Schaumann, Merri Lou

One-hundred and thirty-seven years after George Washington supposedly sat in a Sheraton chair in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it was sold.

The 1861 “List of Retailers” in Carlisle included five bakers. At least three of them were German immigrants who had settled in Carlisle in the 1830s and 1840s; John Sellers, John Schmohl and George Grossman.

The village of Greason is unknown to most people traveling on Cumberland County's major roads. It sits between Newville Road in the north and Ritner Highway (Rt. 11) in the south. It is less than one mile south of Plainfield and grew up along the old Cumberland Valley Railroad line. Approaching the village today, the first thing you notice is the abandoned warehouse. Vines cover the gable end of the warehouse and cling to its board walls that show little of the paint that once covered them. The railroad tracks are gone, and their route is now part of the Rail Trail walking path. The Station Depot is gone, the Greason Academy building, with its many additions, is a private home, but many of the dozen or so houses remain and evoke an image of what the village was like in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Brought to Carlisle from Chester County, Pennsylvania in 1772 at the age of seven,^[1] Robert Darlington Guthrie would spend his adult life making silver and clocks for the residents of Cumberland County and train three of his sons to follow his profession.^[2]