaware have respectively 16, 18,22, 28, and 36 per cent, of their farms let out on money rent-the system that gives the tenant no incentive to stay very long on a farm and care for it and keep it up; but rather to rob it and go-"to skin it and skip." (Census of 1900)
As to tenant farming, our county stands for that more provident system of tenacies (or in many cases only employment of a manager) on shares, thus giving the owner voice in the control and care of the farm and the tenant an incentive to remain upon it for a term of years and keep or build it up.
For this our county has stood in agriculture. And from the early days of the last century until a decade or two ago the ideal of the patriarch farmer was to secure a farm for each of his boys to live and work and spend their lives upon; and marry his daughters to sons of other farmers who had the same purposes for their boys.
Lancaster county's patriotism, through 200 years can only be understood, its meaning can only be known after thorough study-its quality can only be appreciated when the deeper springs of human action are explored.
In the earliest days family was its unit-the large family its charm, and glory-the home community its ultimate object. Family love was its center-community love its circumference. The pious pioneer Teutons loved the family, the community - they loved the land whereon the family, the community dwelt. They would not-be tenants on that beloved land -they would own the land. And they did. Their patriotism was devotion to their familim faith and honesty among neighbors-duty towards rulers-to Caesar what was Caesar's and to God what was God's. They believed that these ideals sincerely lived were better patriotism than wild, extravagant and often empty public eulogies on the flag, by those who froth and foam and shout, but who are not fit for a politcal trust, who would take advantage of a neighbor or cheat the public. And they were right.
National glory did not appeal to our pioneers. "Our Country" to them was:
"The little world of sights and sounds,
Whose girdle was the parish bounds."
But they were not disloyal. Not that they loved Mother Britain or even Pennsylvania less, but Peque and Conestoga more. That was the keynote character of their patriotism. They did not fight in war; but they never shirked a tax. They never built forts nor entered armies; but they furnished the strongest sinews a state can use in war-great granaries of food; and they provided the guarantees of a people's prosperity in peace-the bounteous material wealth and strength and resource. And while the Swiss and German and Quaker farmers plowed, the gallant Scotchman stood armored on the frontier and protect the homes and herds of the valleys. That was his patriotism.
But neither the German, Swiss, Scotch nor English sons of Lancaster county were wanting in national spirit and patriotism when the needs of the English empire, their nation, demanded it, even though it was only the adopted and not the native nation of the Swiss and Germans. When Spain and France began to war on Mother England, the valley of the Conestoga was the first spot In the province to rouse herself; and in 1744 raise and officer a company of soldiers to defend against the French. In Earltown, in the heart of a German settlement, Thomas Edwards this year was captain to raise the first company Of associators (5th A-1-3). Of the 400 men demanded by the king from Pennsylvania in 1746 to join in reducing the French in Canada, Lancaster county led all other sections in numbers(Do. 6 to 16). In the associators of 1748 when our county had less than 4,000 men(5 H., 115) two regiments with a total of 33 companies organized themselves for the defense of home and of Britain(5th A-1-22 & 25), a mass of perhaps 2,000 associators. In the French and Indian wars, beginning in 1754 when there were perhaps 4,500 men in the county (5 H., 115), she furnished thirteen companies and their company and regimental officers (5th A-1-57); and also scores of teams and hundreds of wagonloads of provisions. During the Revolutionary war when there were about 5,500 men in the county (4 H., 12), there were 30 companies of soldiers, large numbers of whom saw service and most of whom volunteered in the beginning of the war-about 2,500 men (E&E 33-69) and the first life given in battle for independence by Pennsylvania was that of William Smith, of Lancaster county (Do., 40). And in the Civil war this county furnished about 12,000 soldiers to help teach the world that a republic cannot be dismembered and that a slave was not chattel, but that God also "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul."
Going back again to the Revolutionary war, no more numerous or enthusiastic meetings were held anywhere than in our county, against British barbarity, which stirred Lancaster county patriotism to its bottom. All shades of feeling were represented here; the meaning of the Revolution was studied by all and in all Its aspects.
