an impressive expression of a people's belief in a government organized on the basis of the Common Law. We celebrate tonight the Two-hundredth Anniversary of the granting of a Charter to the borough of Lancaster. What is a Charter? It is an instru- ment for permitting and encouraging the free

ranking among the most gigantic of all in the United States, and therefore in the whole world. Our story concerns only our own county. But let us take a glimpse or two into the dim past. One of the first references to the "post" or post office is found in the Bible. In the eighth chapter and tenth verse

wedges, which were loosened by the jolting of the cars.—Ellis and Evans' History of Lancaster County, p. 319. Last spring (1940), we saw two hundred of these sandstone blocks pulled out by a tractor from the original roadbed of the old Columbia and Philadelphia Railroad, on the farm of Daniel F. King

with little expense water could be obtained from four or five such courses and would supply our whole city for every purpose that might possibly be required." If that is a true picture of the site of Hamilton's Lancaster, could any- thing be more forbidding—woods everywhere, the Dark Hazel Swamp to the

) in the Congressional Library, in a special philatelic display in June, 1940. The exact dimensions of the stamp are 21 x 14 mm. The United States Stamp Catalogue lists among the "locals": Barr's Penny Dispatch Lancaster, Pa. Established by Elias Barr for local collection and delivery, as well as to

PAPERS OF THE LANCASTER COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY Vol. XLVI 1942 Nos. 2 and 3 By M. LUTHER HEISEY The leading residents of Lancaster, when it was incorporated into a borough, were those who were nominated and appointed in the charter as burgesses and assistants, and a few others. This charter

County, can lay claim to a brief priority; the former by eight years, the second and third by one year. Early records show that Mary Prator, of Earl Township, in her will of April 11, 1741, bequeathed "to the Popish Church at Lancaster Borough the sum of two pounds, for the use and at the disposal of the