Images of patriots toppling New York's equestrian statue of King George III and molding the material into musket balls, or of Philadelphia ladies sacrificing their table service to provide lead for suppling the Continental Army with ammunition capture the popular imagination.
The purpose of this narrative is to document, based on the available evidence, the approximate location of entrenchments said to have been constructed at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, during the French and Indian War.
John Armstrong was born in County Fermanagh, Ireland about the year 1717 or 1720. A surveyor, he settles in Pennsylvania, first in York County and then in the recently created county of Cumberland.
When Post Masters received letters, they listed the names in the newspapers of those to whom the letters were addressed. If the letters were not picked up by a specified date, they went to the Dead Letter Office.
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.
A 1768 Cumberland County incident created political dissension in the Pennsylvania Assembly, promoted bickering between provincial authorities over legal procedures, nearly caused an Indian war, and left frontier residents in shock. A backcountry settler, Frederick Stump, and his accomplice, John lroncutter, murdered ten Indians in cold blood.
Historical discussions of the Penn family's hereditary rule in Pennsylvania and of the authority exerted by its appointees conveniently stress that in 1764 the Proprietary faction tacitly entered into a successful coalition with Dissenting elements (predominantly Scots-Irish Presbyterians) and poorly represented city dwellers and frontiersmen.
The frontier in American history, in fact and in fiction, was everywhere the site of excesses, violence, and license. Cumberland County from its first settlements through the post revolutionary years was no exception.
“Every man in Cumberland County is a rioter at heart,” lamented Governor John Penn the year he ordered his family’s land in Lower Manor subdivided and sold. The concurrence of his remark and his order to sell may have been mere chance, but young Penn in this instance established himself as seer and prophet. When he used the word “rioter” he spoke of the seething Scotch-Irish, who were virtually the only group then living in the County.
Upon ascending the throne in 1603, James I of England (James VI of Scotland) desired to “civilize the uncontrollable, autonomous Irish.” His plan was to displace English Protestants, Presbyterian Scots, French, and German Protestants from their homelands and into Ireland.