Images of patriots toppling New York's equestrian statue of King George III and molding the material into musket balls, or of Philadelphia ladies sacrificing their table service to provide lead for suppling the Continental Army with ammunition capture the popular imagination.
Cumberland county, which forms the eastern portion of the great Cumberland Valley, is made up, as we ordinarily know it, of three geological formations, viz: the slate on the north, the limestone in the center, and the sand or pinelands on the south. It is drained lengthwise by the Conodoguinet and the Yellow Breeches creeks.
In May 1757 Colonel‑Commandant John Stanwix led five companies of his first battalion of the Royal American Regiment to Carlisle. He also took over command of the colonial forces of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, all of whom were hard‑pressed by attacks of pro‑French Indians. His senior subordinates were colonels George Washington of Virginia and John Armstrong of Pennsylvania.
In April 1825, the Pennsylvania General Assembly authorized the construction of the "Public Works," a state-built system of canals and railroads designed to provide improved transportation throughout the Commonwealth. The most vital portion of the Public Works was the "Main Line," a 395-mile long series of canals and railroads built to link the state's largest city, Philadelphia, with the important western city of Pittsburgh.
In 1793 President George Washington laid the cornerstone of the United States Capitol. This event initiated the construction of a building which the statesmen and political leaders of the day hoped would be a grand monument to the democratic ideals of the young nation. To the extent that this first national government building in the Capital City achieved its lofty objective was due to the creativity and vision of Benjamin Latrobe. He served as architect of the United States Capitol from 1803 to 1813 and again from 1815 to 1817.
The final line of the entry about Captain William E. Miller, in the 1905 Biographical Annals of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, ends with "Such is the record of Capt. William E. Miller, a worthy citizen and a gallant soldier." The biographer begins by telling us Captain Miller is "one of the best known and most highly esteemed citizens of Carlisle."
It was a time for great rejoicing that first week of Fall 1776. In the capital on the Delaware the good people of Philadelphia, still exhilarated from the wine of national independence first sipped only two months before were sampling another heavy draught—life under a new and radically democratic State government which had just replaced an oft times unpopular proprietorship. One in congruous event diluted the pure air of celebration.
This paper developed from the research done before, during, and after the Cumberland County Historic Resource Survey completed its study of Carlisle architecture.
In July 1855, six companies from the 2nd Infantry rook possession of an old fur trading post on the banks of the Upper Missouri River and transformed it into a base of operations against the Sioux. But before setting out on this assignment, the officers and men of this regiment spent almost a year and a half at Carlisle Barracks filling their ranks, drilling, and preparing for service on the prairie. Among the officers in this contingent was 34-year-old Lieutenant Thomas William Sweeny.
On the night of August 19, 1779, there occurred on the south side of the North Mountain about ten miles northwest of Carlisle a geological phenomenon that eventually drew the attention of the astronomer David Rittenhouse, Dr. Benjamin Franklin, the Secretary of War, and the president of Harvard College, and was described both in private letters among these and other men and also in the published proceedings of the second oldest learned society in the United States.