What's in a Name? Wormleysburg

The building of the first Susquehanna River bridge from Harrisburg to Cumberland County brought about the beginning of the first west shore community, Wormleysburg. 

When Cumberland County was established in 1750, the west shore for "five or six miles back from the river" since 1736 had already been reserved by the Penn family for the use of the Shawnee Indians. However, the Indians moved on to the west. 

At the time of the American Revolution, a French Engineer wrote of the site of Wormleysburg, "There is a small plane 200 to 300 feet between the shore and the mountain. This plane extends for nearly a mile above the [Harris] ferry." 

When the Penns decided in 1770 to sell those lands, the site was bought by the not yet legendary John Armstrong of Carlisle, who sold it to John Montgomery, who, in 1790, sold "about 100 acres more or less" to John Wormley, Jr. His German immigrant father had built a still-existing house on his 283 acres west of Erford Road.

The junior Wormley set up a ferry to Harrisburg in 1793 from the site of the present Ferry Street. The street extended west up the "mountain" to meet the Carlisle Pike at the Twelfth Street of present day Lemoyne.

Wormley also operated a saw mill, a grist mill, a blacksmith shop, and a tavern. In 1809 he bought an additional seven acres south of his property from the Kelso family which operated the Harris ferry farther south.

The Carlisle American ran an announcement on August 3, 1815, that Wormley had laid out "A VERY HANDSOME TOWN, CALLED WORMLEYSBURG; situate on the west bank of the Susquehanna river, between his ferry and the Harrisburg [Camelback] bridge, which is now erecting over said river." He listed his address as "Wormleys Ferry."

The development was of ninety-one lots 25' wide from Ferry Street south to Black Ash Lane (now Houck Street) facing Front and Second Streets, divided by River Alley. This was to be the basic village of Wormleysburg of East Pennsborough Township for the next seventy-eight years. Logging and lumber businesses thrived along the river with the Wormley, Kelso, Erb and Kilhoffer families buying and selling logs and lumber and developing businesses and real estate. A farmers market operated at the present site of the borough hall on Market Street.

Many of the buildings were of Cumberland County logs, as was illustrated in 1993 when a shop was dismantled at 316 South Front to expose a log tavern built by Jacob Kilhoffer in 1817. In 1893 the village was extended north to Pine Street by the Berghaus estate, adding 155 similar sized lots. 

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