James W. Sullivan was born on March 9, 1848, to Timothy and Elizabeth Hagan Sullivan. The family lived at 17-19 North East Street in Carlisle. Sullivan, a good student, finished all but his last year at Carlisle High School. Instead, he became a printer’s apprentice at The American Volunteer, one of the few newspapers published in town, at the age of 14. He lived through the shelling of Carlisle in 1963 and wrote extensively on the experience in his letters to friends many years later. In fact, Sullivan helped the Union soldiers by throwing their knapsacks into basements for safekeeping before finding safety with his family in the old Methodist Church.
By 1865, Sullivan would move to Philadelphia as a typesetter. Sullivan would also spend four years out west, including an 18-month stint as editor of the Daily Cheyenne Leader before spending a year at a San Francisco newspaper. Sullivan moved to New York City after his time out west and spent eleven years as a New York Times employee, where he eventually became head of the proof room. During his time there, Sullivan is believed to be the first journalist to interview Captain Richard Henry Pratt about establishing the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
By the 1870s, Sullivan observed and internalized the hardships of the urban poor through his newspaper work. Living in New York with his wife, Lillian Stewart, Sullivan joined the International Typographical Union to actively work for social industrial improvements. The couple even toured abroad in Switzerland in 1888 to enlarge Sullivan’s field of work with more intimate knowledge of social, industrial, and political conditions in Europe. Studying the Swiss government, Sullivan investigated the initiative and referendum method of legislation to adopt in the United States. Returning 1889, Sullivan traveled the United States to lecture on Initiative and Referendum, while also writing articles and a book titled The Origins of the Initiative and referendum in America.
Through his work, Sullivan became close friend with Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor. Together, they would compile a pamphlet titled “Socialism as an Incubus on the American Labor Movement”. In 1916, Gompers sent Sullivan to Europe on behalf of the AFL to arrange for representation of the labor movements of allied and neutral countries. Sullivan and his wife were living in Paris during World War I and while there, Sullivan wrote a letter to Washington D.C., resulting in Sullivan being called home in April of 1917 when the United States declared war. This letter got Sullivan appointed as chief of a bureau within the Council of National Defense. President Wilson placed Sullivan on a commission to set the price of wheat, with farmers demanding a higher price, but consumers struggling financially to pay. Sullivan’s work saved the American consumers roughly $31 million.
Sullivan returned to Carlisle in 1934 and lived at 237 West South Street until his death in 1938 and is buried in the Old Graveyard next to his wife, Lillian.
George B. Stuart was born on July 31, 1912 in Carlisle to Walter and Laura J. Peffer Stuart Jr. Graduating from Carlisle High School, Stuart attended the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and Dickinson School of Law to earn his law degree, where he practiced in Carlisle all his life.