Some corroboration for the legendary tale of a "Fair Play Declaration of Independence" was found in the course of this study. Although consisting, in the main, of accounts culled from the records of Revolutionary War pension claimants made some eighty years after the event, the evidence is that of a contemporary.[16] However, the most common objection to this conclusion, that the Fair Play declaration was merely the reading of a copy of Jefferson's Declaration, is unsubstantiated by the archival descriptions.[17] Perhaps the Fair Play declaration is apocryphal, but, lacking valid disclaimers, the Hamilton data offer some basis for a judgment. It is the tentative conclusion of this writer that there was such a declaration on the banks of Pine Creek in July of 1776. The Fair Play territory was truly "an area of free land" in which a "new order of Americanism" emerged.[18] Individualistic and self-reliant of necessity, the pioneers of this farmers' frontier rationally developed their solution to the problem of survival in the wilderness, a democratic squatter sovereignty. With land readily available and a free labor system to work it, provided that the family was large enough to assure sufficient "hands," these agrarian frontiersmen not only cultivated the soil but also a free society. And their cooperative spirit, despite their mixed national origins, was markedly noticeable at harvesttime. From such spirit are communities formed, and from such communities a democratic society emerges. This analysis has not only described the geography and demography, the politics and economics of the Fair Play settlers; it has also examined the basis and structure of this society, including the value system which undergirded it. The results have pictured the religious liberty extant in a frontier society isolated from any regular or established church, a liberty of conscience which left each man free to worship according to the dictates of his own faith. This freedom, this right to choose for himself, made the Fair Play settler surprisingly receptive to other groups and their practices, practices which he was free to reject, and often did.[19] This analysis has also pointed up the class structure and its significance in promoting order in a frontier community. And finally, an examination of the value system of these Pennsylvania pioneers has provided an understanding of why they behaved as they did.