Alexandria, [District of Columbia], 25 February 1810. Thomas Cruse sat down, opened his desk, took out a clean sheet of paper, dipped his pen in the bottle of ink and wrote “Dear Sir.” He was writing to his brother-in-law, Judge James Hamilton of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
John Armstrong was born in County Fermanagh, Ireland about the year 1717 or 1720. A surveyor, he settles in Pennsylvania, first in York County and then in the recently created county of Cumberland.
Printer, publisher, postmaster, bookseller, paper manufacturer and author, Archibald Loudon was “the most interesting of the early printers and publishers of Carlisle.” Archibald, son of James and Christiana Loudon, was reportedly born at sea on August 24, 1754 during his parent’s emigration from Scotland.
Fifty years after J. P. Lyne went out of business, an elderly man reminiscing about the Carlisle of his youth still remembered that “a mammoth wood and gilded sign of a padlock stood in front of J. P. Lyne’s hardware store.” Lyne worked as a coppersmith in Carlisle in the 1820s and 1830s, but by 1838 he had become a hardware merchant. The 1838 Triennial tax assessment listed “J. P. Lyne & Co., merchants.” A partnership with George W. Sheaffer was dissolved in 1845.
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.
When Post Masters received letters, they listed the names in the newspapers of those to whom the letters were addressed. If the letters were not picked up by a specified date, they went to the Dead Letter Office.
A landmark in Carlisle, the “Mansion House Hotel” operated on the south west corner of West High and Pitt streets from the late 1830s until the 1920s. Inns on that site had housed travelers since the days of the Revolutionary War. The first tavern on the site was kept by James Pollock in the eighteenth century.
On March 16, 1836 an inventory and appraisement were taken of the goods & chattles, rights and credits of Barnet Aughinbaugh, Esq., late of the Borough of Carlisle, deceased.
Richard Martin’s son, Reverend Joseph Martin, wrote that his father’s daily book was the English Bible. “He read widely and of the best. He was a great admirer of Shakespeare and could recite passages by the page.
Robert W. McCord was in his senior year at Dickinson College in 1849 when former Carlisle newspaper editor, George Fleming, formed a party of men to head to the gold fields in California. With thoughts of adventure, McCord dropped out of college and joined them.