Carlisle historian Ruth Hodge, representing the African-American community of Carlisle, was actively involved in the discussion about renaming Carlisle High School's West Building. She had several individuals in mind who qualified for the honor, but when requested to pick just one name, she had no difficulty in narrowing the selection to the late Emma Thompson McGowan, a teacher in the Carlisle school system for almost thirty years.
Robert James Coffey, a career newspaperman and prolific writer of verse, was born on 14 April 1839 in a place, he later remembered, "Where the landscape is wild and grand; / In that heaven-blessed state of William Penn, /In the Valley of Cumberland." More precisely, he was born in the village of Cleversburg, a little southeast of Shippensburg.
At an academic conference on Marianne Moore, I needled one of the editors of Moore's letters for writing assertively that in 1896 the Moore family moved from Pittsburgh to "nearby Carlisle." Even a century later, with a turnpike, the trip is four and a half hours by a fast car; at the end of the nineteenth century, it must have been akin to burning your bridges behind you. "Oh, that's all right," said this professor from Pomona College, "from California every place in Pennsylvania is nearby." If unguarded, perspective can trump historical reality every time.
Philip Earenfight, ed., Visualizing a Mission: Artifacts and Imagery of the Carlisle Indian School 1879-1918. Carlisle PA: The Trout Gallery, Dickinson College, 2004.
David Schuyler, A City Transformed: Redevelopment, Race, and Suburbanization in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1940-1980. University Park PA: Penn State Press, 2002. Photos, 278 pps., $19.95.
Lorett Treese, Railroads of Pennsylvania: Fragments of the Past in the Keystone Landscape. Mechanicsburg PA: Stackpole Books, 2003. Photos, 256 pps., $18.95.
Matthew C. Ward, Breaking the Back country: The Seven Years' War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754-1765. Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. Maps, photos, 329 pps., $34.95.
Anne M. Ousterhout, The Most Learned Woman in America: A Life of Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. Photos, 394 pps., $35.00.
Author's note: The Trout Gallery at Dickinson College presented an exhibit entitled "The Carlisle Indian School: 1879-1918" from January 30 to February 28, 2004. Visitors to this exhibit were able to see several pictographs that were once part of an album of drawings presented to Mason D. Pratt by his father, Richard Henry Pratt. The front cover of that album is embossed in gold letters "A Kiowa's Odyssey", and the Kiowa whose drawings formerly rested inside the red covers was Etahdleuh Doanmoe, the subject of this article.
In April 1825, the Pennsylvania General Assembly authorized the construction of the "Public Works," a state-built system of canals and railroads designed to provide improved transportation throughout the Commonwealth. The most vital portion of the Public Works was the "Main Line," a 395-mile long series of canals and railroads built to link the state's largest city, Philadelphia, with the important western city of Pittsburgh.