All must admit that in its character and emence the war for lndependence was insurrection, rebellion, secession; but it was justified by the abuse and tyranny of the British government. Thus it was not treason, because Britain declared us outlaws and public enemies, and herself thereby broke the compact which bound us to her as part of the nation. This view the leaders for inde- pendence held. But there Were other views. Independence thus, was early, the hope of some, the dream of many and the fear and regret of others.
Allegiance to government also wore a different hue to different elements of our county in the time of the Revolutionary war. Each was attracted by his own paticular favorite part of the spectrum. In that spectrum the important tint to one class was the purple of royalty and empire to another class, the blue of truth and loyalty to the established government; while to others the warm enthusiastic red of freedom and independence appealed.
The German's sense of duty long prevented many of his race from rising in rebellion against the established government. Though he was not native born, but only an adopted son of the Britsh empire, he felt that she had accepted him on the honor of his promised allegiance; and he stood by while her own antive Scotch and English sons-scions of a race for hundreds of years, bred and taught under her laws, protected by her majestic arm, bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh,-were waging a war of rebellion and secession against her throne. The German believed that "the powers that be, are ordained of God" (Rom., 13-1). He knew that in the French and Indian war he was fighting his government's enemies; but in the Revolutionary war he must fight against his own adopted government.
But we are considering Lancaster county's patriotism as a whole. Thus considered she -did notable and noble services in the cause of independence. We have stated the number of soldiers she lent to the cause.
One of the first pledges which thousands of our county's citizens approved and subscribed to, right after Lexington was the pledge, "We do most solemnly agree and , associate under the deepest sense of our duty to God and country, ourselves and our posterity-to defend and protect the religious and civil rights of this and our sister colonies, with our lives and our fortunes against any power to deprive us of them."
Lancaster county companies were among the first in the field. They took part in the Long Island campaign-in New York and in New Jersey and in the battles of Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth.
July 11, 1775, our county furnished two companies of expert riflemen out of nine in the entire province (E&E., 39) and they joined Washington at Cambridge. She sent a company up the Kennebec to Canada (Do.40 & 41)- a company in the Pennsylvania line with Wayne to Georgia (Do.). She sent the Lancaster Rifle company under Captain Ross to Cambridge-in addition to Smith and Ross' companies she had Hamilton and Henry Miller's companies at battle of Long Island (Do., 47)-she had five companies in Colonel De Haas' Battalion (Do., 48)-she had one company, that of Captain Brisbon of Leacock in the second battalion under Colonel Arthur St. Clair, who saw service at Three Rivers, Crown Point and Ticonderoga (Do., 49)-she had Captain Hubley's company in the Third regiment under Col. Shee, who fought in the battle of Long Island and were largely taken prisoners at Fort Washington.
When the "Flying Camp" of 10,000 men were ordered raised and 13,800 militia from New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland-in a meeting at Lancaster, eleven battalions of associators were raised in our county. Our county also furnished two companies amounting to 200 men in Samuel Atlee's Musketry battalion (Do., 54). It furnished Grubb's Lancaster county company of about 100 men in Miles' regiment (Do., 54) and many men in two mote companies of the regiment, a fair number of whom were Germans. These were in the battles of Marcus Hook and Long Island. It furnished one company of the German regiment made up of four Pennsylvania companies. and four Maryland companies. It furnished the Lancaster county Independent company to guard prisoners, (Do., 56). In the 10th regiment we had Captain Weaver's company, (Do., 56). In the 12th regiment we had two com-pai;ies under Captains Chambers and Herbert, (Do., 57). And in the New 11th regiment Lancaster county had one company (Do., 58). This, as we have said before, aggregates 30 companies, making 2,000 to 2,500 men, or cover over one-third of the men of the county at the time.
In the Civil war not less tha 12,000 Lancaster county men enlisted in the cause of preserving the Union and destroying slavery-and German, English, Irish, Scotch and all won equal glory.
But the patriotism of peace is more beautiful than the patriotism of war, and in this patriotism our county has no superior on earth. It is shown in its love of the land itself whereon we were reared and how we carefore and cultivate it-how we stick to it and refuse to roam to other spheres. It is shown inthe sense of duty to the home township and the home county; and the willingnes to discharge that duty faithfully. It is a patriotism bred of justice and not of jingoism-animated by justice, and fed and nurtured by justice.
