Interview of Charles L. Brown of Carlisle, Pennsylvania on November 13, 1998 by David Kates. Kates conducted the interview for research on the Desegregation of the Carlisle School District as part of an American Studies Seminar. Interview was digitized from a cassette tape.
My father was District Attorney from 1904 to 1907 and built a house on South College Street in Carlisle, at the corner of Graham Street, in 1910. The way it happened was this. Wilbur F. Sadler was judge of Cumberland County at the time. He had been elected, for the second time, in 1904 in a bloody battle with John Wetzel in which each side was reputed to have spent $100,000, a huge sum in those days.
AIthough the record of John Armstrong, Senior, is fairly complete, and biographies of his sons James and John are available because, like their father, they both served as Congressman, that of his wife and her family, his father, brothers and sisters are sketchy. This paper undertakes an examination of the family with emphasis on those members.
The word "Shireman" is of English origin meaning "the official or steward of a shire, a sheriff." "Shire" or "Shires" also is of English origin and means "dweller in the shire or county; one who came from Shere (bright), in Surrey."
As many are probably aware, Carlisle was chosen to be the County seat of Cumberland County after much debate in 1751. The Penn family had plans for the town drawn up that same year. The Penn plan for Carlisle "consisted of 312 lots, each sixty feet by two hundred and forty feet. The original boundaries of the town were North, South, East and West Streets.
Discontent and resistance against royal authority was found throughout the frontier and urban centers of pre-Revolutionary America. In an attempt to examine the defiant Pennsylvania frontiersmen, this paper will investigate a small portion of the life of one Pennsylvanian, James Smith, during the years he spent as leader of the rebellious "Black Boys."
Cumberland county, which forms the eastern portion of the great Cumberland Valley, is made up, as we ordinarily know it, of three geological formations, viz: the slate on the north, the limestone in the center, and the sand or pinelands on the south. It is drained lengthwise by the Conodoguinet and the Yellow Breeches creeks.
Local legend reported that a lone caller for the telegraph tower which stood in the area, across the river from Harrisburg, made the suggestion that "Alone" might be an apt name. In reverse, this is "Enola" and this could well have been the derivation of the town's name, but, further research into the matter, revealed that Enola is named after a little girl called Enola Miller.
This is an oral history conducted by Steven Burg with Catharine MacCaffray at her home in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on June 20, 2002 as part of the Cumberland County Women During World War Two Oral History Project. MacCaffray discusses her experience as a volunteer nurse's aid for the American Red Cross in various hostitals in Carlisle. MacCaffray further talks about other various experiences including working at C. H. Masland's, seeing German POWs, and rationing.
Interview with Winifred Kegris at her home in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, on June 5, 2002, with Jennifer Elliott as part of the Cumberland County Women During World War Two Oral History Project.