An alleged conspiracy near Somerville in 1734 while it cost the reputed ringleader his life, cost his supposed colleagues their ears only.

On the other hand sentences to burning at the stake were more frequent as punishment for ordinary crimes; and on such occasions the citizens of the neighborhood turned honest shillings by providing faggots for the fire.

For the western counties the published annals concerning slavery are brief wellnigh to blankness.[37] [Footnote 37: H.S.Cooley, _A Study of Slavery in New Jersey_ (Johns Hopkins University _Studios_, XIV, nos.

9, 10, Baltimore, 1896).] Pennsylvania's place in the colonial slaveholding sisterhood was a little unusual in that negroes formed a smaller proportion of the population than her location between New York and Maryland might well have warranted.
This was due not to her laws nor to the type of her industry but to the disrelish of slaveholding felt by many of her Quaker and German inhabitants and to the greater abundance of white immigrant labor whether wage-earning or indentured.

Negroes were present in the region before Penn's colony was founded.