In 1818, Edward Cavenaugh, a weaver living in Allen Township, Cumberland County, applied for a pension before Jacob Hendel, Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Cumberland County.
Col. Magaw was a major in Colonel William Thompson's "Battalion of Pennsylvania Riflemen", the first troops from the South to reach Boston. Colonel of the Fifth Pennsylvania Regiment. Assigned by Washington to defend Fort Washington. Paper read before the Hamilton Library Association, Carlisle, Pa. -- The Historical Society of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.
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 female patriotic organization was founded in 1890. Members are descendants of a Revolutionary War solider or an individual who contributed to the cause such as a civil officer or for providing material aid. The DAR is the largest lineage patriotic organization in the United States.
Intellectually, Benjamin Franklin was a very gifted person, with only a few years of academic schooling, he was a self-taught individual. Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, one of ten children of a soap and candle maker.
The story of Molly Pitcher is complex. It is a story that is part fact, part myth, and partly the combination of stories of multiple women during the Revolutionary War.1 Myths were built up and repeated without documented evidence to support the story.
Dorothea McKenzie, the daughter of a Quaker ironmaster, became a widow at the age of 38, never remarried, and, until her death, ran a genteel boarding house in Carlisle with the help of her slaves. Dorothea’s father, Thomas Maybury, established the Green Lane Forge in the Perkiomen Valley in what is now Montgomery County, Pennsylvania as well as the Hereford Furnace. Her mother, Sophia Rutter, was a descendant of Pennsylvania ironmaster, Thomas Rutter.[1]
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.
Largely overlooked in local histories, Samuel Postlethwaite deserves a prominent place on a list of early Cumberland County notables. A frontier trader, he helped supply the Continental Army in the American Revolution and played an active role in Cumberland County’s government and social institutions during the early days of the American Republic. In the 1790’s, he served in the Pennsylvania legislature as the senator from Cumberland County.
The National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution was founded in 1889. One of the first meetings of the SAR took place in the historic Long Room of Fraunces Tavern in New York City.