Interview of Jim Leonard for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library. Leonard discusses growing up in Enola, PA and his family's connection to the Enola Rail Yard. He further goes into details on his own work at the Rail Yard over the course of thirty years.
From a likely fictional confession written a day before his death, Pennsylvania’s Robin Hood tells the story of David Lewis, better known as Lewis the Robber from his birth on Hanover Street in Carlisle on March 4, 1790 to his capture and eventual death in jail in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania on July
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.
Isabella Oliver, (July 16, 1771—June 7, 1843), once known as the “poetess of the Conodoguinet,” or more colorfully as that creek’s “muse,” was the second--and the first female--published Cumberland County poet in 1805 with Poems on Various Subjects, following the unknown writer of The Unequal Conflict in 1792.
Silver spoons and tableware were considered valuable assets in 1780. Spoons and a few other pieces of tableware such as “Mustard Potts” represent entries among a handful of the county’s residents. They are not found in the earliest county tax lists.
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 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.
When the Septennial Census of Carlisle was taken in 1814, it included the names and occupations of all the borough’s taxables. Nineteen of them, including two women, were identified as weavers, and at least half of them were born in Ireland.
Pennsylvania has produced few true folk heroes, but one of the best known has a close association with Cumberland County. David Lewis, better known as Lewis the Robber, is the subject of an extensive legend to which have accrued numerous deeds and attributes of other outlaw folk heroes.
"'Black Jack’ was a famous cook,” wrote Jeremiah Zeamer, editor of the American Volunteer newspaper. “He had a great reputation as a cook and caterer. Whenever in that part of the county there was a wedding, a dance, or a party of any kind for which a feast was to be prepared, ‘Black Jack’ was sent for to superintend the cooking and set the table, and so well did he do this that he was always in high favor with people who had appetites.”