early life was spent in Lancaster. His father was proprietor of "The Fountain Inn." Aaron was born in the year 1827, and, after his remaining canvases, one landscape learned of his early life—he kept an inn of his own, called "The Cross Keys." His wife's name was Sarah Demuth. These few facts and three

Abraham Witmer' s Bridge At the period immediately succeed- ing the RevolutionaryWar, there was no bridge along the King's Highway over the Conestoga River. There was, how- ever, a public fording. A fording still exists, though now partly cover- ed over by the tracks of the Lancaster and Eastern

legal it may have been, technically, was evidently no more pleasant than it was profitable and popular. It seems that the party who accompanied Edward Gorsuch to Christiana—some of whom retreated rather ingloriously—were not animat- ed wholly by a spirit of philanthropy and patriotism. Thrift was their

this history: Amateur Papers of Lancaster County. A son of Judge Lewis edited and published the first amateur paper printed in Lancaster, so far as I have been able to trace. This was in the year 1849. In 1855 another paper was started by John H. Carmany, and continued for about a year. The office of

THE AMERICAN RIFLE. Upon various occasions in the pro- ceedings of the Lancaster County His- torical Society, attention has been called to the importance of the rifle in the early history of the country, and to the fact that the city of Lan- caster, and its suburban water powers, furnished a centre

third is that of Henry Robert Reed, his fath- er, dated 1816. Mr. Ford's portrait was painted in 1812, and is, therefore, one of the earliest of the artist's works. A very considerable cluster of Eich- holtz portraits and the relations of a notable Lancaster family have been traced to and through Mr