Eschleman's Lists for Early Lancaster County

There is nothing at all in our Court House in manuscript form, dated before 1729. This is so because, prior to that date, we were part of Chester county. Indeed, there is very little, in the shape of manuscript, prior to 1750 in our Court House. Practically all there is to be found there are the Quarter Sessions and road records, the Common Pleas dockets, the appointment of constables, overseers of the poor and highways, the granting of liquor licenses, and the minutes of the County Commissioners, and the records of wills, estates and deeds.

All of the assessment lists before 1750 are gone. I think the earliest list preserved of Lancaster town and borough is that of 1754. It is printed among our society's proceedings. At the time Mr. Samuel Evans wrote his history of our county, the assessments of several townships prior to 1750 were here, because he has copies of some of them in his book. But it is very probable that some of these lists were taken out for the printer of that work and have never been returned.

The Quarter Sessions and road and Common Pleas records are here because they are in docket form. But the old Common Pleas dockets are very frail. The first Commissioners' minute book is in fine condition.

Returning to the documents relating to our county before 1729, we may note that the record of laying out the roads (which began in 1719) are well preseved in book form in the Quarter Sessions Court of Chester county as to common roads. The future will owe a great debt of gratitude to Gilbert Cope for the collecting and binding of those records. There were several roads laid out, reaching into what is now our county, from 1719 to 1726. I have made drafts of some of them. The records of the King's Highways are preserved in the Colonial Records, now in print. The original drafts and petitions and surveyor's notes before 1729 are very rare.

The original petition for the erection of Lancaster county has long since been lost; but a certified copy of it, made 175 years ago by John Wright, was found some years ago at Harrisburg, and it is printed in our proceedings and a copy also hangs in our Commissioners' office. Two petitions filed against the erection of the county, noticed in the votes of assembly, are not in known existence. They were numerously signed by Germans.

The drafts and surveys of land here, containing much data, as to roads, woods, etc.; and the warrants for and returns of the same, are found by hun- dreds in the library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, in the Taylor Papers. They in- clude practically the whole county. Those antedating 1729 themselves make a good-sized list. In many cases five or ten, or even twenty-five separate tracts, are found in one connected draft. One who had the leisure and application could construct from them a map of our county, in 1729, showing where all the inhabitants owning land lived at that time.

The correspondence as to the early taking up of land, finding of min- erals, conflicts of claims, the move- ment and activities of the Indians, etc., is also preserved in the original letters, etc. These, as a whole, illumine the early activities of our people before 1729.

The minutes of land granting here, as well as in the other parts of Penn- sylvania, from 1686 are printed in Vol. 19, Sec. Series of Pa. Archives. They give a great deal of side light light upon many early local movements here before 1729, such as the places of worship and the burial grounds, the mills and woodlands, etc. The manuscripts as to these matters are likely at Harrisburg.

The early patent deeds and other conveyances of land hore before 1729 are, of course, in possession of the modern owners of the lands included in them; except also a fairly large percentage which may be found in the Historical Society at Philadelphia, in our own county records and else where. Copies of many of the Taylor Papers are in our own library also.

The assessment lists of our county began in 1718. Those now in existence extend from 1718 to 1726, inclusive, except that of 1723. These lists were in the dark recesses of the basement of the Chester County Court House until 1879, when Gilbert Cope rescued them and much other valuable early history, jurt as the County Commissioners were about to sell them to the waste paper man,to "raise money for cigars," as Mr. Cope told me. The lists, of course, include only Conestoga (later East and West Conestoga), Donegal and Pequea townships, as these large, partly-organized sections practically included the whole of the Lancaster county region then inhabited.

I have copied these assessment lists complete, and have them here with me this evening. They should be printed in our records, because they ought to be in the possession of our county. This is important for legal, historical, sociological and genealogical reasons; and also as aids in es- tablishing complete title records of real estate. When we consider that for one hundred years Philadelphia was the only port of entry of the United States, through which the German-Swiss population swept into this country; and that from the valleys of the Susquehanna and the Schuylkill, these sturdy people spread out in ever-widening areas southwest, west and northwest, and established the German-Swiss populations of all the middle-western and the far-western part of this empire republic of ours, we can see the importance of a true and accurate list of the originals, of that people and of the townships in which they lived. This County of Lancaster, being the motherland of such a tremendous percentage of the whole Middle and Western sections of America, is sure to become more and more important as tha spirit of history awakens and arises in the robust and active, enterprising peoples of all those regions. Those Western people apply to us now for the early history of their race, and will do so more and more. We, here in Lancaster county, hold a much more dignified and eminent place, historically, sociologically, genealogically and economically, than we now realize. Great universities and libraries and other organizations apply to us for their former history, too.

We ought to own the originals of these lists, but that cannot be, for the owner (Mr. Cope) will not part with them, nor leave them to us at his death.

The lists which I have copied do not seem to contain all of the names of the male adults living here at the time. Then, too, for a year or two several names disappear and again appear in later years. It seems certain that a number of persons living on the extreme outskirts were missed in taking lists. The lists are confined to the townships I have named. There were people living here, not in the townships, as organized, but rather in the wilds, and they were missed. Then, too, a number lived across the Susquehanna, and. were not taken into account because they were not ascertainable; and because Maryland claimed them, and for some years they adhered to Maryland. There is evi- dence of carelessness, too, in other respects, in the lists. And it may be that persons of very little property, paying little tax, were not taken. In fact, no one who lived on Pequea and Conestoga creeks were called upon for eight years after the original date of settlement to pay any taxes not from 1710 to 1718. My study into the many official laxities and negligences during the first twelve years of settlement here makes it appear not unlikely that some citizens may have induced the assessor, for little consideration, to omit them.

As to the people living here prior to the erection of our county in 1729, there are several sources of information. The letter of the original settlers here, dated 1710 in London, the statements of Melchoir Zeller, Hans Burki, and Benedict Brackbill, of 1710, giving lists of those going to Pennsylvania (Eshleman's German-Swiss Annals, pp. 148 to 160), the names which appear in the 1711 migration to Holland and thence here (do., pp. 172, 184, 188, 191), the land warrants found in the Pennsylvania Archives, Vol. 19, second series, the list in Rupp's 30,000 names, dating before 1718, and the naturalization list of those arriving in Lancaster county before 1718, in Vol. 4, Statutes-at-Large, p. 147, the records of the great immigration of 1717 (German-Swiss Annals, p. 203, etc.,), and the assessment lists above referred to of 1718 to 1726, inclusive, are the chief of these source books. There are seventy names on the naturalization list of those who came over prior to 1718 that do not appear on the assessment list of 1718. This shows the lists are not complete. Some of these seventy names, however, do appear on the assessment of 1719 and others on later lists. But it seems strange that they do not appear on the list of 1718, or on the other lists here produced.

[edit]

Biblio

"Elusive Empires" discusses migration into Lancaster County and on into the Ohio River Valley. The discussion of settlement in Lancaster is a good overview of issues, and makes use of Eschleman's extracts of tax data.

Retrieved from "https://www.werelate.org/wiki/Eschleman%27s_Lists_for_Early_Lancaster_County"

Category: Old Chester Tapestry