That inclusiveness has a long history. The Pennsylvania Dutch first settled in the area in 1709, after fleeing persecution in Europe for their adherence to Anabaptism, a Protestant movement. A banner above a busy intersection downtown reads, “A History of Welcome Since 1742,” the year Lancaster was chartered as a borough.
During the 19th century, Lancaster became a stop along the Underground Railroad, as residents provided protection for escaped slaves. Puerto Ricans and other Latinos began arriving as farm laborers in the 1940s, followed in the 1980s by Cubans who had come to the United States in the Mariel boatlift, a mass emigration to escape economic hardship and political repression.
National religious organizations like the Mennonite Central Committee, which opened a Lancaster office in 1935, and Church World Service, which followed in 1987, have actively sought to bring refugees to the city. In 2017, Church World Service reported resettling 477 refugees here. That same year the city, whose population is about 60,000, took in 20 times more refugees per capita than any other in the United States, according to the Lancaster City Alliance, an organization devoted to the city’s development.
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