Commander (as he then was) Charles Wilkes, U.S.N. (1798- 1877) travelled through Cumberland County to Harrisburg in August 1844. He described the towns and countryside he passed through, noted institutions like churches and the county jail, and passed ten days in Carlisle, where he was agreeably entertained by the gentry and by officers at Carlisle Barracks.
The prominent McCormick family dynasty of Harrisburg was founded by James McCormick, the only son of William McCormick of East Pennsborough township, Cumberland County. Though a great deal has been written concerning the vast financial empire erected by James McCormick in nineteenth century Harrisburg, little attention has been paid to his father, a moderately situated yeoman farmer and distiller, who met his untimely end in a farm accident during the opening decade of the nineteenth century.
Our story begins at eleven o'clock in the morning on July 17, 1866, when 24 Cumberland County physicians arrived at the Court House in Carlisle. This was the largest gathering of physicians in the county up to that time and, in addition to seven doctors from Carlisle, included practitioners from Shippensburg, Newville, Mechanicsburg, New Cumberland, West Fairview, and a number of other smaller points in the county.
A visitor returns to a familiar scene to refresh his memory, he looks for once familiar landmarks, and he notes, with approval or regret, whatever changes have come about. An armchair revisitation to Fort Loudoun has been on the whole reassuring. Since I wrote about it sixteen years ago, the fort has not been neglected.
White Hill is a village designation along the northern edge of Lower Allen Township, centered at the intersection of Hummel Avenue and 18th Street. Villages lack municipal boundaries, but the general area of White Hill would be considered as west of the end of the residential development in the Borough of Lemoyne on Hummel Avenue and extending westerly along the railroad track approximately one mile to the intersection of Carlisle Road and State Road. White Hill has also been used to designate the first stone house to be erected in Camp Hill, then known as Lowther Manor (Whitehill's); a railroad village started in the late 1830s; two railroad stations on two separate rail lines; and the end of the line on the streetcar run.
In the heart of the very green and idyllic Cumberland Valley of Central Pennsylvania sits the town of Carlisle. Just like any other town, it has its old and historic buildings and people with their own backgrounds. Among these people of different ethnic backgrounds is the very prominent Greek community. There are forty-five families that reside in Carlisle that are of Greek descent. Fortunate for the writer who would examine the Greeks is that the patriarch, the original Greek to settle in the area is alive and very active in the Greek community.
The sound of the engine swelled and thickened, and soon an open cockpit biplane could be seen. The small boy yelled for his mother to come out and see. A plane descended slightly and made a few passes over a nearby field to check the condition of the surface. The pilot made a speed-killing climbing turn and side-slipped, gliding gently to earth.
So many of us go through life without thinking of the bigger picture- what can we do to better our communities after we are gone? I would like today to discuss Mary Wheeler King and to say to you that here is a friend who thought very carefully how she would influence future generations.
Geronimo is one of the most famous figures in the history of the American West. To the Apaches he was a war shaman, or medicine man, respected for the great mystical power he possessed. To his enemies, the Mexicans and the Americans, he was a vicious and fearless warrior. His name became a battle cry that struck terror into the hearts of those who heard it.
Linda Witmer's chronicle of the Carlisle Indian School makes one feel that he was really there and knew some of the students personally. The story begins with the journey of seventy-two shackled Indian prisoners to St. Augustine, Florida in 1875 under Richard Henry Pratt, the transfer of most of them three years later to Hampton, Virginia, and the establishment of the Indian Industrial School at Carlisle in 1879.