Distillery: Old Landmark Collapses in Carlisle

On the afternoon of Friday July 31, 1908, residents on East South Street in Carlisle heard a loud noise when a portion of the historic Cloyd house collapsed and practically demolished his neighbor’s summer kitchen. Trucker James Cloyd, who had resided in the old distillery with his family for many years, said that he thought the heavy rains recently had weakened the wall and the stones in the foundation of the cellar. The Sentinel newspaper reported:

The portion of the wall that fell was probably 18 feet by 20 feet in dimensions and ran from the roof to the ground. It was one of the old-fashioned double walls and was not bound. It was nearly two feet thick. The wall fell out and in, so to speak, that is, a mass of debris lays in the Gibson yard and on the first floor of the Cloyd building, which, however, was not a residence portion. With the wall there went down an immense brick chimney through roof and all, which added very materially to the size of the pile of debris. The building, which is unique, was used as a stable, residence and up to 1838 as a still house, or distillery. It is fully one hundred years old. The old whiskey vault and a well 96 feet deep are still on the property. Whilst the entire structure is very old, the portion that fell appears to have come from a still older portion than the front of the house.¹

The Cloyd property was located on the north side of East South Street about halfway between Bedford and East Streets. The original owner, currier Nathaniel Wallace, sold the lot and house to Abraham Loughridge in 1794.² The 1798 Direct Tax, commonly called the Glass Tax, recorded a stone distillery 45 feet by 26 feet on the property. Loughridge, who settled in Carlisle in the 1770s and worked first as a spinning wheel maker and later as a storekeeper, bought the property likely as an investment since tax assessments never recorded his occupation as a distiller.

Lougheridge owed money to his creditors, and in 1808 his assignees were taxed for the distillery. In February 1813, they sold the property to Peter Spahr of Carlisle, baker, and Michael Longsdorf of Carlisle, manufacturer for £1,150 which also included Loughridge’s lot on South Hanover Street. ³

Thomas Holmes ran the distillery from 1810 until he went bankrupt in 1824. His Insolvent Debtor Petition listed not only his creditors, but also more than fifty people who owed him money including local tavernkeepers.⁴ Robert McCoy, Esq. was the owner of the old stone distillery in 1838 when it was said to have ceased operations.

H. F. Bridgens’ 1858 Plan of Carlisle lists Elizabeth Gorgas living on the property, and the 1867 map by J. G. Strong, and the 1872 Atlas of Cumberland County both show J. McCartney as the property owner. By 1880 James Cloyd and his family were living on the property.⁵ After the partial collapse of the Cloyd’s building in 1908, its days were numbered. The Cloyd house was described as unsafe in 1914,⁶ and in November 1915, a fire broke out where a stove pipe protruded from a window. When the Sanborn fire insurance Map was published in 1915, the old stone distillery building was gone.