Emma Louise Thompson McGowan was born in Winchester, Virginia in 1876. When she was thirteen years old, McGowan moved with her family from Winchester, Virginia to Carlisle, Pennsylvania escaping the devastation of the South and seeking a new life in the North.
Salem Church on the Carlisle Pike in Hampden Township, the three-span stone bridge at Fisher’s Fording (Houston’s Mill), and many substantial stone houses east of Carlisle were built by William McHose and his brother John between the years 1810 and 1826.
Interview of Jennifer McKenna for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library. McKenna discusses growing up in Carlisle and attending the Second Presbyterian Church. She further talks about leaving Carlisle and working in the South including a death row ministry that eventually led her to the Seminary and returning to Second Presbyterian as the Associate Pastor.
Dorothea McKenzie, the daughter of a Quaker ironmaster, became a widow at the age of 38, never remarried, and, until her death, ran a genteel boarding house in Carlisle with the help of her slaves. Dorothea’s father, Thomas Maybury, established the Green Lane Forge in the Perkiomen Valley in what is now Montgomery County, Pennsylvania as well as the Hereford Furnace. Her mother, Sophia Rutter, was a descendant of Pennsylvania ironmaster, Thomas Rutter.[1]
Although Cormick McManus, a tailor, was one of a number of Irish Catholics who immigrated to America, settled in Carlisle, and was naturalized in the early decades of the nineteenth century, he was memorable enough to be written about in the reminiscences of several Carlisle natives. The tailor shop of Cormick McManus on West High Street, wrote James Miller McKim, was:
In 1916, P. Lee Phillips, Chief of the Division of Maps and Charts at the Library of Congress, wrote to the editor of the Carlisle Evening Herald newspaper seeking information. The editor printed the letter under the following headlines.
John Armstrong has rightly been labeled "the First Citizen of Carlisle. "He was a justice of the peace, the principal official of local government in the British dominions; a county judge, chief land surveyor of Cumberland County, assemblyman, colonel of the colonial Pennsylvania Regiment, an original member of the Pennsylvania revolutionary committee of safety; brigadier general of the Continental Army, major general of the Pennsylvania militia, delegate to the Continental Congress, and an original trustee of Dickinson College.
Very little is known about Carson Miller’s early life before his enlistment in the United States Army. Carson was born in 1834. On May 30th, 1864, he joined the United States Army, enlisting in Company L of the 45th Regiment of the United States Colored Troops. After being reorganized into Company H, Miller became a member of the Color Guard, assigned to protect the regiment’s Flag. Carson was injured attempting to protect the flag, not from Confederate Soldiers, but strong winds.
Captain William E. Miller was one of the few Cumberland County residents who won the Medal of Honor during the Civil War. However, Miller may be the most distinctive honoree for winning his medal by going against his orders. Miller was born to a farming family in West Hill, Cumberland County, one mile west of Plainfield in West Pennsboro Township. As a young man, Miller ran his father’s farm and was establishing a small family of his own, when his life was interrupted by the call to war in 1861.
Before the days of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Interstate 81, and the attendant motels and restaurants, when motoring travelers passed through Carlisle’s downtown on Hanover and High Streets, Carlisle had a notable hotel named the Molly Pitcher Hotel.