"Notwithstanding the difficulties under which the volunteer firemen labored, there were always ready to respond to the first alarms, and to sacrifice comfort and everything else for the public good." [from the text]
"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]
1 v. (various pagings) : ill., folded map ; 29 cm.
Notes
Includes detailed inventory of sites and structures.
This report presents the case for the preservation of the architectural and environmental aspects of this heritage in a balanced, planned relationship with continued contemporary development. Information is offered concerning the County's resources, the dangers to historic areas, and the possibilities for action. While individual County landmarks do deserve additional attention, the primary emphasis within this report is on the overall character of Lancaster's environmental heritage and the need for its preservation. The natural beauty of our rural areas and the pervasive historic character of many of our older communities are among Lancaster County's basic assets.
This study was updated in 1985 by the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County. The update's title is "Our present past: An update of Lancaster's Heritage" and can be found in our collection. The author of the update is "Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County".
This record provides a link to this resource on the publisher's official online repository.
Summary
HISTORIANS HAVE TRAPPED William Henry of Lancaster (1729–86) in the identity of gunsmith. Though meant as a compliment— most accounts portray Henry as the most important gunsmith in the "rifle-making hub of colonial America," Lancaster County— - this confinement is ironic, since Henry escaped this occupation as soon as he was able. The term gunsmith, then as now, could describe men who repaired guns, who produced specialized gun parts (such as barrels or locks), who created an entire gun from scratch (lock, stock, and barrel), or who ran a factory that employed other men. Henry seems not to have engaged in any of these activities after 1760. By the last decade of his life, Henry had achieved a level of financial security (and apparently embodied the virtuous independence thought to derive from it) that led his peers to entrust him with positions of responsibility and that left Henry free to accept them. He served first in local and state governments and was later appointed an administrator and financier for the Continental army and elected twice to the Continental Congress. We have failed to register the shape of his career, the magnitude of his transformation; instead, historians have imagined that during all these varied activities, Henry continued to work as a gunsmith. Indeed, the belief that Henry "was engaged in the manufacture of firearms for over thirty years," that he produced the rifles or muskets carried by soldiers from the French and Indian War through the Revolution, has been central to stories about him. [abstract]
