Note 76 — EPHRATA.

The Mennonites and Quakers were peaceably disposed towards the Indians, but the Presbyterians from the north of Ireland, who had settled at Paxton, felt a deadly animosity against them, and, as Day says, against the peaceful Moravians and Quakers, who wished to protect the Indians, at the expense, as the Paxton men thought, of the lives of the settlers. The Paxton rangers were commanded by the Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Colonel Elder, who seems to have opposed the massacre of the Indians at Lancaster by the “Paxton boys.” Day says that no historian ought to excuse or justify the murders at Lancaster and Conestoga, and adds that they must ever remain dark and bloody spots in our provincial history.