In May 1757 Colonel‑Commandant John Stanwix led five companies of his first battalion of the Royal American Regiment to Carlisle. He also took over command of the colonial forces of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, all of whom were hard‑pressed by attacks of pro‑French Indians. His senior subordinates were colonels George Washington of Virginia and John Armstrong of Pennsylvania.
John Armstrong has rightly been labeled "the First Citizen of Carlisle. "He was a justice of the peace, the principal official of local government in the British dominions; a county judge, chief land surveyor of Cumberland County, assemblyman, colonel of the colonial Pennsylvania Regiment, an original member of the Pennsylvania revolutionary committee of safety; brigadier general of the Continental Army, major general of the Pennsylvania militia, delegate to the Continental Congress, and an original trustee of Dickinson College.
Every American schoolchild was taught of the humiliating defeat of General Braddock's British redcoats by the French and Indians at the battle of the Monongahela; and the able Pennsylvania colonial military historian William A. Hunter on these pages told the tale of the bedraggled withdrawal of the remnants of Braddock's task force down the Cumberland Valley to Philadelphia in August 1755.