A roller skating craze swept the country in the 1880s. Opinions were divided on whether roller skating rinks provided the public with “healthful amusement” or were “pits of perdition” as some preachers claimed.1 Regardless, roller skating was so popular that rinks were built in Carlisle, Mechanicsburg, Mt. Holly and Shippensburg.
A headline in an 1882 newspaper read, “A Man and his Wife Pounded.” A reader of today would interpret this as an act of violence, but it was actually an act of benevolence.
Mrs. George H. Stewart and her sons Alexander and George, Jr.1 left New York on May 30, 1912 aboard the Carpathia.
Sometime around 1890, members of Carlisle’s First Lutheran Church decided to create a ladies’ parlor, and one of their members donated a sofa to furnish it.
Regardless of his varied titles of printer, publisher, editor, attorney or federal agent, Tom Flagg was best known about the county as a “character”.
On Tuesday, August 19, 1884, a train left New York City with 100 children bound for the Cumberland Valley. They were “Fresh Air Fund” children; a movement started by Pennsylvania clergyman Willard Parsons in 1877.
From 1857 until the 1880s, residents of Cumberland County migrated en masse to the plains of central Kansas.
A black and white photograph shows two horse-drawn wagons filled with children from the Basin Hill School and their teacher Miss Bertha Kitch. They are having their picture taken in front of Carlisle’s Market House. The ground is covered with snow.
Wilhelm Schimmel (1817-1890) was a German itinerant who lived in Cumberland County during the last quarter of the 19th century. In exchange for food and lodging, often in people’s barns, he made wood carvings for them.
Throughout the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, temperance movements were prominent in Cumberland County.