"He gave River City the library building, bur he left all the books to her." Meredith Willson, The Music Man. That verse summarizes the history of public libraries in many American small towns. A generous citizen provides for a library and puts it in the care of a guardian. The public library in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, is no exception, and it is the purpose here to address some aspects of its history, in particular its nature as a public and memorial library.
On Saturday morning last a duel was fought near this place by Messr. John Duncan and James Lamberton, when the former unhappily received a ball through his head, which instantly deprived him of his life. By this melancholy accident his wife has lost an affectionate husband, and his five children a tender parent, and society one of its most valuble citizens. He was honest, benevolent, generous, and brave.
On the evening of December 23, 1949, Floyd Rice's tractor-trailer engine broke down on the Camp Hill By-pass.It was a Friday, and traffic in the usual Christmas rush continued around the stranded vehicle. Not far from Rice's truck, a family gathered awaiting the arrival home of a husband and father. The table was set with the traditional Christmas dinner, and neatly wrapped presents lay beneath the decorated tree.
Since the end of WWII Lower Allen Township has experienced a great growth in population and an accompanying change in character from rural to urban and suburban. There is concern in many quarters that continual growth will result, inexorably, in the destruction of part of its cultural heritage, that is, its old houses, mills, barns, and other structures which now dot the countryside.
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.
History is, on the one hand, individual stories and, on the other, stories of groups, nations and cultures. In my recollection of classes I took when I was in college, the starting point was the latter, but in my recent experience of trying to write history, I began with individual stories I found in the Johnson Collection in the Cumberland County Historical Society - a collection of letters and papers of an African-American family in Carlisle.
A 1768 Cumberland County incident created political dissension in the Pennsylvania Assembly, promoted bickering between provincial authorities over legal procedures, nearly caused an Indian war, and left frontier residents in shock. A backcountry settler, Frederick Stump, and his accomplice, John lroncutter, murdered ten Indians in cold blood.
In the absence of systematically collected enumeration data (such as those collected for a census), researchers interested in reconstructing regional demographic histories are left with few choices. This is especially true for those wishing to examine demographic trends before the first federal census of 1790.
The rolling hills and wooded valleys of Central Pennsylvania, now so tranquil, were, a mere 240 years ago, the scene of dramatic, violent, and sometimes heartrending confrontations between the Native Americans and the incoming white European settlers. Cumberland County at that time comprised the western frontier, and Scots-Irish settlers were rapidly establishing a presence in lands that had long been home to the Delaware Indians.
Local history tells of events and things which help us feel what life was like before our time. In the middle 1950's a gentleman in his early 80’s told me about something from his youth which has stayed with me. 1 can't recall his name but he lived between Waynesboro and Greencastle in the village of Zullinger.