In its infant years this county always stood politically with the country party of the province and against the proprietary or city party. Our earliest county politics, too, largely followed the cleavage of nationality, the alignment being Germans and Quakers against Scotch Irish and English. This remained true a hundred years. Scotch and English signed the petition for the erection of the county and the two petitions Opposing it were, likely, almost entirely signed by Germans.
In the beginning the Germans took very little political interest in the county affairs. They were not naturalized and at first did not care to be naturalized. But a little later they became very active. In 1732 a body of them were charged with disloyalty to the county and with a friendliness toward an invasion by Maryland.
A few years later no party could have been more politically patriotic to our county than they. They were apower in polics then.
In 1737 by their help the highest successful candidate for the Assembly here received 755 votes. (A.W.M., October 6, 1737), and in 1738 he received 1,016 votes. (Do., October 5, 1739). Our Germans joined forces with the Quakersabout this time (4 St. L., 471) and stood firmly with them for years against the Scotch-Irish and English. With the Quakers they formed the anti-war party against Governor Thomas' new war party and they polled a majority vote here in 1739 (A.W.M., October 4, 1739). In 1742 they threw all their strength into the field and helped the Quakers to defeat Governor Thomas' new war party in this county by a vote of 1,480 to 362 (Penna. Gaz., Oct. 7, 1742). And in 1749 the Germans of this county, under the leadership of Christian Herr, assisted by the Quakers, entirely controlled the election that fall.(4 V., 122); and they were so zealous in exercising the franchise as to succeed in getting 2,300 tickets in the ballot box, though during the day there were not over 1,000 different voters at the polls, according to witnesses. This "repeating," however, many witneses also denied. But while they took this interest in politics they could not or did not desire to hold office themselves during somee years to come, except certain township offices.
Then came on the French and Indian wars and party politics was forgotten. When peace was restored political feeling against the proprietary grew stronger in Lancaster county. Then came on the Stamp act, the Boston Port bill and the preliminaries of the Revolutionary war and this again made political partisan matters unimportant.
When party lines re-appeared in Lancaster county at the close of the Revolutionary war, those lately most zealous in the war, having extravagant notions of hopes for unrestrained liberty,and detesting federal interference with local or state affairs as a tyranny like that of England, whose galling bonds they had just broken, gradually gathered into one political party; and those who were conservative, who feared that the new liberty, might insidiously lead to license and disinitegration, unless restrained by strong central federal power, gravitated into an opposite party. And these two political views were held in ourcounty throughout the years of the Confederation during the period of adopting the National Constitution and during a decade afterwards.
Those reasons have made it a political paradox in our county that the element in it, which today largely take no part in politics, one hundred and twenty-five years ago, by taking an active part, made the county, first a Federal, then and Anti-Masonic, then a Whig, and ever since a Republican stronghold. The same German race in Berks county, adhering to opposite principles and to a different church, made that county Democratic during more than a century. Early Berks county Germans being largely Lutherans and Reformed, took active part in the Revolutionary war and opposed the Federal Constitution of 1787 because they felt it did not give enough of the freedom they fought for and would be as oppressive as British rule had been; while the Mennonites of Lancaster county favored a conservative position, did not see nor fear any danger of tyranny In the new constitution and voted numerously with the Federalists to support it. Lancaster county remained a "Federal" county down to 1800 inclusive electing a Federalist congressman by 400 majority that autumn while the state electors voted strongly for Jefferson for president at the same time, and while the state was from three-fourths to nine-tenths Democratic or "Jefferson," did Lancaster county yield from 200-600 Democratic majority (Intelligencer). In 1805 the county went back to the Federal, now called locally the Federal Constitution party by nearly 1,700 majority and remained there with two significant exceptions in 1810 and 1811 until the suspension of the Federalist party in the times of anti-Masonry in 1829, varying in its Federalist strength from a small majority to two-thirds at times, while the state was from 60 to 75 per cent Democratic; and in 1811, 1824 and 1826 respectively, 93, 90 and 98 per cent. Democratic (Smull). From 1828 to 1835 our county was anti-Masonic by large majorities (Intelligencer and Smull) while the state except in 1828 remained Democratic. The commonwealth remained in the Democratic column, with the exception of the small Whig majorities of 400 and 1,400 respectively in 40 and 48, and the large "Know Nothing" majority of 12,000 in '55 until the slavery agitation in 1858 brought it permanently (with exceptions) into the Republican ranks. But the county in all this time (without exception) remained the firm opponent of Democracy, generally by large majorities, either under the political party name of Federalist, anti-Masonic, Whig or Know-Nothing party where it has remained by great majorities invariably ever since, reaching its high water mark of Republicanism in the majorities of 17,000 for McKinley in 1896 and of 19,000 for Rossevelt in 1904, the state also being strong Republican, except in the few modern well-known instances of 1862-67-74-77-82-90 and 1906.
