By Ted Lassa for Lancaster Online on January 20, 2025
When: Lancaster City Council meeting, Jan. 28. Mayor Danene Sorace and council members Faith Craig and Lochard Calixte were absent.
What happened: The Lancaster City Witness Stones Project will place approximately 25 stones per year for the next three years in the central historical district to teach about the history of local enslaved people, organizers told council. Their presentation was informational, requiring no council action.
Background: Stones are 4-by-4-inch squares capped with an engraved brass plate describing a person enslaved in Lancaster and will be embedded in the brick verge or strip between the sidewalk and street, level with surrounding surfaces. Project organizers will work with the city’s Department of Public Works to authorize locations and manner of installation of the stones for safety compliance.
Exceptions: No stones will be placed adjacent to properties where owners do not want them, said Pamela Stoner, project manager and longtime Historic Rock Ford volunteer.
History: An eighth-grade teacher founded The Witness Stones Project Inc. in Guilford, Connecticut in 2017. The Lancaster City Witness Stones Project was launched in search of a different approach by Historic Rock Ford to educate the public about servants Robert, Bet and Susan, enslaved at Edward Hand’s home in the city and Frank, an enslaved servant at Rock Ford, Stoner said.
Organizers: The African American Historical Society of South Central Pennsylvania, Historic Rock Ford and the School District of Lancaster are collaborators on the local Witness Stones project.
Quotable: “The historic Rock Ford plantation was involved in that institution of slavery. And this project helps right a wrong,” Nelson Polite Jr., society president told council.
More: “At least the last decade, we’ve been really working hard to tell a more complete version of history as it relates to Gen. Edward Hand and his property,” Stoner said.
Student involvement: “To me, the Witness Stones Project will represent a way in which the school will honor the people who were part of a significant contribution to this city,” said Ariadna Avelez Velez, a senior at McCaskey High School. “And yet they were not recognized.”
