greatest number of members is situated in a sparsely populated rural county containing a few boroughs and no institutions of higher learning. This county has only a fifth of the population Lancaster County boasts. Our study would tend to show the "older" counties of eastern Pennsylvania—those which

Lancaster County. In 1840, a corrected account by the same authority lists eleven forges, three furnaces and one rolling mill. The furnaces were the Colebrook, Elizabeth and Mount Hope ; the rolling mill was the Coleman works at Martic. The market for pig iron was quite unstable, especially in early 1837

and papers in the office of the Clerk of Quarter Sessions Court for Lancaster County revealed that petitions had been presented to the court beginning in the mid-1830's by numerous citi- zens of West Donegal, East Donegal, Mount Joy and Rapho townships, all seeking divisions of their townships into

following year they left France and arrived in Philadelphia via Rotterdam on the ship Nancy, Captain John Ewing master, on September 14, 1754.2 Coming to Lancaster County immediately, the Mathiots settled in Lam- peter Township, and at once became identified with Trinity Lutheran Church in Lancaster. On

and a companion established themselves in a cabin along Mill Creek, about eight miles above its junction with the Conestoga, near Bird- in-Hand, Lancaster County. For some time Beissel acted in the self-appointed capacity as spiritual leader of the numerous German sectarians, including the Mennonites