George Ross (May 10, 1730—July 14, 1779) was born in New Castle, Delaware, the son of Rev. George and Catherine Van Gezel Ross, studied in Philadelphia, opened his law practice in Lancaster in 1751, and was named the King’s attorney for Cumberland County.
The James Wilson chair on exhibit at the Cumberland County Historical Society is a large, classical Chippendale chair, perhaps too big for all of us, Wilson's cultural descendants, to sit in. For not only was James Wilson a big man physically, he was a big man politically. Indeed, during his time, it may surely be said that he was an oversized American in every significant respect.
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.
The Pennsylvanians who led the Whiskey Rebellion were disproportionately affected by the 1791 excise tax on domestic liquor because the majority of western farmers were small-scale distillers, who also had the expensive disadvantage of having to transport their product over the Allegheny mountain
The provincial town of Carlisle was fortunate to have among its mist for a short period a political theorist and talented lawyer, James Wilson. Born in 1742 at Carskerdo near St. Andrews, Scotland, Wilson studied at St. Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Emigrating to America in1765, he first took a tutoring job at the College of Philadelphia. Next Wilson studied law under John Dickinson...