Lancaster County, Wright having served since 1717. Cornish and Hendricks had been appointed in Chester County in 1724. All were Quakers, or members of the Religious Society of Friends. At the November session of 1729, Andrew Galbraith and Thomas Edwards were added as justices. Edwards was appointed a

government in the 1730s was quite primitive. The only officials were constables, overseers of the poor, and supervisors of highways. In practice, Lancaster County's magistrates (or lay justices) were the only local government. With Lancaster being chosen for the county seat as anticipated by James Hamilton

and vice. German and Irish immigration brought many persons to Lancaster in the middle and late nineteenth century. Unlike earlier immigrants who were for the greater part middle-class artisans that practiced their trades in Lancaster, many of the newer residents competed for the available laboring or

one or more manageable objectives in keeping with financial resources available. Now that the Lancaster County Historical Society had a constitution and by-laws, it was ready to get down to the business of electing officers. Dr. Hark and Mr. Diffenderffer were to be the nominating committee. This was

Lancaster and the American Centennial Exposition of 1876 By John W. W. Loose To celebrate a century of American Independence, a "world's fair" or Cen- tennial Exposition was held in Philadelphia from May to November 1876. The "birthday party" for the world's largest "democratic Republic" was an

. Mr. Chambers was reared as a Quaker but upon reaching adulthood he proclaimed himself a "freethinker" and "communist." R. J. Houston in 1896 described Chambers thus: "Reuben's Lancaster County neighbors didn't take much stock in new isms or doctrines and hadn't time to chop logic or split hairs with