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.
Interview of Randall Adams of the Union Fire Company by Randy Watts on March 16, 2015. The interview focuses on the Union Fire Company in Carlisle, Pennsylvania as well as fire fighting in general.
The 1820s saw the rise of Refreshment Houses and Oyster Cellars in Carlisle; many operated by African Americans such as Lewis Robinson, barber John Peck, and John B. Vashon, also a barber. These establishments were seasonal, usually in rented spaces and often in the cellars of taverns. Fare typically consisted of oysters served fried, stewed, pickled or roasted, as well as tripe, pigs’ feet and turtle soup.
Interview of Dennis Akin for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library Memory Bank. Akin discusses his early life growing up in Iowa as well as his Naval Service in the Korean War, and his career as a professor of Art at Dickinson College. Akin also discusses his views on art and some of the artistic works he has created over the years.
James Alexander was a veteran who served in the 127th United States Colored Infantry with Company I. It is not confirmed whether this individual's name was strictly "James Alexander" or "James H. Alexander"; census records and archival material use either name. He was born around 1843 in Franklin County, Pennsylvania to parents, Cale and Amelia (unconfirmed) Alexander.1 The "U.S. Find A Grave Index, 1600s to Current for James Henry Alexander" claims his mother, Amelia, was born in Virginia, and his father was born in Maryland.2
Settlers in colonial America adopted the use of tobacco after it was introduced to them by native peoples in the 1600s. Tobacco plantations proliferated as the demand for tobacco grew. After tobacco was harvested, it had to be cured.
“Ho! For California” headlined an item in the March 21, 1849 issue of the Carlisle Herald. “A party of enterprising adventurers, from Carlisle, consisting of Messrs. Geo. Fleming, Esq., Col. Simon Alter, Samuel F. Gaenslen, Geo. Keller, Wm. Keller, John C. Williams, and William Humer, left this place on Monday morning last for California. The party proceeds via Pittsburgh to the rendezvous at Independence, Missouri, where they will probably join one of the large expeditions on the overland route to California.”
In 1854 Americans took a detour from the road to civil war. It was the year of the Kansas-Nebraska act, which allowed slavery to spread into the formerly free Kansas territory. This act, the warfare between pro- and anti-slavery settlers in Kansas that followed, and the rise of the free soil Republican party, so inflamed hostile feelings between North and South that the firing on Fort Sumter took place less than seven years later.
Three published works have dealt with routes through the area of Cumberland County which is west of Carlisle. In 1904 a Shippensburg attorney, John R. Miller, wrote Reminiscences of the Walnut Bottom Road. Five years later a Carlisle surveyor, John D. Hemminger, published Old Roads of Cumberland County.
Eli Anderson was born on November 27, 1838, in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. His mother, Catharine Woods, was born in Cumberland County, his father, whose name is unknown, was born in Virginia.1 He enlisted in Company I of the 10th U.S.C.T.