François Andre Michaux, botanist and silviculturist, a traveller in America, and author of a work on the forest trees of North America, first came to America in 1787 with his father, Andre, who established two nurseries in the young United States and proposed an exploration of the Missouri River and the American West in 1793, ten years before the expedition of Lewis and Clark.
Joshua Gilpin, a well-to-do merchant, manufacturer, and capitalist of Philadelphia and Delaware, travelled through Cumberland County from Chambersburg to Harrisburg in 1809 on his way home from a business and pleasure trip to western Pennsylvania. As was his custom on journeys of this kind, he made a record of observations and events. Although not notably different in content from those of other travellers on the same road at the same time, its relevant portion is nonetheless worth reprinting as a source of information about the county at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
James Silk Buckingham (1786-1855), an English journalist, lecturer, reformer, and sometime Member of Parliament, was a tireless traveler and the author of books on observations and experiences in the Middle East, Europe, and America. He spent four years in the United States, producing a total of eight stout volumes on the Northern or Free States (3v., 1841), the Slaves States (2v., 1842), and the Eastern and Western States (3 v., 1842).
Cumberland County and Valley before the 1830s was one of the principal avenues to the American West. A steady procession of naturalists, farmers with their families and flocks, European reporters on American democracy, investors and speculators in land, fortune hunters and ne'er-do-wells came up from Philadelphia, crossed the Susquehanna, and, many of them, passed through Carlisle and Shippensburg over the mountains to Bedford, Pittsburgh, and the fertile lands of Ohio.
Interview of Clair Tritt by Linda Benzon for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library.
Esther Tritt describes her work at the Middletown Air Service Depot during World War II as a production control worker responsible for locating parts for damaged airplanes that were being repaired at Middletown as well as other experiences during WWII including her marriage to husband Wayne Tritt.
John Trough was the only potter in Carlisle from 1806 through at least 1835. Trough (spelled Drach in German) was the son of Adam and Eve Drach of Haycock Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.1 Rudolph Drach, possibly John’s relative, was also a Bucks County potter, and several examples of his signed pieces are known.
As a tribute to Mr. and Mrs. Trout’s standing the community, the Daily Evening Sentinel ran a lengthy obituary on December 28, 1893. “Death of Mrs. Trout. A Prominent Carlisle Woman Passes Away.
Interview of Gayle and Denver Tuckey for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library Memory Bank. The Tuckey's discuss growing up in Summerdale and Enola in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania as well as their careers. Denver Tuckey recounts starting work for Frank Black before eventually buying the company that would become Tuckey Mechanical Services.
According to the “U.S. Find a Grave Index, 1600s to Current for Richard Turner,” Turner was born in 1840 in Virginia.1 However, legal documents filed on his behalf through his life, however, imply birth years of a range from 1830 to 1840. Turner himself gives his birthplace as Woodstock; Shenandoah Valley, VA but census records for Shenandoah County are not available for either 1830 or 1840 so his age is unknown.2 This is due to speculation that Turner was likely a slave born in Virginia but sold south to a large and prosperous plantation in Louisiana.