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. The principals were captured but dramatically released from the county jail at Carlisle by a cheering mob, never to be heard from again. For months afterward, repercussions were felt from Carlisle to London.
Despite the Stump Affair's impact on Pennsylvania’s colonial history, scholars have given it cursory treatment. Many early Cumberland County histories simply describe the event as an interesting local incident. Conway Wing's 1879 History of Cumberland County and Warner and Beers' 1886 History of Cumberland and Adams Counties devote about one page to it. Recent essays by scholars have relegated the Stump Affair to a significance behind more notorious Pennsylvania frontier vigilantism, the 1763 Conestoga Massacre and the 1765 Sideling Hill Affair. Only when superficially supporting a larger topical theme, or as a convenient vehicle to discuss colonial Pennsylvania's political or legal processes, is it even mentioned. As a result, facts and details concerning the case have become obscured. Scholarly treatments of certain aspects suffer from confusion, neglect, and in some cases, falsification. Most often ignored has been the identification of Stump, lroncutter, and the men who rescued them from jail. The story needs to be correctly told and explained so that it can be accorded a proper niche in county and regional history.
The legislation creating Cumberland County in 1750 defined it as including everything west of the Susquehanna River and north of Maryland, excepting York County. The Cumberland County of 1768 was a huge, sparsely populated territory. Residents of this sprawling wilderness were primarily of Scotch-Irish and German stock. Geographically, much of Cumberland was in Pennsylvania's ridge and valley province, making communication, travel, and government administration slow and difficult. Government of this vast expanse emanated from the county seat, Carlisle. This growing town, located in the center of the Great Valley which stretched west and south into Virginia, was a frequent stopping place for soldiers, Indians, traders, and settlers. Neither the frontier nor civilization, Carlisle was in that geocultural locale referred to by Easterners as the backcountry, combining newly cleared lands and permanent farmsteads.
Beyond Carlisle, to the north and west, lay the frontier, containing ruder, temporary structures and uncleared lands. The recent French and Indian War and Pontiac's "Rebellion" had ravaged the county's frontier populace. Residents with relatives killed or property destroyed by Indians were living with bitter memories. Apart from war, independent incidents of violence between frontiersmen and Indians frequently occurred. Most infamous of these was the Conestoga Massacre of 1763 in Lancaster County. Christianized Indian men, women, and children at Conestoga were slaughtered by men from Paxton Township who claimed they were supplying their brethren on the frontier with information to aid Pontiac's followers. The "Paxton Boys" could not be caught or tried, for they simply vanished into the wilderness. They reappeared briefly a few months later to petition their grievances against the government, but the issue was never resolved.
Another well-known incident was the Sideling Hill Affair of 1765. It began when James Smith and other Conococheague Valley settlers of Cumberland County feared that Philadelphia merchants traded guns to Indians at Fort Pitt in return for pelts. Because the Six Nations had not yet signed the treaty ending Pontiac's War, frontiersmen considered these merchants to be aiding the enemy. Smith and his friends blackened their faces, dressed as Indians, and attacked loaded pack trains heading west. The Black Boys 'inspected' carriages for weapons, permitting other merchandise to go on. They even besieged and ousted the royal garrison at Fort Loudoun. Their illegal activities did not cease until the treaty was signed.
One less thrilling Cumberland County incident is worth mentioning. In 1760, Doctor John, a Delaware Indian, and his family were murdered near Carlisle, supposedly due to an insulting remark against whites made by John as he drank at a local tavern. The guilty were never caught.
It was an early summer day in 1792, and a gloomy man was in a bad mood. Charles Nisbet, a Presbyterian minister in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, wrote a letter to his bookseller, William Young, in Philadelphia. The two had been corresponding about twice a year since 1790; Nisbet was beginning his sixth letter to Young.