Preparations for the Forbes Expedition, 1758, in Adams County, with Particular Focus on the Reverend Thomas Barton

In the year 1755, two events occurred which left their impress upon the history of what was to become Adams county. One was momentous, and its consequences, like concentric ripples produced by a stone hurled into a large body of water, continued to move and shape the history of Pennsylvania\u27s frontier long afterwards. By comparison, the other was insignificant, the mere, almost undetectable slipping of a pebble into the rushing torrent of Time. Yet this second happening eventuated in ways that profoundly contributed to our understanding of Adams county\u27s, and Pennsylvania\u27s, history during the years 1755-59. The lesser of these occurrences had its genesis in the religious needs of a people often neglected in accounts of colonial Pennsylvania, the Anglicans (or members of the Church of England) who dwelt along the western frontier and who, as it fell out, were largely Anglo-Irish and Scots-Irish in origin. Numerically fewer than their Presbyterian neighbors clustered to the north in Cumberland county and to the south in the settlements of Marsh Creek, the people of the Church of England had informally staked out an area for themselves along the Conewago and the Bermudian Creeks in Huntington, Tyrone and Reading townships in what was then western York county. A shoal precariously situated in a sea of Presbyterians, Seceders, and Covenanters, and cut off from the nearest Anglican church, St. James\u27s in Lancaster, by the triple geographic barriers of dense forest, broad river, and vast distance, they felt the survival of their religion an uncertain thing indeed. [excerpt

The Bermudian Creek Tories

The history of the American Revolution which most Americans have learned and which is everyday reinforced in the public media is essentially but one of several competing interpretations of that conflict. We rarely think about this, so successfully has that particular history taken root in our culture. Common sense, however, should caution us that the British also possess a version or versions which differ in important ways from ours. The French, our allies during the Revolution, offer yet another construction, one stressing that war\u27s place in their own long history of conflict with Great Britain. And had the northeastern American Indians possessed a written, instead of an oral, tradition, doubtless they would have recorded how their involvement in the war between the two English-speaking opponents hastened the destruction of their culture. [excerpt

Introduction to Reverend Thomas Barton\u27s Letter of November 8, 1756 and Forbes Expedition Journal of 1758

When western York county became Adams county in the year 1800, the area already possessed something of a recorded history reaching back into the late 1730s. Principally in the form of documents relating to administrative, legal, and land-claim issues, these official papers provide us today with valuable evidence of the county\u27s early settlers-who came, when they arrived, where they settled, and occasionally how they got along, or did not get along, with one another and with the colonial Penn government, and later with that of the new state erected during the Revolution. In its earliest period, these documents offer insight into an ethnically and religiously diverse people, largely Scots-Irish, with lesser components of Anglo-Irish, English, and, later, Germans and Swiss. These settlers struggled to subdue a natural world they perceived as barbaric and even hostile. [excerpt

Interview with James Myers, March 28 & 31, 2011

James Myers was interviewed on March 28 & 31, 2011 by Brad Miller about his childhood, collegiate years and teaching at Gettysburg College. He also discussed Carl Arnold Hanson\u27s presidency, the political unrest during that time, and how the college has changed during his time here. Length of Interview: 103 minutes Course Information: Course Title: HIST 300: Historical Method Academic Term: Spring 2011 Course Instructor: Dr. Michael Birkner \u2772 Collection Note: This oral history was selected from the Oral History Collection maintained by Special Collections & College Archives. Transcripts are available for browsing in the Special Collections Reading Room, 4th floor, Musselman Library. GettDigital contains the complete listing of oral histories done from 1978 to the present. To view this list and to access selected digital versions please visit -- http://gettysburg.cdmhost.com/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16274coll

Universally Sloppy Parameter Sensitivities in Systems Biology

Quantitative computational models play an increasingly important role in modern biology. Such models typically involve many free parameters, and assigning their values is often a substantial obstacle to model development. Directly measuring \emph{in vivo} biochemical parameters is difficult, and collectively fitting them to other data often yields large parameter uncertainties. Nevertheless, in earlier work we showed in a growth-factor-signaling model that collective fitting could yield well-constrained predictions, even when it left individual parameters very poorly constrained. We also showed that the model had a `sloppy' spectrum of parameter sensitivities, with eigenvalues roughly evenly distributed over many decades. Here we use a collection of models from the literature to test whether such sloppy spectra are common in systems biology. Strikingly, we find that every model we examine has a sloppy spectrum of sensitivities. We also test several consequences of this sloppiness for building predictive models. In particular, sloppiness suggests that collective fits to even large amounts of ideal time-series data will often leave many parameters poorly constrained. Tests over our model collection are consistent with this suggestion. This difficulty with collective fits may seem to argue for direct parameter measurements, but sloppiness also implies that such measurements must be formidably precise and complete to usefully constrain many model predictions. We confirm this implication in our signaling model. Our results suggest that sloppy sensitivity spectra are universal in systems biology models. The prevalence of sloppiness highlights the power of collective fits and suggests that modelers should focus on predictions rather than on parameters.Comment: Submitted to PLoS Computational Biology. Supplementary Information available in "Other Formats" bundle. Discussion slightly revised to add historical contex