above from http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/bah/DAM/graphics/PAcountyMap.gif
 
 

Great site:
    Pennsylvania  Research Outline Many Historical, Maps and Geneological  Links
 

Link to Cumberland County history [next to Adams] GREAT fully transcribed. Includes all history of Cumberland.

Below from http://www.u.arizona.edu/~marietta/431readingquestions.htm
"
These reading relate to Pontiacís Rebellion (1763) and the years following it, in the 1760s.  The French and Indian War had ended in 1763, but the Ottawa
Indian chief Pontiac assembled one of the most successful alliances among various tribes in American history and re-ignited war in the west.  In the fall of
1763, the conspiring Indians captured British forts in the midwest, even besieged Fort Pitt, and attacked the frontier settlements in Pennsylvania, New York,
and the south.  To western Pennsylvanians, the Scotch-Irish especially, this was a nightmarish repeat of their experience in 1755-1756.  Again they blamed
the Pennsylvania government as one of the villains for not defending them, and to pacifist Quakers in general, whom the westerners (incorrectly) claimed still
ran the House of Representatives, and the Quaker Party, which did indeed still run the House (as Tully pointed out in his article).

On 14 December 1763, some 50 or so men from Cumberland County came south to Conestoga in Lancaster County, to the village of the Conestoga Indians.
They found and murdered six of them.  The few remaining Conestogas were put into the workhouse-jail in Lancaster (town) for their own safety.  But on 27
December, some 25 or more men returned, to break open the jail and kill all the fourteen Conestogas in it. People in eastern Pennsylvania were outraged at
the massacre.  Newspapers and pamphlets carried the news and diatribes about the perpetrators and/or the Indians, and blaming in many directions.  (See
Franklinís pamphlet)

In January of 1764 rumors circulated that frontiersmen were planning to come east to attack other peaceful Indians, especially the Christian Indians who
were under the protection of the Moravian Brethren of Nazareth and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  Also, rumors asserted that the frontiersmen would pursue
Quakers leaders who had been defending the Delaware Indians since 1755.  (These Quakers were especially the ìFriendly Associationî mentioned in Tullyís
article on pages 87-88.)

In February 1764, the westerners did indeed march on Philadelphia.  The Christian Indians were removed to Philadelphia (and later across the Delaware
River to New Jersey) for their safety.  People in Philadelphia prepared for violent clash with the so-called Paxton ìboysî?from Paxtang Township, near
todayís Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  On February 7, the Paxton marchers stopped at Germantown, outside Philadelphia, where representative of the
government (including Franklin and John Penn) conferred with them.  These 250 or so Paxtonites agreed to go back home peaceably, and the civil war, which
some panicky Philadelphians expected, was avoided.  But the scare and the hatreds were immense.  After Feb. 7, the battleground shifted to the press, when
more political pamphlets than ever before in Pennsylvania history were published.  (ìThe Cloven-Foot Discoveredî was one of these acid-filled pamphlets."

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~marietta/431readingquestions.htm
 
 

Links:Pennsylvania was founded in 1681, after a petition to the King of England from William Penn, and the name does not appear on maps before then
1860s Penna Maps
"The founding counties of Pennsylvania - Philadelphia, Bucks, and Chester - were created in 1682. Penn created three counties in his new province in order to balance the existing three Delaware counties of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex that were created under the Duke of York's proprietorship. Chester County was formed from a portion of the existing New Castle County. Today, the city and county of Philadelphia are one and the same, the only such arrangement in the state. The county seat of Bucks County is Doylestown, and of Chester County, Westchester. In 1789 Delaware County along the river was carved out of Chester County with the odd result of placing the town of Chester (the Swedish Uplandt) in Delaware County.
 

In the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Cambridge, there is a fifteen inch globe by Morden, Berry, and Lea, London, dated to 1683, for which the British Library also has an uncut sheet of gores. Pennsylvania is named and this is the first appearance of the state on a globe. Both the globe and gore sheet are illustrated in Pritchard & Taliaferro.
 

