Carlisle

J. P. Lyne (1800-1862): Coppersmith and Hardware Merchant

Scan of Lyne advertisement in the American Volunteer, December 19, 1850.

Fifty years after J. P. Lyne went out of business, an elderly man reminiscing about the Carlisle of his youth still remembered that “a mammoth wood and gilded sign of a padlock stood in front of J. P. Lyne’s hardware store.” Lyne worked as a coppersmith in Carlisle in the 1820s and 1830s, but by 1838 he had become a hardware merchant. The 1838 Triennial tax assessment listed “J. P. Lyne & Co., merchants.” A partnership with George W. Sheaffer was dissolved in 1845.

David M'Farland

David S. Mcfarland was born in Carlise, Pennsyvania in May, 1842, the son of John and Mary Mcfarland. David was raised in Lower Dickinson Township with his 5 brothers and 3 sisters, and worked as a laborer. At the age of 20 in January, 1863, Mcfarland was drafted into the army, and was eventually assigned to Company A of the 22nd Regiment of the United States Colored troops. Mcfarland was wounded during the War, which restricted his ability to find work after. He was was discharged in 1865, and returned to Cumberland County. 

Catharine MacCaffray (Women in World War II)

Catharine MacCaffray instructs Masland Employees on applying bandages

This is an oral history conducted by Steven Burg with Catharine MacCaffray at her home in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on June 20, 2002 as part of the Cumberland County Women During World War Two Oral History Project. MacCaffray discusses her experience as a volunteer nurse's aid for the American Red Cross in various hostitals in Carlisle. MacCaffray further talks about other various experiences including working at C. H. Masland's, seeing German POWs, and rationing.

Mansion House Hotel

Photo of the Mansion House Hotel

A landmark in Carlisle, the “Mansion House Hotel” operated on the south west corner of West High and Pitt streets from the late 1830s until the 1920s. Inns on that site had housed travelers since the days of the Revolutionary War. The first tavern on the site was kept by James Pollock in the eighteenth century.

Marianne Moore, Suffrage, and Celibacy

Some time ago I attempted to read Marianne Moore's poems as clues to local history. I noted that Moore (1887-1972) spent her formative years in Carlisle, Pennsylvania: From 1896 to 1918, that is, from ages nine to thirty-one, she lived, studied, and taught in Carlisle. For much of four years (1905-1909) she was in college at Bryn Mawr, for three months after college she worked in New York for Melvil Dewey (of decimal system fame), but otherwise, Moore was in Carlisle.

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