Lewisberry: Quakers, Gunsmiths, and the Continental Army

The earliest Quaker settlers reached this valley west of the Susquehanna as early as seventeen thirty-four, led by a family named Lewis. By seventeen sixty, gunsmiths were operating here, and during the Revolutionary War four local craftsmen, including John Rankin and George Blymire, were kept busy manufacturing flintlock muskets and rifles for the Continental Army.

Eli Lewis, born in the valley in seventeen fifty, opened a store on the present site of the borough just before the Revolution. In seventeen ninety-eight he commissioned a surveyor to divide twelve acres of his holdings into building lots, formally founding the village that carries his family's name. It expanded to one hundred and twenty-eight lots by eighteen fifteen and was incorporated as a borough in eighteen thirty-two, becoming the third oldest borough in York County. The town has never grown large. The population today is about four hundred.