First Settlement - PLAQUE
Paradise Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
On September 10, 1710, a patent for 2000 acres of land surrounding this spot was granted by William Penn, proprietor of Pennsylvania, to Daniel Fiere and Isaac Lefever. The patentees were from France and were Huguenots. Here they, with their mother , Madam Mary Fiere, and her family settled. These were the first white settlers in this part of Lancaster County. On account of an error in measurement the original patent was surrendered and a new patent for 2300 acres was granted on October 29, 1734. Within sight of this marker, Daniel Lefever, the son of Isaac Lefever and Catharine Fiere, his wife, was born. He was the first white child in the settlement.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In 1710 William Penn granted a large tract in the rolling farmland of what became Lancaster County to Daniel Fiere and Isaac Lefever, French Huguenots who had fled religious persecution in Europe. Settling here with the widowed Madam Mary Fiere and her family, they were among the first Europeans to put down roots in this corner of Penn's colony. A surveying error later forced them to surrender the original patent for a corrected one, and a child born within sight of this spot is remembered as the settlement's first.
Why it matters
It marks the arrival of Huguenot refugees whose search for religious freedom helped seed Pennsylvania's famously diverse early population.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The gently rolling farmland of Lancaster County is some of the richest soil in the eastern United States, and in the early 1700s it was a magnet for settlers seeking land and, often, freedom to worship as they chose. This was William Penn's colony, founded on a promise of religious tolerance that drew persecuted people from across Europe.
Among them were the Huguenots — French Protestants who had fled their homeland to escape brutal religious persecution. Scattered across Europe and then across the Atlantic, they sought places where they could live and pray without fear. Penn's Pennsylvania was exactly such a place.
When this land was patented in 1710, it was frontier country — the far settled edge of a young colony, where a grant of two thousand acres meant wilderness to be cleared and a new life to be built from the ground up.
People & events
The story fixed to this spot begins on September 10, 1710, when William Penn, the colony's proprietor, granted a large tract of land to Daniel Fiere and Isaac Lefever, both Huguenots from France. With them came the widowed Madam Mary Fiere and her family, and together they put down the first European roots in this part of Lancaster County.
There is a very human wrinkle in the record. The original patent, it turned out, rested on a surveying error, and years later it had to be surrendered and replaced — a corrected, larger grant issued in 1734. It is the kind of detail that reminds you how improvised the mapping of early America really was, with boundaries drawn by hand across ground no official had ever fully measured.
The marker also remembers a birth. Within sight of this spot, Daniel Lefever — son of Isaac Lefever and his wife, Catharine Fiere — was born, and he is honored as the first European child of the settlement. In the story of any new community, that first child is a powerful symbol: proof that the settlers had not merely arrived but meant to stay.
Its place in the American story
Pennsylvania became famous for the sheer variety of people it gathered — English Quakers, German Protestants, Scots-Irish, French Huguenots, and more — and that diversity is a big part of why it mattered to the larger American story. The arrival of Huguenot refugees on this tract is one small thread in that much larger weave.
The Huguenots came fleeing religious persecution, and they found in Penn's colony a chance to worship freely. That pursuit of religious liberty would become one of the founding ideals of the nation that grew out of these colonies, and families like the Fieres and Lefevers helped plant it in the soil.
The marker also, quietly, carries the theme of Native American history — a reminder that this "first settlement" was first only from the newcomers' point of view. These fertile valleys were homelands long before any European patent was drawn, and the arrival of settlers marked the beginning of a profound change for the people already there.
If you visit
This is a marker that invites you to look outward from where you stand. The inscription points to features "within sight" of the spot, so take a slow look around at the farmland. The land itself is the real exhibit — settled, worked, and lived on for three centuries since those first families arrived.
Lancaster County remains deeply tied to its history of immigrant farming communities, and a stop here sits comfortably on a road trip through that landscape. The surrounding countryside still carries the rhythm of agricultural life that drew settlers to this soil in the first place.
Come with an eye for the long view of time. Three hundred years ago, a French refugee family began again on this ground, a first child was born nearby, and a surveyor's mistake had to be quietly set right. Standing here, you can feel how the grand themes of early America — freedom of worship, immigration, and the displacement that came with settlement — all played out on one ordinary, beautiful patch of Pennsylvania farmland.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · William Penn
- · Isaac Lefever
- · Daniel Fiere
- · Mary Fiere
- · Daniel Lefever
Related events
- · Huguenot settlement of Lancaster County
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Anthony Sadowski
Amity Township, PA · est. 1966
Anthony Sadowski, a Polish pioneer, settled along the Schuylkill River in this region in 1712, making his living as a trader among the Native peoples of the area. His command of frontier diplomacy led the Provincial Government to employ him as a messenger and interpreter during negotiations with Indian tribes in 1728, and he was buried here in 1736 in the graveyard of St. Gabriel's Church.
Great Minquas Path
Salisbury Township, PA · est. 1951
An ancient Indian path once ran through the Gap just south of here, later becoming the original Conestoga Road. In the 17th century the Minquas—the Conestoga—used it to carry great quantities of beaver skins from the Susquehanna Valley to the trading posts near Philadelphia. What began as a Native trail hardened over time into one of the region's foundational overland routes.
Boehm's Chapel
Pequea Township, PA · est. 1984
Built in 1791 of local limestone, Boehm's Chapel is the oldest surviving structure designed for Methodist worship in Pennsylvania and among the oldest in the country. It rose on land once owned by Bishop Martin Boehm, a co-founder of the United Brethren in Christ, and drew visits from Bishop Francis Asbury, remembered as the father of American Methodism. The chapel dates to the very first years of the young republic, when American denominations were organizing themselves.
Holy Trinity Lutheran Church
Lancaster, PA · est. 1975
Founded in 1730, this Lancaster congregation stood at the heart of a bustling colonial town where the Pennsylvania frontier met the settled east. Its early building even hosted a 1762 Indian treaty council, a reminder that diplomacy with Native nations often unfolded in the plainest of civic spaces. The stone church dedicated in 1766 still guards the graves of two Pennsylvania statesmen of the Revolutionary era, Thomas Wharton and Governor Thomas Mifflin.