AN EARLY NEWSPAPER The importance and value of news- papers in the study of local history can not well be overrated. They come next in importance to the original records of State and county. In more recent times they have lost somewhat of their value from the coloring given to public questions as

the old Gap-Road as far as the Village of Strasburg in Lancaster county— This road, your petitioners beg leave to say, is laid out on much better ground than the old Road, is some miles shorter & your Petitioners conceive is the best, straitest and most con- venient Road for the back Inhabit- ants

earliest record of his artistic life that I have found dates back to about the year 1820, when, at the age of twenty-two years, he opened a studio in the bor- ough of Marietta, where the late Judge John J. Liebhart became one of his students, acquiring no little pro- ficiency in portrait painting, and one

. Complains of Ill Treatment. He complains bitterly of his treat- ment. I will quote his own words. He says: "My servant, too, was now in- volved in the severity practiced upon me, and we were all three shut up in a �dirty room, in which we could obtain nothing but an old pair of blankets, and that only in

is to be found in the walls of the stately and old mansion, built almost 150 years ago, and still standing in West Cocalico township, near Schoeneck. It is known as the old Bricker homestead, and the manorial estate that once lay around it embraced 800 acres of land. On this splendid estate the owner

, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, October 5, 1899. Peace to the Brave! They do not need our praising, For in all hearts is treasured every name; Yet for the future we to-day are raising A tablet to their fame. And while the trees put on their fading splendors And trail their banners like to knights of old

newspapers and books. Their influence was unquestionably great, as we know from the very general circu- �lation of their weekly papers, and from the further fact that there is hardly a family in the county to-day, whose his- tory goes back a hundred years or more, that has not a number of old books printed

companies of players in England as early as about 1450; regu- larly-constructed theatres did not make their appearance until several hundred years later, perhaps about 1576. Prior to that time the per- formances, such as they were, were held in churches, the yards of inns and even private houses; anywhere

entire story forms an interesting episode in the early history of Lan- caster count y theatres. �Actor Murdoch's Story. "While yet a mere youth I was acting in the old city of Lancaster, Pa., during the vacation of the regular theatrical season, with a portion of the company attached to the Arch street