Recently there has been increased interest in proposals to merge the several local police departments on the West Shore in order to improve efficiency and reduce crime. More than a century and half ago, when police forces were limited or non-existent, but a particular criminal act was not uncommon, citizens often banded together for their own defense.
Clarke Garrett, In Pursuit of Pleasure: Leisure in Nineteenth Century Cumberland County. Carlisle: Cumberland County Historical Society, 1997. 152 pp. $37. 50.
Merri Lou Schaumann, Plank Bottom Chairs and Chairmakers: South Central Pennsylvania 1800-1880. Carlisle, PA: The Cumberland County Historical Society, 2009. Photos, 136 pgs., $29.95.
In April 1825, the Pennsylvania General Assembly authorized the construction of the "Public Works," a state-built system of canals and railroads designed to provide improved transportation throughout the Commonwealth. The most vital portion of the Public Works was the "Main Line," a 395-mile long series of canals and railroads built to link the state's largest city, Philadelphia, with the important western city of Pittsburgh.
The present collection of proverbs began as an incidental by-product of a study on the life and times of Lewis the Robber, central Pennsylvania's folk-hero. Examination of newspapers and other materials published in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, before 1820 revealed a wealth of proverbial material in dated occurrences prior to the starting date of Archer Taylor and Bartlett J. Whiting's Dictionary of American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, 1820-80.
Transcriptions of newspaper articles by Mark W Podvia and Joan McBride. On April 7, 1893, the Evening Sentinel reported that Frederick Douglass was making his first visit to Carlisle when he addressed the students at the Carlisle Indian School. His presence at the school was also subsequently reported in the school's publication, The Indian Helper, on April14, 1893 and April21, 1893.
There was a time when Cumberland County had no Republican party. It was born of the 1850s struggle between slavery and free labor that produced the Civil War. The party itself helped bring about war, for it was exclusively northern and "free soil", determined to stop slavery's spread. Merely by winning the presidency and Congress in 1860, the Republicans provoked seven southern states to secede, with four to follow upon the war's outbreak.
This paper was originally presented at the Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico. The paper, slightly modified for Cumberland County History, is presented here.
The life of Jacob Fought, Carlisle tavern keeper and blacksmith, during the five years following the end of the War of 1812, serves as a microcosm of that period. It was a time of economic expansion followed by depression, of rising then plummeting cotton prices, and of a land boom that accompanied American westward migration followed by rapidly dropping real estate values.
In May of 1837, James and Eliza Geddes Weakley welcomed into their home in Mill Town (Huntsdale) their youngest son, James Geddes (JG) Weakley. The grandson of Samuel Weakley, JG was also the great grandson of the patriarch of "one of the most prominent families in the western part of the county," James Weakley. What act or acts did JG Weakley, a seemingly honorable man, commit in later life that caused him to be erased from the family tree?