The town of Newville lodges in the northwest corner of Cumberland County.1 The first settler, Andrew Ralston, arrived in 1728.2 The town was founded by Scots-Irish when the Big Spring Presbyterian Church, which dates to 1737, sold lots from its 89 acres in 1790.
On November 25, 1858 the Newville weekly newspaper, The Valley Star, published the first installment of a history and description of the village. It was entitled "Newville as it Was, and as it Is," and its author was identified simply as "A Citizen of Newville." The first essay, on early history, was received with so much interest and applause that the entire printing of the issue was quickly sold out, and the printer had to reprint it the citizens of Newville would "insist" that the author publish the sketches in book form.
The foregoing article by Angela Shears is primarily a personal impression of the Valley Times-Star of Newville, Pennsylvania, a weekly newspaper that began publication in 1858 and continues to this day. The author has written about its content, its editor, and its readers, especially in the past 30 years.
Small "hometown newspapers" mean different things to different people. On vacation recently, I bought a copy of the local weekly newspaper-published in a quaint beach town for the past 142 years-and the store owner jokingly said, "You gonna go fish? That is the only thing people do with that paper! "
The Big Spring Hotel was situated near the Newville Depot on the Cumberland Valley Rail Road. It was enlarged and improved by its owners, the Ahl brothers, in 1860. By May 1860, a three-story brick addition to the back of the hotel was almost finished.1
In 1860, women of almost all social classes purchased clothing from milliners and dressmakers: goods were made to order usually in a small shop with a female entrepreneur.
Isabella Oliver, (July 16, 1771—June 7, 1843), once known as the “poetess of the Conodoguinet,” or more colorfully as that creek’s “muse,” was the second--and the first female--published Cumberland County poet in 1805 with Poems on Various Subjects, following the unknown writer of The Unequal Conflict in 1792.
Interview of Bob Over for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library an initiative of the Cumberland County Historical Society. Over discusses growing up in Newville, Pennsylvania during the Great Depression and World War II as well as the history of Newville.
Passageways evolve out of topography and out of the general location of the area with reference to destinations. For about seventy miles the Cumberland Valley of Pennsylvania extends southwestward from the Susquehanna River across from Harrisburg to the Potomac River in Maryland.