Jane Smead was the niece of my great-grandmother, Jane who married John Hays, and the daughter of Alexander Dallas Bache Smead. Far back into my youth I have memories of her fortress-like, solid brick house commanding the south -east corner of West and South Streets in Carlisle. On West Street the yard was extremely deep and guarded by a high wooden fence.
Captain Raphael Cummings Smead, after serving some months with the army in Mexico, was ordered to Carlisle Barracks in 1847. He brought his wife Sarah Radcliff and their family of five children to the town, and enrolled his oldest son, John Radcliff, in the local Dickinson College. But a liberal education appears to have had few attractions for either father or son; a commission in the army or even a job as a surveyor or engineer on one of the railroads under construction in the West promised higher social rank and income.