Index of Cumberland County Birth, Wedding, Divorce & Obituary Newspaper Records - 2003
This index runs from January 1, 2003 through December 31, 2003.
A Past Standing Outside Time: The Election of 1912 According to Cumberland County Newspapers
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." Maybe so, but how can one read the editorial in the October 25, 1912 issue of the Shippensburg News without experiencing a feeling that something is lost, delights no longer attainable, outside of time? And, one might add, disparagement of our present day.
GREAT DEMOCRATIC RALLY
On Saturday night last the Woodrow Wilson Club gave the most magnificent display in the political line that has ever been witnessed here.
For the opening of this monstrous Wilson demonstration, the Edward Shippen Military Band, rendering selections on the square, marched under the glare of red fire to the residence of Harry A. Raum, corner of Orange and Earl streets, and escorted the speakers of the evening, the Hon. William. H. Berry, candidate for State Treasurer, and Hon. H.L. Kaufman, candidate for Congress in the eighteenth district, to the platform erected in front of the post office on which sat the Executive Committee of the local organization. Never in the history of this community has there ever been such an intelligent body of men enmassed at a function of this nature.
It must have been an impressive demonstration for a newspaper of opposing political opinion to have reported it in such glowing terms. A few months earlier the News editorialized: "Governor Wilson will not think of resigning until after November 5. Very wise decision, Governor; you might not think it necessary then."
Except where otherwise noted, the following newspapers for the period November 1911 through November 1912 are the source material for this paper:
The Shippensburg News, published every Friday morning by J.C. Fleming. $1.25 per year in advance.
The Carlisle Evening Herald, published every evening at 53 W High St., Carlisle. $3 per year, 25 cents a month by mail. Delivered to town subscribers at 6 cents per week. Caleb B. Brinton, president, Guy H. Davies, secretary and treasurer, and Wilbur F. Harris, editor.
The Carlisle Evening Sentinel, published every weekday evening. $3 per year, a semi-weekly edition at $1.50 per year. D.R. Thompson, editor and proprietor; A.D. Thompson, managing editor; and Charles H. Kutz, city editor.
Farmer's Friend- Grange Trade Bulletin, Mechanicsburg. R.H. Thomas, Jr., and Leonard Rhone, editors. Weeldy at 75 cents per year.
The Sentinel, the Herald and the News were unabashedly partisan in their reporting and editorials; the Herald bed-rock Republican, its president, Caleb B. Brinton, a major figure in the Republican Party county organization; and the Sentinel lodged solidly in the Democratic camp. The News, like the Herald, was strongly Republican. The Farmer's Friend, its co-editor, Robert H. Thomas, host to the Woodrow Wilson party at his cottage in Williams Grove on August 29, 1912, displayed little partisan loyalty, its coverage being principally of news and self-help items useful to its rural readers.1
This paper does not analyze the background of the 1912 election of New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson to the office of president of the United States. The story of the 1912 campaign and its reporting in county newspapers is far too sweeping and complex to be told here. It is a story of party bosses (Colonel James M. Guffey [D], William Flynn [R], Boies Penrose [R], and A. Mitchell Palmer [D] for examples), the stunning resurgence of the Democratic party in Cumberland County and the fracturing of the Republican Party, campaign finance scandals (two simultaneous independent Senate investigations during the year),2 multiple "third" parties, and the hint of major historical events yet to unfold in the next quarter century (World War I, Prohibition, woman's suffrage, and New Deal social legislation).
Rather, the paper is like a series of snapshots from around the county captured through the lens of newspaper accounts and editorials. Wilson, himself, does not figure prominently. It is a report of people, events and the times in the election year 1912 in Cumberland County.