As to popular interest in politics here at home two observations are pertinnent. First from the beginning until now one-fourth of our people never have and do not now, exercise the right to vote nor take any other interest in politiocal concerns. In the early days of 1737 and 8, when there were about 2,600 men entitled to vote in our county (5 H.,115), the successful candidate in the first year received 755 votes and in the second 1,016 votes (A.M.W., October 6, 1736 and October 5, 1738) and the opposition did not poll 400 votes either year, so that only about half of the voters voted. In 1742 when there were fully 3,000 voters in Lancaster county, the successful candidate received 1,480 votes and his opponent 362, a total of about 1,800 votes or three-fifths, leaving two-fifths not voting, even though that fight was one of the hottest known in years (Pa. Gaz., October 7, 1742). In 1749, while about 2,300 ballots were cast, witnessed affirmed that only 1,000 persons voted out of a list of 4,600 voters in the county, (4 V., 122 and 126). Evenif 2,000 were present at the polls and voted that was less than half. In 1795 under the date of September 9th, our "Lancaster Journal" laments that the people show a very little interest in suffrage and political affairs generally. And in our modern days in only the most strenuous elections do three-fourths of our now 46,000 voters go out and vote.
Second, from earliest days to the present time our people as a whole have been and are inclined to be politically very contented and to place great faith and confidence in political leaders. This is the condition in all nationalities represented in our county. It seems also to exist alike in the rank and file of both dominant and minority political Parties locally. There is not now and seldom has been much questioning and revolting from the choice of candidates which such leaders make, nearly all classes of our people having been and being now willing to trust the political fortunes of the county to political specialists- a county leader and various local statesmen. We are and have been thus a a people easily managed politically and in this are in strong contrast with many counties where the plebiscite is suspicious, not inclined to accept that in which they took no part; and where the people are more generally given to the same independent political thought that a sagacious man exercises in business.
This is not a truly healthy political attitude, and our county has been surprisingly fortunate in escaping as many of the political evils as we have escaped which this lethargy freely breeds. The local press over one hundred years ago complained that, "For several years an inexcusable neglect to vote has been shown and the result has been that a few have hitherto directed elections and the voice of the people is not generally heard" (Lancaster Journal, September 9, 1795).
The truth of history compels us to state that the non-resistant churchmen, made up of four distinct sects in our county (or some of them) took part in politics and in voting in earlier times to an extent that surprises us today. While from the first the Germans took part in politics and of voting they did not hold important offices until about 1750, when Emanuel Zimmerman led off in this departure. But since the Germans entered upon office holding in earnest, after the close of the Revolution, they have held on to all of them ever since. About 1755 the proprietor ordered that the Scotch-Irish shall henceforth go to the Cumberland and the Germans hold forth here (15 H. 81).
To sum up the political meaning of our county in its 200 years we may say: our earliest generations of the county believed in plain simple agragrian government, of few offices and of economical fees and salaries -they stood against proprietaryship -they stood against military exploitation-they believed in the principal of laissez faire, and tenaciously hold to it today-in the days of the Revolution a certain portion of our people believed in political preservation as far as consistent with the gospel of peace--but the masses were very zealous for independence--they have believed and voted that liberty should be exercised conservatively under a strong federal government, which individuals and states should gladly recognize as supreme as the the necessary strong protector of all -later generations stood consistently for stimulation of home industry against cheaper foreign labor by a tariff -and in this present day she is still firmly anchored to that political principle by which she aims to keep her agricultural wealth the great basis on which to develop her industries, by the protective tariff.
