An interesting cast of characters and stories reveal Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, also known as the center of Pennsylvania Dutch country. Fiery Patriots, resourceful inventors and brilliant artists have all hailed from Lancaster County. The lives and deeds of such famous and ordinary folk of Pennsylvania Dutch country are chronicled by Jack Brubaker in this collection of fascinating vignettes drawn from his Lancaster New Era column, "The Scribbler." From tales of President James Buchanan's youthful antics to the attempted delivery of the nation's first airmail by hot-air balloon, Brubaker creates a compelling and entertaining narrative of the history of Lancaster City and County. Memories of the original Brunswick Hotel's shoofly pie and the Horse Thief Association of Intercourse will transport readers to a Lancaster from days gone by.

In the 1960s, a few volunteers at the Mary Ball Washington Museum (MBWM) in Lancaster, Virginia began collecting inscriptions and making brief location notes on the rapidly disappearing family cemeteries of Lancaster County. In early 1999, the compilers of this book began to complete the task by making an extensive search for family burial sites and adding inscriptions from church and community cemeteries. We naively said we would be finished by the end of that year! Clyde and Carolyn Ratcliffe "beat the bushes" to locate family cemeteries, some with a single gravestone. Peggy and John Hill transcribed stones in church and community cemeteries. We found ancient and modern flat table markers. We found ordinary markers with only birth and death dates. There were homemade, handlettered markers of cement and even a few made of wood. We found a few graves marked with statuary and many marked with obelisks. We hope we have found the grave marker that is of vital interest to you.

A gripping account of how a vigilante mob of Pennsylvania frontiersmen butchered a Native American tribe—and got away with it. On two chilly December days in 1763, bands of armed men raged through camps of peaceful Conestoga Indians. They killed twenty Susquehannock women, children and men, effectively wiping out the tribe. These murderous rampages by Lancaster County’s Paxton Boys were the tragic culmination of a gruesomely violent conflict between European settlers and native tribes. The Paxton Boys then journeyed to Philadelphia, not to evade the law but to confront it. They openly threatened to commit more of the same violence if their demands were not met. In Massacre at the Conestogas, Lancaster journalist Jack Brubaker gives a blow-by-blow account of the massacres, examines their aftermath, and investigates how the Paxton Boys got away with murder.