, 1849, before me, the subscriber, a Justice of the Peace in and for the said county, personally appeared Ed- ward Gorsuch and made oath on the Holy Evangely of Almighty God, that he has every reason to believe that the wheat mentioned in the aforego- ing letter was stolen from his granary by his servant

after Philadelphia and York County. Lancaster County maintained this prominent position up to the Civil War. In 1860 for example, it ranked third after Philadelphia and Chester County with 3,459—this figure represents a slight loss over 1850 ( — 4.3%). Columbia Borough had the largest urban free Black

The General Position of Lan- caster County in Negro Slavery Slavery, in its various forms, has come down to us from the regions of dim antiquity. Its prevalence in West- ern Europe was a certainty, predes- tined that it should taint the new civ- ilization soon to take root and spread in the Western

10th of March, 1798. John Woodhull, of Monmouth coun- ty, N. J., on the 19th day of March, 1799, tells us: "This is to certify that I have set free from slavery a negro man named James, now in the county of Lancaster, Pa., so that he may make bargains and contracts for him- self as other free negroes

- thority upon any historical subject will be a great honor to it. The plan also will give unity to the work of the year. Then, too, the public cele- bration of the sixtieth anniversary of the chief manifestation of slavery in Lancaster County (The Christiana Riot) is designed to be a great moral object