"On April 17, 1865, eighteen year old John Rakestraw left the family farm in Bart Township, Lancaster County, to attend Unionville Academy, a small Quaker boarding school in Chester County. During the time he was away his two older sisters wrote to him regularly. Ten of those letters have survived and they provide a candid and often painfully honest glimpse of life on a Lancaster County farm in the 1860's. Diaries and ledgers kept by John's father, William I. Rakestraw , provide additional insight into that that time and place." [excerpt from the text]
In: Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, v. 30.
Summary
The article focuses on a letter from Edward Shippen lll to his son, Edward Shippen lV (who would later become the Chief Justice of Pennsylvania). The letter contains advice on how to live a good and productive life both in business and family life.
James Buchanan; paper read before the Kittochtinny Historical Society of Franklin County, Friday evening, March 30, 1900, at the residence of Dr. Chas. F. Palmer, Chambersburg, Pa
"By following the story of my great-grandmother Isabella Ford's life, and adding to it with information from available sources, I have been able to get a better understanding of the circumstances of Lancaster's free blacks. Her story provides a sense of life in mid-nineteenth century Lancaster County and shows how free black families held their own, despite an environment that was often unfriendly and that restricted their opportunities by both law and custom."