This work embraces about 1,200 sketches of 19th-century York Countians. Most sketches include a variety of genealogical and biographical data.

Peter Schwahr/Swarr was born in 1690 near Strasburg, Alsace, France. He married Adaline Bloomfing at Strasburg. They and their two oldest sons immigrated to America in 1716 and settled near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They had four more children born in Pennsylvania. Most descendants listed lived in Pennsylvania.

This important work has the names of nearly 15,000 Lancaster County residents who left wills or died intestate, 1729-1850. Arranged in two alphabets, the full name of the deceased is given, as well as the year, the book volume and page wherein the records are to be found. There is also a brief history of the early inhabitants of the area, and a classified bibliography.

Lydia Hamilton Smith (1813–1884) was a prominent African American businesswoman in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the longtime housekeeper, life companion, and collaborator of the state’s abolitionist congressman Thaddeus Stevens. In his biography of this remarkable woman, Mark Kelley reveals how Smith served the cause of abolition, managed Stevens’s household, acquired property, and crossed racialized social boundaries. Born a free woman near Gettysburg, Smith began working for Stevens in 1844. Her relationship with Stevens fascinated and infuriated many, and it made Smith a highly recognizable figure both locally and nationally. The two walked side by side in Lancaster and in Washington, DC, as they worked to secure the rights of African Americans, sheltered people on the Underground Railroad, managed two households, raised her sons and his nephews, and built a real-estate business. In the last years of Stevens’s life, as his declining health threatened to short-circuit his work, Smith risked her own well-being to keep him alive while he led the drive to end slavery, impeach Andrew Johnson, and push for the ratification of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. An Uncommon Woman is a vital history that accords Lydia Hamilton Smith the recognition that she deserves. Every American should know Smith’s inspiring story.

A biographical history of the Eby family, being a history of their movements in Europe during the reformation, and of their early settlement in America; as also much other unpublished historical information belonging to the family

Who uses "skeeter hawk," "snake doctor," and "dragonfly" to refer to the same insect? Who says "gum band" instead of "rubber band"? The answers can be found in the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (LAMSAS), the largest single survey of regional and social differences in spoken American English. It covers the region from New York state to northern Florida and from the coastline to the borders of Ohio and Kentucky. Through interviews with nearly twelve hundred people conducted during the 1930s and 1940s, the LAMSAS mapped regional variations in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation at a time when population movements were more limited than they are today, thus providing a unique look at the correspondence of language and settlement patterns. This handbook is an essential guide to the LAMSAS project, laying out its history and describing its scope and methodology. In addition, the handbook reveals biographical information about the informants and social histories of the communities in which they lived, including primary settlement areas of the original colonies. Dialectologists will rely on it for understanding the LAMSAS, and historians will find it valuable for its original historical research. Since much of the LAMSAS questionnaire concerns rural terms, the data collected from the interviews can pinpoint such language differences as those between areas of plantation and small-farm agriculture. For example, LAMSAS reveals that two waves of settlement through the Appalachians created two distinct speech types. Settlers coming into Georgia and other parts of the Upper South through the Shenandoah Valley and on to the western side of the mountain range had a Pennsylvania-influenced dialect, and were typically small farmers. Those who settled the Deep South in the rich lowlands and plateaus tended to be plantation farmers from Virginia and the Carolinas who retained the vocabulary and speech patterns of coastal areas. With these revealing findings, the LAMSAS represents a benchmark study of the English language, and this handbook is an indispensable guide to its riches.