This article is the third in a series of biographical sketches about Jacob Fought, a blacksmith and innkeeper who moved from Berks County to rural Cumberland County in 1798, and to Carlisle in 1806. In 1811, he became proprietor of the Sign of the Plough and Harrow, a tavern located one and one-half blocks east of the town square.
Jacob Fought, blacksmith and tavern keeper of Cumberland County in the first third of the nineteenth century, became well-known in and around Carlisle at about the time of the War of 1812. He rose in prominence in the late 1810s through the 1820s and into the 1830s. He had business, legal, and social dealings with many professionals, businessmen, farmers, tradesmen, common folk, and even criminals.
The life of Jacob Fought, Carlisle tavern keeper and blacksmith, during the five years following the end of the War of 1812, serves as a microcosm of that period. It was a time of economic expansion followed by depression, of rising then plummeting cotton prices, and of a land boom that accompanied American westward migration followed by rapidly dropping real estate values.