I have never forgotten my first solitary walk through Camp Michaux. The sun was setting and visitors had gone. I explored in silence, hearing only a gentle breeze create an eerie creaking in the trees that made me strain my ear as if listening for voices of the past.
World War II had an enormous impact on the citizens of the United States. The country was struggling for its very existence. All sections of the country felt the impact including the borough schools of Mechanicsburg.
On Sunday, 6 December 1942, just one year removed from the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, 20-year-old German submariner Matrosengefreiter (Seaman, 2nd Class) Gerd Horn and 19-year-old Maschinengefreiter (Fireman, 3rd Class) Werner Rast were about to be questioned by U.S. Navy intelligence experts.
Toward the end of WWII, the Pine Grove Furnace POW Interrogation Camp was used to house Japanese prisoners. One of those prisoners, Yoshikuni Masuyama, wrote a memoir of of his war time experiences after the war. This was later transcribed by his wife, Fumie Masuyama. Subsequently, the memoir was retold in English by his daughter Miyuki Hegg.
Forgotten roads shimmer like fragile cobwebs over the mountains and valleys of central Pennsylvania. Many have disappeared under later roads and tracks. Others wind over the ridges as hiking trails or forestry roads. A very few remain as narrow paths in the woodlands. Their histories have become confused by 300 years of European settlers’ traffic. There were many such roads near Carlisle for the town was always a knot in this skein. The Fort Granville Road, mapped in 1755-1756, is an example of a truly forgotten, but still existing road.
One hundred years ago, in its first major projection of military power overseas, the United States was marshalling the force that President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed would “make the world safe for democracy.” Eventually, some two million Americans would enter combat in the “Great War” in Europe, helping to break a four-year stalemate and drive the Allied cause to victory.
Carlisle was an optimistic town on the move in the early 1900’s and as the new century dawned it was welcomed with “Such a clanging of bells, blowing of whistles, shooting of guns, etc., as was never heard before, even on mornings of the glorious fourths.”12
On April 6, 1784, in the county courthouse in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the Board of Trustees of the fledgling Dickinson College met and asked two of its members, John Dickinson and Benjamin Rush, to devise a seal for the college.
On June 8, 1833, the Honorable John Reed, President Judge of the Cumberland County Court of Common Pleas, wrote a letter to the Trustees of Dickinson College in which he proposed opening a law school under his tutelage that would have “some nominal connection with the College.”
In May 1757 Colonel‑Commandant John Stanwix led five companies of his first battalion of the Royal American Regiment to Carlisle. He also took over command of the colonial forces of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, all of whom were hard‑pressed by attacks of pro‑French Indians. His senior subordinates were colonels George Washington of Virginia and John Armstrong of Pennsylvania.