Music Lessons
Children and those who wanted to play an instrument either learned at home from their parents, from relatives, or by instruction from private tutors or traveling music masters.
Schaumann, Merri Lou
The Mystery at Carlisle's Union Hotel
When a man sleepwalks and falls out of his hotel window on the second floor, that's odd. When two men sleepwalk and fall out of the windows of their rooms on the second floor of the same hotel, that's very odd. But when three men in three years sleepwalk and fall out of their windows on the second floor of the same hotel, that's a mystery.
The Near-Death Experience of John Wilkins
Most of us are familiar with contemporary descriptions of the near-death experience: the bright light, the tunnel, and the feeling of being "out of the body." Those who have had the near death experience also describe being taken to the other side, only to be told that they had died before their time and that they must go back.
Dr. John C. Neff: Dentist and Gold Rush ‘49er
Shortly before 1840, John Cassilus Neff1 and his family settled in Carlisle where he opened his practice as a dentist.2 During the 1840s, Dr.
Mrs. Margaretta Neff: Carlisle Milliner
Margaretta, her husband, John Cassilus Neff1 and their children, settled in Carlisle in 1838. Dr. Neff set up a practice as a dentist, and his wife, Margaretta, opened a millinery shop, both at No. 7 Harper's Row. Mrs.
New Year’s Eve Tradition: “Firing off the Old Year.”
The Carlisle Weekly Herald reported in its January 5, 1859 edition that “On New Year’s Eve, the custom of “firing off the old year” was indulged in to the usual extent that everything that would make noise, from a Chinese firecracker to an old musket, was in requisition, and a continual
Newville’s Big Spring Hotel -1860
The Big Spring Hotel was situated near the Newville Depot on the Cumberland Valley Rail Road. It was enlarged and improved by its owners, the Ahl brothers, in 1860. By May 1860, a three-story brick addition to the back of the hotel was almost finished.1
Newville’s Civil War Era Milliners
In 1860, women of almost all social classes purchased clothing from milliners and dressmakers: goods were made to order usually in a small shop with a female entrepreneur.
A Year in the Life of a Village: Oakville 1910
It was a good day for Shippensburg photographer Clyde Laughlin to take photographs of Oakville because there were no leaves on the trees. Mr. Laughlin produces post cards from the photos he takes of the towns and villages of Cumberland County. His camera captures a horse and buggy traveling towards him on Main Street, and the two young boys who are peering over a fence watching what he is doing. The white-washed Rail Road Crossing sign post warns people to Stop, Look, Listen.
Thomas S. Officer: Miniature and Portrait Painter
Born in Carlisle in 1810, this gifted artist trained in Philadelphia, traveled extensively, won awards for his paintings, and drank himself to an early death in San Francisco in 1859. In 1872, James Miller McKim wrote a series of reminiscences for the Carlisle Herald newspaper about the places and people of Carlisle in an earlier day. He wrote that “David Smith, a boot and shoemaker, had two sons…