pt. 1. Telling the story -- "Drive the heathen out of the land" -- "Some hot headed ill advised persons" -- "The same spirit & frantic rage" -- "Persons of undoubted probity & veracity" -- pt. 2. Retelling the story -- "I never heard one word of it till it was just over" -- "A mighty noise and hubbub" -- "Shot, scalped, hacked, and cut to pieces" -- "One of those youthful ebullitions of wrath" -- "The innocent were destined to share the fate of the guilty" -- "A zone of vicious racial violence" -- pt. 3. Killers and abettors -- "The most respectable of men" -- "They had possession and would keep it" -- "Eternal shame & reproach" -- pt. 4. Death and reconciliation -- "The remains of the victims of a terrible crime" -- "Slaughter'd, kill'd, and cut off a whole tribe" -- "Who was left to mourn for these people?"
"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]
"As the 300th anniversary year of the arrival of Jacob Boehm to the Pequea Settlement and the 225th anniversary of Boehm's Chapel approached, I felt a need to mark the occasion by collecting and preserving tidbits about the Boehm family, the chapel, and the present Boehm's UMC congregation. The Reverend Abram Sangrey, a WWII era pastor of Boehms's Episcopal Church, had written two histories, 'Martin Boehm' and 'The Temple of Limestone', before the 1991 Bicentennial Celebration, which offered insight into the formative years at Boehm's." [preface]
"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."