Four words sum up our county's industrial history -variety, excellence, energy and honesty. And four words also sum up the quality of our financial history- conservative, safe, sane and sound. Of the industries, we have discussed agriculture, and we now turn our thoughts to other branches.
The earliest manufacture was that of meal and flour, Christopher Schlegel having a mill on Little Conestoga in 1714 (12 L., 20). And Atkinson's, Graeff's, Stehman's and Taylor's mills quickly followed. Mining also began early. Minerals were reported about Conestoga in 1707 (2 C., 403 & 5) and John Cartlidge, of that place, found iron ore near there also in 1721 (12 L., 20). In 1722 a deposit of copper also was said to be found in Lancaster county(3 C., 160) the nickel mines of the Mine Ridge and the silver mines of the Pequea and the iron mines in many parts were opened before the Revolutionary war. The Elizabeth furnace was started in 1750 by John Huber, a German, the first one in Lancaster county (Swank, "Iron and Steel" for 1883, p.23). Martic Forge began in 1755 and Windsor about the same time before, (Pa. Gaz., March 17, 1773). Saddles, pack saddles and guns were made before 1754 in Lancaster, which was described by a traveler at the time as a town of 500 houses, 2000 people, who were making money (6 H., 29). The Octororo was early lined with mills, trip hammers, etc.
In 1770 and before, an elaborate textile manufacture was carried on here by our industrious German mothers, God bless them. In the year, May 1st, 1769, to May 1, 1770, cotton, woolen and linen goods, consisting of clothing, bed clothing, curtains, etc., of thirteen varieties made by the women of Lancaster, reached 28,000 yards reported, with materials in the looms for 8,000 yards more and many more not reported at all., as the Germans feared it was sought for taxation. One good mother alone, while at the same time she was proprietor of one of the principal hotels in the town wove 660 yards herself (Pa. Gaz., June 14, 1770).
And in silk production in 1772 in Pennsylvania for the greatest number of cocoons and best reeled silk, Lancaster county led the entire state, (Philadelphia city included) in quantities and quality, Widow Stoner herself having raised 72,800 cocoons, Caspar Falkney 22,845 cocoons and Catherine Steiner 21,800 cocoons, all of them Germans living in this county. Chester and Philadelphia county and city fell far behind (Pa. Gaz., March 17, 1773).
In 1780 according to the assessment list there were in Lancaster, then a town of 3,000 people, 35 different kinds of manufactures, including woolen, silk, cotton and flax weaving. In the Revolutionary war we manufactured the most famous and fartherest-carrying rifles in the world. In 1830, there were hundreds of manufactures in the county, among which 7 furnaces, 14 forges, 183 distilleries, 45 tan yards, 32 fulling mills, 164 grist mills, 8 hemp mills, 87 saw mills, nine breweries, five oil mills, five clover mills, 3 cotton factories, 3 potteries, 6 carding engines, 3 paper mills, 1 snuff mill, 7 tilt hammers, 6 rolling mills and one or more nail factories (Gord. Gaz., p 230). And thus it has gone on increasing until a few years ago, on the ideal of small factories, and many of them in which many men of small capital gave employment each to a score of his neighbors.
SmalI factories until lately were humming by the thousands in our county and large ones by the score. But sad to relate, as to the small industries, the relentless hand of giant monopolies has crushed and broken most of the small concerns to pieces, and in their stead has established branches of great corporations. This has exchanged an independent for a dependent industrialism in our county. Through all its ages and stages of manufacture until this last decade, the county stood for and splendidly exemplified the small industrial business man employing his happy contented neighbors, turning out honest homemade goods, in which it took an honest delight and pride.
