Largely overlooked in local histories, Samuel Postlethwaite deserves a prominent place on a list of early Cumberland County notables. A frontier trader, he helped supply the Continental Army in the American Revolution and played an active role in Cumberland County’s government and social institutions during the early days of the American Republic. In the 1790’s, he served in the Pennsylvania legislature as the senator from Cumberland County.
The career of Samuel Postlethwaite is worthy of consideration not just because of the public positions that he held, however, but because in many ways his experiences were typical of many men of 18th Century frontier Pennsylvania. Throughout his long life, Samuel Postlethwaite struggled to advance his family fortunes while simultaneously performing what he perceived to be his public duty. Like other early traders on the Pennsylvania frontier, he took financial risks and experienced financial losses while pushing the borders of frontier commerce. As with other merchants who became members of the Quartermaster Department in the years of the American Revolution, he struggled to meet the needs of General Washington’s Army without ruining his own credit. Many of Carlisle’s ‘gentry’ including Postlethwaite took up the Federalist side of the national debate on the new American government. Like other Federalists, he enjoyed more than a decade of political prominence, but saw his leadership jeopardized and career come to an end as the tide of Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic Republicanism swept Cumberland County. As with many early Pennsylvanians, he and his family weathered tumultuous times and in so doing, helped shape the Cumberland County that we know today.
The Cumberland County Historical Society has long held a collection of Samuel Postlethwaite’s papers and in the fall of 2013 received a new collection with literally hundreds of military and public records and private correspondence that bear his name. An in-depth review of the information in these sources served as the impetus for the research that follows. Questions raised during this process led to relevant information about his business ventures, military and political career, and family in the collections of other county historical societies in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Wisconsin, the Pennsylvania Historical Society, Pennsylvania State Archives, and the Library of Congress. Comparison of these sources with the larger historical record of 18th Century Pennsylvania led to the development of this biography and story of life in early Cumberland County that follows.
A Mercantile Heritage
Parentage, family connections and early training motivated, if not preordained the career of Samuel Postlethwaite. He was born in about 1738 in Conestoga, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He was one of seven children sired by John Postlethwaite, an English trader, who built his position and that of his family through marriage, ties to the Penn Proprietorship, and membership in Lancaster County’s religious and social institutions.
One of the Hamilton Library's oldest 18th century manuscripts provides a unique glimpse into what life was like for Pennsylvania's soldiers serving in America's French and Indian War, the 250th anniversary of which is now being commemorated.