On Saturday, March 30, 1822, Gilson Craighead, a prosperous South Middleton Township farmer and mill owner, went to Carlisle for the day with his son Major James. They would both be dead within a week.
On May 16, 1822, Walter and Catharine Brandt of Allen Township, Cumberland County wrote to their friend Walter McCormick to tell him about the deaths of the Craigheads.1
“Mr. Gilson Craighead and his eldest son James died and were both buried on Easter Sunday. They died within about twelve hours of each other and it was allowed to have been the largest burying that ever was in Carlisle. There were three hundred and thirty odd that accompanied the corpse[es] from his place to the burying ground in Carlisle. It was a very striking case as they were both in Carlisle on Saturday before their death and in the fore part of the day were both well. The father complained of not being well, and about an hour after his son began to complain and neither waited on any person but each other. As soon as they took sick [they] got their horse and went home where they both took their beds. Every medical assistance was procured but proved of no effect. Young Mr. Craighead was to be married, if he had lived, the Thursday after his death to Miss Susannah Williamson, daughter of Mr. Thomas Williamson, innkeeper on Trindle’s Road.”
Their obituary in the Thursday April 11, 1822 edition of the American Volunteer stated: “Died in South Middleton Township on Friday evening last Major Gilson Craighead, aged about 54 years—and the next morning his eldest son Major James Craighead aged 24. A few days before their decease they were both in this borough apparently in good health. Whilst living they inhabited the same dwelling and on Sunday last they both became tenants of the same grave adjoining this boro.”
Both men fell ill within hours of each other on Saturday, March 30; the father first and then the son. The men lingered for almost a week; the father dying on the evening of Friday, April 5 and the son 12 hours later on the morning of April 6. Did they die of food poisoning or a viral infection? They were buried in “the same grave” in Carlisle’s Old Graveyard. Although there are dozens of Craighead burials in the graveyard, why is there no stone to mark the grave of these two men?
Margaret MacDonald was born on June 22, 1760, one of Duncan and Sarah MacDonald’s four children.1 Her father, described as “the old Scotch highland piper,”2 likely served in one of the British regiments sent to Carlisle during the French and Indian War.
[1] Cumberland County Historical Society Manuscript Collection.