Irving College
In 1856, Solomon Gorgas, a successful businessman, state legislator, and influential resident of Mechanicsburg donated land for an institution for the education of women.
Wing, Conway
News of General Lee’s Surrender Reaches Carlisle, Pennsylvania
On Monday, April 10, 1865, news of the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia reached Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In response to this event one of the town’s newspapers, the American Volunteer, exclaimed, “Thank God! [T]he fearful and bloody rebellion that has desolated our land for over four long years, costing, as it did, hundreds of thousands of lives, thousands of millions of treasure, is, so far as fighting is concerned, over.”1 Lee’s surrender signaled an end to the fighting between the United States and the Southern Confederacy.