Cumberland Justice: Legal Practice in Cumberland County 1750 - 2000 by the Cumberland County Bar Association. Carlisle, PA: Cumberland County Bar Association, 2001. Index, hardback. $39.95.
The great Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott, one of the most successful converts from law to literature, reflected on his abandoned profession in his novel Guy Mannering, published in 1815. In it, an Edinburgh advocate muses, "In civilized society, law is the chimney through which all the smoke discharges itself that used to circulate through the whole house, and put every one's eyes out - no wonder, therefore, that the vent itself should sometimes get a little sooty." In Cumberland justice, Dickinson Law School archivist Mark Podvia and a committee representing the Cumberland County Bar Association take it upon themselves to perform a thorough inspection of our local societal chimney. They find sootiness, true, but they also find heroism, humor, and much else besides.
The first one hundred and seventy years of the law, taking the reader to 1920 and the founding of the bar association, are covered in five chapters written by Mr. Podvia. Photographs and illustrations of notable people, places, and documents are plentiful and, for the most part, relevant. Brief biographies are woven into the tapestry of events, touching upon those who found a larger stage in life (James Wilson, John Bannister Gibson) and those who left colorful local legends (James Hamilton, John McClintock). Extended quotations from original sources and the occasional sidebar of another perspective create a closeness and an accessibility to these people and events of long ago. Some images travel across the years so vividly as to be alarming, often for different reasons: Judge Brackenridge riding naked in the rain, Chloe the slave girl facing two murder charges for girls under her care, Henry Stahm slain by his best friend and awaiting justice in the snow and mud of a woodlot. Many absorbing stories of passion and vengeance arise in these pages. Great names in county history find their places and claim a story or two, names such as Reed, Hays, Trickett, Sadler, Biddle, and Kast. The reader will be sorry to see Mr. Podvia exit with the Roaring Twenties.
Kevin Patrick, Pennsylvania Caves & Other Rocky Roadside Wonders. Stackpole Books, 2004. Photographs, maps, diagrams, visitor information, bibliography, index, 248 pages, paperback $19.95.