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.
On Saturday, March 30, 1822, Gilson Craighead, a prosperous South Middleton Township farmer and mill owner, went to Carlisle for the day with his son Major James. They would both be dead within a week.
The 1820s saw the rise of Refreshment Houses and Oyster Cellars in Carlisle; many operated by African Americans such as Lewis Robinson, barber John Peck, and John B. Vashon, also a barber. These establishments were seasonal, usually in rented spaces and often in the cellars of taverns. Fare typically consisted of oysters served fried, stewed, pickled or roasted, as well as tripe, pigs’ feet and turtle soup.
Known in town as “Bossy” Baker, Van Baker was born a slave in Virginia about the year 1820. When The Star and Enterprise newspaper reported that Mr.
For several years at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, a pottery was operated in Carlisle by Peter Pattaw.
Interview of Dennis Akin for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library Memory Bank. Akin discusses his early life growing up in Iowa as well as his Naval Service in the Korean War, and his career as a professor of Art at Dickinson College. Akin also discusses his views on art and some of the artistic works he has created over the years.
Interview of Wilbur Wolf for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library Memory Bank and the Conodoguinet Creek Watershed Association. Wolf discusses his involvement with the CCWA and the Cumberland County Conservation District as well as his work in the forestry business and being on the Big Spring School District Board.
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.