An account of the occupation and shelling of the town of Carlisle by units of the Confederate Army ten days before was printed in the Carlisle American Volunteer on July 9, 1863, in the Carlisle Herald on the following day, July 10, and in the Carlisle American on July 15. The author was S. K. Donavin.
Almost nothing has been learned about him. Simpson K. Donavin may have been a native, or at least a resident, of the western end of Cumberland County, where Simpson and Sallie Donavin owned a lot in Shippensburg in the 1880s. In November 1862 Donavin was appointed a deputy sheriff of the County. In 1867 he was living in Carlisle, where the town directory of that year gave his address as "Corman [Cornman?] House." In 1882 the Donavins were residents of Delaware, Delaware County, Ohio.
A short abridgement of Donavin's account of the invasion and bombardment of Carlisle was printed in J. G. Strong, Directory of the Borough of Carlisle, . . . Also, an Account of the Occupation of the Place by the Rebel Army in the Year 1867 (Carlisle, 1867), 3-6. In 1963 Donavin's article was reprinted in facsimile from the American Volunteer as a supplement to Civil War Miscellany (Cumberland County Historical Society, 1963). The same supplement reproduced from the Carlisle American of August 5, 1863, Samuel D. Hillman's ''A Few Days of Rebel Rule," originally published in the Hollidaysburg Register.
Donavin's account is reprinted here from the American Volunteer, with only a few changes and corrections in spelling and punctuation. General Ewell's name, for example, consistently misspelled in the newspaper account, has been as consistently corrected. The Herald added two names to Donavin's list of "sufferers": these names are printed here. The Editor:
The Confederate invasion of Cumberland County in June and July of 1863 has left marks remaining to be seen 135 years later. All who are familiar with Robert G. Crist's pamphlet on the "Confederate Invasion of the West Shore-1863” know of the effort to fortify the higher points of Hummel Hill at Bridgeport (later Lemoyne).
John and Leo Faller were brothers from Carlisle Pa. who served in the same unit during the war. Their letters to family members provide excellent insight into the thoughts of a typical soldier.