There were, of course, far more than enough exceptions to “prove the rule.” Rev. Lindley C. Rutter, long the beloved pastor of Chestnut Level Presbyterian Church, was one of the most fearless and outspoken of the local Abolitionists. Likewise “Father” William Easton, of the Octoraro United Presbyterian Church. In the neighborhood of Quarryville, where the German and Scotch Irish elements seemed to meet, intermixture of colored and white blood was not infrequent; and, contrary to the general laws of miscegenation and degeneration, many of the mulatto, quadroon and octoroon people sprung from these racial intermarriages were very respectable, honest and industrious citizens. On the north side of the Mine Ridge, that range running westward from Gap across Lancaster County, during the “fifties” there was a considerable amount of outlawry on the part of an organized “gang,” whose depredations now took on the form of kidnapping and again the less illegal, but by no means more popular, practice of aiding the recapture and return--regularly or irregularly--of fugitive slaves. If their raids and robberies were the terror of the farmers, millers, butchers and storekeepers of the peaceful Pequea Valley, on the south side of which their strongholds then lay, their incursions into the homes and haunts of colored laborers beyond the Octoraro hills were no less cause for alarm among the free or fugitive colored people than they were of intense resentment and indignation on the part of the white friends, employers and protectors of the blacks. While then one trail of the Underground Railroad ran by Columbia and Bird-in-Hand, whereon friendly hands passed the fugitive from Stephen Smith to Daniel Gibbons; and a branch led from Joseph Taylor’s, at Ashville to Penningtonville and Christiana, another had a continuous line of stations from the Gilberts and Bushongs around May, in Bart, or later Eden township, out “the valley” to and past the scene of what was to be the deepest tragedy which ever thrilled this little community. Popular feeling was not wholly unprepared for it. The conflagration was not a sudden outbreak. Combustibles had been accumulating. Local incidents, such as escapes, man hunts, kidnappings and other like events had occurred to an extent sufficient to excite popular interest; and by rumor they had been exaggerated enough to further inflame it; numerous persons supposed or known to be ex-slaves resided and worked in the neighborhood and were the subjects of a qualified popular protection. There had been outrages on one side and some reprisals on the other.