Jacob Fought, blacksmith and tavern keeper of Cumberland County in the first third of the nineteenth century, became well-known in and around Carlisle at about the time of the War of 1812. He rose in prominence in the late 1810s through the 1820s and into the 1830s. He had business, legal, and social dealings with many professionals, businessmen, farmers, tradesmen, common folk, and even criminals.
In 1734 the land on the west shore of the Susquehanna River was opened for homesteading, and the first settlers were permitted to cross the river to legally obtain land. Trappers and Indian traders had been traveling through the valley to the west and the south for years, but they were not permitted to reside or claim land. The Penn's had previously purchased this land from the Indians, but some claims remained, and it had not been opened to the public.
Thomas Penn, a son of William Penn and a Proprietor of the lands remaining from his father's original grant, was actively involved in plans related to the design of Carlisle. The town, as originally developed, incorporated sixteen square blocks centered on a Square bounded by the cardinal streets: North, South, East and West.
America's first historian, Abiel Holmes, records that by 1792 enterprising New Englanders were enjoying success in the cultivation of silk worms. The idea was to begin an American source for silk and thus avoid importing the luxury from France or other European brokers. Silk had been appreciated in the West since at least the days of Augustus, being brought from China to Syria by way of India.
In January of 1883, an eleven-year-old boy from the Laguna pueblo in New Mexico Territory wrote a letter from the Carlisle Indian School to someone back home. Here is the letter:
In a recent reorganization of the Cumberland County Historical library, two original Oaths of Allegiance from Cumberland County were rediscovered: the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy of April 13th 1761, and the Oath or Affirmation of Allegiance and Fidelity of June 13th 1777.
Oliver P. Williams, County Courthouses of Pennsylvania: A Guide. (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2001) xi, 244 pp, glossary, index, illustrated; paperback, $19.95 (ISBN 0-8117-2738-6)
I shall not call this an infant school, because I do not intend the children to be schooled, but to be allowed under the gentlest treatment to develop freely. -Friedrick Frobell
When the women of the Civic Club of Carlisle purchased a new Studebaker Street Sprinkler in May 1903 to keep the streets of Carlisle clean, the club was not only embarking on new territory but also continuing an already impressive, albeit short, civic track record.
Wilhelm Schimmel, regarded today as one of America's most famous folk carvers, was a colorful itinerant who roamed throughout the Cumberland Valley region of Pennsylvania in the latter half of the nineteenth century. He likely immigrated to America from the Hesse-Darmstadt region of Germany shortly after the American Civil War.