Ray L. Wolfe was a well-known banking executive and President of the Farmer’s Trust Company born in 1934 in just south of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Wolfe grew up on a farm with his family, with his childhood mostly consisting of working on his family farm and other farms working picking apples, berries and peaches. Wolfe graduated high school in Boiling Springs and immediately started to work in Farmer’s Trust Bank where he worked his way up to a clerk position.
George N. Wade, longtime State Senator representing Pennsylvania’s 31st district, was born on August 13, 1893 in Washington, Pennsylvania.1 One of 9 children, Wade started work in the oil and coal industry at sixteen years of age.
The Pennsylvanians who led the Whiskey Rebellion were disproportionately affected by the 1791 excise tax on domestic liquor because the majority of western farmers were small-scale distillers, who also had the expensive disadvantage of having to transport their product over the Allegheny mountain
In the 1790s, the newly-founded United States was deeply in debt and had no reliable sources of revenue. The 1789 Constitution had given the Federal government the right to levy both direct and indirect (excise, import, etc.) taxes, something the Articles of Confederation made almost impossible.
On Tuesday, August 19, 1884, a train left New York City with 100 children bound for the Cumberland Valley. They were “Fresh Air Fund” children; a movement started by Pennsylvania clergyman Willard Parsons in 1877.
Horses were vital for transportation and farming, and horse stealing was a chronic problem. In the nineteenth century, horse thief detection and protection societies were formed in many states.
A black and white photograph shows two horse-drawn wagons filled with children from the Basin Hill School and their teacher Miss Bertha Kitch. They are having their picture taken in front of Carlisle’s Market House. The ground is covered with snow.
When Sarah Filey was growing up in rural Cumberland County in the 1830s and 1840s, she could not have imagined that ten years of her life would be spent more than 5,000 miles away in Constantinople, Turkey.
The Big Spring Hotel was situated near the Newville Depot on the Cumberland Valley Rail Road. It was enlarged and improved by its owners, the Ahl brothers, in 1860. By May 1860, a three-story brick addition to the back of the hotel was almost finished.1
The editor of the Carlisle Herald newspaper devoted several columns in the December 31 edition of the paper to describe some of the Christmas festivities in Carlisle.