Her industries have always been steady and stable; and in prosperity and panic she has marched onward not flinching before the shock of financial disaster, throughout the land that in many other towns and counties, have laid proud industries in the dust. Her watches are found throughout all the lands-there is not a people who do not smoke her cigars and hardly a spot on the earth where her umbrellas do not protect from storm. Her confectionery runs annually upwards of a million dollars in value - her watches over a million - her cigars and smoking and chewing tobacco two millions and a half and her umbrellas nearly four million dollars a year. Her silk, cotton and iron manufactures are vast important industries. Our little city of 41,000 people ten years ago increased her industrial strength from 1890 to 1900, from 599 manufacturing plants to 738 -with capitol increased from $8,000,000 to $10,000,000, wage earners from 7,300 to 9,300 -wages paid from $2,000,000 to $3,000,000 and product value from $11,500,000 to $16,500,000. And in these last ten years there has been a corresponding increase.
In commerce as early as 1731 there is mention of a ship from Lancaster arriving at New York with goods likely taken laboriously down the Conestoga and Susquehanna then loaded on ships. (Pa. Gaz., January 5, 1731). Our county did her part in 1792 to 1794 in building the first turnpike to Philadelphia at a cost of $465,000 (Gordon p. 229), the first turnpike in America; and from 1775 to 1860 she built her share of the system of canals and turnpikes that in that day were the best in the world. And now she is well in the van again with the greatest rural trolley system in the state. These were her efforts in commerce and transportation.
In finances the progress of her Germans and their growing competence attracted the jealous English eyes of the government at Philadelphia before their valleys felt the spell of German agriculture a score of years, (C.R. & V.). By 1830 when they had brought the county's land to be worth $24,000,000 this county's citizens had $4,000,000 of money at interest, while Chester and Bucks counties, each fifty years older had respectively only $400,000 and $250,000 of money at interest, even at that early date our county stood as a fair second to Philaelphia itself. She had more money at interest, even at that date than all the rest of Pennsylvania, excepting Philadelphia.
And best of all every cent of our savings was honest; gotten by honest toil and honest methods in agriculture and manufacture and not speculation in false inflated values,spurious stocks, representing a plant only on paper and in the imagination of oily swindlers.
And in our present day the finanancial strength of this county has grown so that there are returned to the assessors $27,000,000 of money at interest, which omits fully $10,000,000 more. There axe many millions in our manufacturing plants. There are 46 banks and trust companies in operation in our county, with assets of over $40,000,000 or perhaps an average of $1,000,000 each. These institutions have increased from $29,000,000 to $40,000,000 in seven years, about 33 per cent, and the stock of several of them sells from 300 to 500 per cent of par.
The educational history of our county needs explanation more than defense. Early English writers were accustomed to criticize our county's education. They forget that in 1734 there was a German school in Lancaster (5 H., 22). From 1745 to 1780 there were parochial and private schools (Riddle, 10). in 1746 the Moravian school was flourishing (Do., 9). In 1748 there was a large school of English, Irish and German pupils here, which continued till 1788, (Do., 10). In 1752 the county had the famous Rock Hall school and also others of importance (Lanc. Gaz., June 29, 1752). Robert Smith had his Presbyterian school in operation then at Pequea and there were similar ones in Southern and Western Lancaster county. The Germans had their church schools very early, too, and these prepared the way for Franklin college, in 1787 and afterwards Marshall. Then too, there was and is, Yeates school, also started in 1780. About the beginning of the 19th century came on the famous Lancastrian schools, the public school system a decade later and a very progressive system since. There was compulsory public payment for the schooling of poor children as early as 1819 (4 H., 295), and under it (before the days of the regular common school system), Lancaster county paid annually $6,500 as a contribution (3 H., 165).
One thing is evident: Lancaster county from the beginning was concerned aboput two qualities in the education it gave to its sons and daughters- that it should be practical and that it should be moral and indeed religious. They were wiser than we, in that the moral culture which true education should give, we make inferior to the purely intellectual; and the religious we are absolutely afraid of.
Their education was practical. The primary popular end of education as we see it today everywhere is to enable children to succeed well in life, to gain a competence, a standing, an estate, a large estate, a million if possible. We may boast that modern education has aims higher than these sordid ones; but it is not true as a practical condition. So too, 150-200 years ago our pioneers gave themselves that kind of education which conditions demanded- an education that enabled them to succeed. And they did succeed. They cleared their farms and by 1830 had $4,000,000 at interest. None of the older and alleged more intellectual counties could show more than one-tenth of that result. Their education in the country was necessarily, a study of the soil and how to make it crop well- a study of how to turn crops into the best market- the cultivation of strong reliable judgement and how to make it crop well idy of how to turn crops into the best market-the cultivation of reliable judgment amd how to meet duty as it comes to them. In this they had the best kind of education. In the town the education must be that of trade and manufacture and the early town of Lancaster showed marvelous results in that line.
