My father was District Attorney from 1904 to 1907 and built a house on South College Street in Carlisle, at the corner of Graham Street, in 1910. The way it happened was this. Wilbur F. Sadler was judge of Cumberland County at the time. He had been elected, for the second time, in 1904 in a bloody battle with John Wetzel in which each side was reputed to have spent $100,000, a huge sum in those days. Sadler was a Republican, and it was about then that the Republican dominance of Cumberland County began.
Judge Sadler had four sons: Lewis, Sylvester, Wilbur, and Horace. Lewis became Commissioner of Highways in Pennsylvania, Sylvester was a lawyer who succeeded his father as Judge of Cumberland County in 1914 and in 1921 became a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Wilbur was Adjutant General of New Jersey, and Horace became a dentist. Sylvester told my father that Lewis was going to build a big house at the south end of College Street and would make College Street a highway. He suggested Dad buy a lot on South College Street and build his house, which Dad did.
Lewis did build the big house in the acreage known as "Thornwald. " The entire 11 or 12 acres surrounded by a high brick wall.
When Dad built his house at 230 South College Street there were only three houses south of it- two houses built by Merkel Landis were on each side of the street between Graham and Walnut Streets, and the Butcher property on the west side of College Street just north of Walnut Bottom Road. The Butchers were substantial black people and operated a small farm on their land. Later one of the Butchers, Miss Alice Butcher, became a highly respected teacher in the Carlisle public schools and a neighbor of mine on Walnut Street. South College Street became the place to live and rapidly filled with new houses.
I well remember that at one time there was a blacksmith shop on the northeast comer of South College Street and Walnut Bottom Road. There, as 10 or 12 year old boys, we lighted our experimental pipes made of hollowed out buckeyes filled with cornsilk.
Some of what I talk about will be based on my own eye-witness, and some will be hearsay and might best be classed as apocryphal. Most of what I'm about to say concerning the Sadlers is hearsay.
The Sadlers were one of Carlisle's most prominent families. Lewis and Horace married women from the Bosler family, another of the area's prominent and financially successful families. A great deal of the Sadler wealth is reputed to have come from those marriages. In any event, everybody died before Horace, and he was the sole survivor to whom everything passed. When Horace died he was a wealthy man, by standards at the time of his death, worth $4 to $5 million dollars. Horace had never practiced dentistry and to the best of my knowledge had never worked.
In 1937 I married into the Hays family, another of Carlisle's prominent families. My father-in-law, Raphael S. Hays, was the majority owner and president of the Frog, Switch & Manufacturing Company. He was a very intelligent and able man, but he loved to socialize and gossip. In the course of one of his socializing sessions, after Horace had become the sole surviving Sadler, Mr. Hays remarked that "All the Sadler brains are in Ashland Cemetery. " Of course the remark got back to Dr. Sadler, and he and Mr. Hays never spoke to each other again. Mrs. Hays had been a bridesmaid at the wedding of Dr. Sadler and Miss Bosler, and Dr. Sadler continued to send flowers to Mrs. Hays on anniversaries in spite of his displeasure with Mr. Hays.
In 2008, the daughters of John S. Steckbeck donated his research collection to the Cumberland County Historical Society. Steckbeck was a professor of physical education at Dickinson College from 1946-1955. He was also a backfield coach, track coach, swim coach, and a trainer for the college. When he was not busy with sporting events, he spent his time with music.