''All at once I was startled by the howling of members and rattling of ponderous chains ... he grasped me with Herculean strength and shook me violently, dragging me up and down the room ... the funniest appearance was their grotesque and ludicrous dresses, and all wore burlesque masks" a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows recalled of his initiation in 1832.
In preparing the following sketches and reminiscences of our former public buildings, in addition to old papers, we have carefully consulted several of our aged and best informed citizens in regard to the latter, both the have our own recollections confirmed or rectified, so far as they go back, and to secure assistance in reaching the truth where our own recollections were faint and unsatisfactory.
At first like other towns in their incipient state, the people of Carlisle, may have largely depended on their own yards and gardens and out-lots for the supply of their wants with occasional visits by meat dealers and country people. Every family raised something both for summer and winter consumption, and “killing time,” or “butchering time,” as it was generally called, which occurred late in the Fall, after the corn and potatoes had all been housed, was always a season of great plenty, when many a well-fed steer and hog had to yield its life, and its flesh was prepared for future use.
As time passes there is an increasing nostalgia for the one-room school which so many persons attended and which passed from the countryside in the 1950s. Nationwide, in the early 1900s, an astonishing one-half of the children attended 212,000 one-room schools.
In the early part of the 18th century, public schools did not exist in Pennsylvania. Affluent parents who wanted their child to have a formal education enrolled them in a private academy such as the Carlisle Grammar School or the Cumberland Valley Institute in Mechanicsburg. Private or subscription schools were very expensive but would prepare a child for college and the professions.
The advancement of civilization demands a full development of the minds of our girls. The day when the boy is to be educated and the girl neglected has, like other relics of barbarism, passed into history.
The photographs in the collection at the Cumberland County Historical Society (CCHS) that document the history of the Pine Grove Furnace Prisoner of War Camp at Camp Michaux during the Second World War come from several sources. The primary source is from a collection originally owned by Major Laurence Thomas, the camp’s commander that were taken by the Army Signal Corp. This collection contains pictures of German and Japanese POWs, usually working around the camp or in candid poses and photos of the camp during various seasons of the year.
The Panic of 1819 was the first great depression in the U.S. In this bicentennial year, the article will first present background about the event. It will then attempt to answer four questions related to the Panic of 1819 and Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.
In his book, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics, Christopher Lasch cautions that "Nostalgia appeals to the feeling that the past offered delights no longer attainable ...," a past that "stands outside time, frozen in unchanging perfection." "The hallmark of nostalgia," he writes, "is a dependency on the disparagement of the present."
Editorial Note. This list of Kansas emigrants from Penn Township, Cumberland County, was made by Dr. S.M. Whistler. It was printed in Carlisle Herald, April 4, 1878, and reprinted the next day in the Carlisle Mirror; from which it is reprinted here.