A map titled CARTE DE LA LOUISIANE OU DES VOYAGES DU SR. DE LA SALLE...., par Jean Baptiste Louis Franquelin, 1684 Paris, shows the eastern United States plus the Caribbean islands, and so is beyond consideration here. However, it deserves mention as being the earliest French map seen to include Pennsylvania. The map is listed on page 563 in Phillips. La Salle was an active French explorer of the Mississippi River Basin, and much of the French knowledge of interior North America came from his expeditions. As the Map Image shows, Pennsylvania lies on the Chesapeake Bay, there is no Maryland and an enormous Virginia. This black & white image is from Hanna, and only the Pennsylvania region is shown. A 1688 manuscript map of Franquelin is listed below. "
from pages of Historical maps of Pennsylvania, specific page: 1860s Penna Maps
XXXXXXX

Where are the Susquehannock? [or Conestogas] and the year they died out
First Nations [history of the tribes]
The Carlisle Industrial School [(1879 - 1918)] [It is our purpose to respectfully honor those students
  and their descendants who lived the experiment, to celebrate with those who prospered from it,
and to grieve with those whose lives were diminished by it. ]
The York Daily Recorder, history of york with links
York in the Revolution
Native History Magazine
Pennsylvania Dutch Arts
and some history on Phila
Pennsylvania Genweb Digital Map Library
PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY: PENNSYLVANIA ON THE EVE OF COLONIZATION
Townships in the 1790 Pennsylvania Census
Formation of Counties ; Lists of Townships and Boroughs ; Links to Township Histories and Maps
Lincolnway [the westward march] in map
The Lincolnway, it's history
Sheridan Library Map Collection
The Lutheran and Reformed Congregations in Colonial Penna

The first Census, taken in 1790, tallied nearly 4 million people-a tiny sum compared with the more than 280 million people counted in the 2000 Census.

of 25000 american dead in revolution, 1500-1800 died at Valley Forge

"Reverend Robert Jenny (1687-1762), rector of Christ
Church, Philadelphia, made an estimate of the religious affiliation of the province's population, c. 1755.  Reporting to the Lords of Trade in London, Jenny
wrote, "the Chief Powers of this Government were originally in the Quakers, who were a Majority of the first settlers, but, in process of time, by the ascension of
men of other persuasions, they not only became a minority, but now do not even exceed one-fifth part of the whole."  Jenny estimated the following
numbers.263

1. Of the Church of England, about 25,000

2. Quakers, 50,000

3. English, Scotch and Irish Presbyterians, Covenanters &c., 55,000

4. English Annabaptists, 5,000

5. German Annabaptists, or Mennonists, and other Quietest Sects, 30,000

6. German Lutherans, who are well inclined to be incorporated into the Church of  England, 35,000

7. Swedish Lutherans, who use the Liturgy & discipline of the Church, 5,000

8. German Presbyterians, or Calvinists, who style themselves Reformed, 30,000

9. Roman Catholics, English, Irish and German, 10,000

10. Moravians and a small German Society called Donkers [Dunkards], about 5,000

                In All    250,000 "
From The Penna Militia
http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:8q-PWtZGkOUC:www.constitution.org/jw/acm_3-m.doc+%22the+Volunteer+Militia%22+%22Pennsylvania%22++%22revolution%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
 
 

Regarding the Reformed Church In Early colonial Penna:
 "In the early colonial period in Pennsylvania the Reformed Church was the stronger of the two. During the first half of the eighteenth century it established more congregations in Pennsylvania than the Lutheran Church. The Lutherans had been spared the religious persecution that led many of the Reformed faith to emigrate. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 followed the principle, "like master, like man." It stipulated that the religion of the subject must follow the religion of the ruler. As many of the German princes were Lutherans, there was relatively little persecution of that church. Until kindled by the mass impulse to emigrate to Pennsylvania that swept through the German Palatinate like wildfire, the Lutherans for the most part were satified to stay at home. Members of the Reformed Church, however, were not permitted to practice their religion with the liberty they desired. In the Palatinate they were forced to share their church buildings with the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics. The use of their catechism was denied them, and Jesuits were appointed to the faculty of the University of Heidelberg, a stronghold of the Reformed Church. As a consequence the members of the church left the Palatinate by the thousands, thus converting that province from a Reformed land into Roman Catholic country, which it remains today. On the other hand, the flood of Palatine Protestants helped to make Pennsylvania a Protestant colony. By 1730 the Reformed numbered more than half of the German population of Pennsylvania. It was not till the latter half of the century that they were outnumbered by the Lutherans. Most of the Lutherans who came to Pennsylvania came to better themselves economically, not for religious reasons. Wurttemberg and Alsace, both of which sent many immigrants to Pennsylvania, were dominantly Lutheran; but Baden, Hesse, Nassau, Zweibrucken, Hanau, Anhalt, Lippe, and Bremen, as well as the Palatinate, Switzerland, and Holland, were Reformed centers. ì
[From Paul S. Lefever EARLY LEFEVRE CHURCH CONNECTIONS  http://www.pennsylvanialefevres.org/studies/ELCC/index.html]