The education of our county's pioneer ancestors was deeply moral and religious. They did not try to make brilliant scoundrels,. but noble men. They would have a man that you could trust, one who had moral backbone, to stand against the temptation of dishonesty and cupidity. They preferred to make a man rather than a scholar. We make the mistake in modern days of giving the pupil storage capacity at the sacrifice of strength; we make the children bins Instead of bulwarks. Our ancestors never made that mistake. They saw that children were taught moral back-bone as well as mathematics-goodness as well as geography-honor and honesty as well as history and Godliness as well as grammar.
The two great text books of our grandfathers and our great-grandfathers times were the Bible and the newspaper. There is no better source in all the universe of an education than these.
Our county has had about 275 newspapers in her time, 175 in the town and later city and about 100 in the country. This record exceeds any similar community of 160,000 people, anywhere in the world. These papers began as early as 1743, and they became numerous at once, and evenbefore the year 1800 there were over a score of them printed. Who can say in the face of this that our county was not an early educated county? All read the papers and the papers contained the most practical knowledge to be had. It was the education suited to their needs and it made our county early a great prosperous people. Every modern student of the early newspapers of colonial time knows they contained much home and foreign geography, history, finance, philosophy and other learning.
Our forefathers feared not a stern morality and rigid rectitude in their courses of study. In the schools of those days, the Bible was taught as one of the text books. And they taught it Gospels and all too. It is only lately that we have found out thjat teaching boys and girls to love the saviour of the world is opposed to American liberty. God bless the brave old forefathers. They remembered that it was their Christian forefathers who colonized America, fought for it and handed it down to them. They remembered that Christianity did more for America than the Constitution and the law ever did. And what men the rod and the Bible made in our grandfather's time! To steal a cent was as wicked to them as to steal a hundred thousand dollars. You could have put anyone of them in a bank as president or cashier and he would never have thought of robbing it and going to Canada. He would never have taken it to gamble in stocks. You never would have found one of them form monopolies and crush out weaker men. Nay, thus strong they stood as proof against evil as old Gibraltar is strong against the waves of the hammering sea.
Men gravitated to them with all their troubles and had them settled by the simple rule of right, from which they never appealed. Why was this so? Because in their schools the chief branch of their curriculum was character-building, and the products of their commencements were men rather than scholars weak in moral manhood and bravery.
The genius and spirit of a free government may be against the Bible or religious training in schools; but our forefathers did not think so. They studied the Bible and in doing so the government gained vastly more in good, noble patriotic men than it ever could have gained by her means.
Let us reflect, when we incline to ridicule our county's lack of polite education in primitive days, that taking it all in all their education may have been better and truer and of more real service to God and man than our own. I for one, unalterably stand for moral and religious culture in the common schools, even at the sacrifice of some of the purely Intellectual, because it is that kind of education that will make better heads of families, better neighbors, better citizens. And that, in the last analysis, is the supreme object of every state.
An. Susq. means Annals of the Susquehannocks, etc.
9 L., etc. means Vol. 9. Lancaster Historical Society Proceedings, etc.
2 V., means Vol. 2 Votes of Assembly etc.
4 H., etc., means Vol. 4. Hazard's IRegister etc.
Gord. Gaz., means Gordon's Gazette of Pennsylvania.
5th-A-1 etc., means 5th series Penn. Archives, Vol. 1, etc
E.& E. etc., means Ellis and Evans History of Lancaster county.
A.W.M., means American Weekly Mercury.
4 St. L. etc. means Vol. 4, Statutes at Large.
Smull means Smull's Handbook
Pa. Gaz., means Pennsylvania Gazette
2 C., etc., means 2 Colonial Records, etc.
Lanc. Gaz., means Lancaster Gazette