Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Every year about this time I begin planning where I will go for research in March.  It has to be between Huntington and Boston or actually be in Boston or near West Port, Connecticut or in the area around Philadelphia.  This year the answer came to me in the middle of the night last night:  Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It is a no brainer!  I will put the reasons for my choice in the main body of my blog post.  I will begin with a map of where I might go and what I might do.  

I am going to add a link to a great you tube presentation on the boundaries of Lancaster County as they changed over the years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0JC6JZFUHw

First is the map that started all of this.  I woke up one morning very early and found by chance this map while drinking coffee:

http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~berry/genealogy/newupload/figures/Fig29.jpg

Perhaps the same day but at least soon after, I found that Jacob Elliott dis mou.  Elizabeth was NOT Quaker!  And, of course, that led me to think that she was probably Scotch-Irish?  Now after a bit more research I would add or German?  And this led me to decide to zero in on Lancaster County!  However, Elizabeth is not a very German name,

The below map helps put a location on Lancaster County.  I did not realize that it adjoined Berks County.  Also notice that it adjoins Harford and Cecil MD.  All through the time period I am talking about in this blog post, Lord Baltimore was fighting with Pennsylvania about the border between the two colonies.

The tide of settlement was not to be stopped, however. As early as 1709, a Scot had established himself in present-day Salisbury Township, and an English Quaker family was living in Little Britain Township. It was not until 1710, however, that the first community within the present borders of the county was established. In that year, a group of Swiss Mennonites--the families of Herr, Mylin and Kendig--built a settlement a few miles south-east of present-day Lancaster city. Two years later a band of French Huguenots led by Marie Ferree settled near Strasburg. Two more years passed before the Scot Presbyterians arrived in two waves, one settling in the Donegal area of northwestern Lancaster County an d the other occupying land in the south. These Scots, often called the "Scotch-Irish," came from Ulster in Ireland after being "planted" there by the English in an attempt to subdue the Irish.

Foor a clickable version of this map go to

http://www.usgwarchives.net/maps/pa/county/lancas/usgs/

On the heels of the Scots came a small but influential group of English and Welsh families. The English tended to settle along a band running horizontally across the county between Salisbury Township and Wright's Ferry (Columbia), including Lancaster village. Occupying lands in what later became Caernarvon, Brecknock and Lampeter townships, the Welsh often were found working in iron. By 1717, the entire central portion of Lancaster County was rapidly filling with immigrants from the Rhineland as well, usually employed as farmers or skilled artisans. When Lancaster County became a reality, it was already the most pluralistic and cosmopolitan place in the New World.

https://www.lancasterhistory.org/highlights/articles/lanccohistory.htm 

From Leyburn's The Scotch Irish: A Social History on pages 189 and 190 and 191:

Penn recruited settlers.  He visited personally German lands that had been devastated by the Thirty Years War.  In 1683, led by their ministers, great numbers of families from the Rhine country came to Pennsylvania.  [I may want to look at this date when I am working on my Cassell family.]

Almost three decades later the Ulster Scots began to arrive.  James Logan invited the first group of Ulstermen to come.  ....for they were his "brave" fellow-countrymen. 

In 1720 he wrote:

 At the time we were apprehensive from the Northern Indians....I therefore thought it might be prudent to plant a settlement of such men as those who formerly had so bravely defended Londonderry.....He accordingly gave them an extensive tract of land in Chester (now Lancaster) County and they immediately named their settlement Donegal after the home county in Northern Ireland.

and on page 197:  

The town of Lancaster became an important town and was the point of departure for immigrants headed toward western Maryland and the Valley of Virginia.  There was a ferry run by John Harris across the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County as well as a trading post and an important link to the Great Wagon Road.  The ferry was the beginning of the town of Harrisburg.

The Scotch-Irish continued to push West.  Often they squatted on the land.  Penn's men had always tried to purchase the land from the Indians.  But the Squatters did not wait until the land purchases were made.  By 1754 the Indian trouble began.  Settlers began to move down the great Wagon road rather than west.  Only in the years after the Indian fighting had ended in 1764 did settlers move farther west in Pennsylvania.

The next book I looked at is:

On page 267 Bolton says: 

"A stronghold of Presbyterianism was in the neighborhood of Newcastle, Delaware.  The narrow tong of land.....is shared by Maryland and Delaware....North of these two counties and across the Pennsylvania line are Lancaster and Chester Counties  extending from the Delaware River to the Susquehanna River.  The territory, south a few miles from Philadelphia, became the mecca for Scotch emigrants from Ireland.  These emigrants pushed up through Newcastle County to cross the Pennsylvania line, hoping to escape from Maryland and its tithes.