This is a gold mine of a book. Mrs. Schaumann has done some real digging in official County records and in doing so has come up with an excellent overview of Carlisle as found in tax lists. The major section deals with the original 312 lots, each 60' x 240' as laid out by John Armstrong for the Penn proprietors.
Local history tells of events and things which help us feel what life was like before our time. In the middle 1950's a gentleman in his early 80’s told me about something from his youth which has stayed with me. 1 can't recall his name but he lived between Waynesboro and Greencastle in the village of Zullinger.
No telephone history would be complete without a brief biography of the telephone's inventor. Alexander Graham Bell, credited with inventing the telephone, came from an English family deeply involved in speech and elocution. As a young man, Bell traveled from England to Boston where he earned his living teaching speech to the deaf.
It seems to be an axiom of geography that settlements arise along rivers and heavy trade routes. One has only to consider the city-states of ancient Mesopotamia, or Rome, Paris, or London. In many ways Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century was similar more to an ancient or medieval land than to anything of the twentieth century.
Pennsylvania has produced few true folk heroes, but one of the best known has a close association with Cumberland County. David Lewis, better known as Lewis the Robber, is the subject of an extensive legend to which have accrued numerous deeds and attributes of other outlaw folk heroes.
Interview of Newton C. Robbins of Carlisle by Michael Collins on July 8, 2015.
Most people are unaware of the unique origin of the Borough of Newville, Cumberland County. Early towns usually grew up around springs, taverns or industries. Newville was planned by a church and laid out on church property.
In October 1988 the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of construction on Pennsylvania's first super-highway. October 1990 will mark the similar anniversary of the turnpike 's official opening to traffic. Probably few of those who travel the turnpike today are aware that the route was originally planned as a railroad and that after two years of construction in the 1880's, the project lay abandoned for fifty-three years before the Turnpike Commission revived it.
This author's interest in the cityscape of Mechanicsburg was aroused several years ago during a bit of genealogical research. A letter written by Mollie Schafhirt in 1893 describes as "Tower Hill" the section of Mechanicsburg to which she had come as a bride. The house, on East Coover Street, still displays a tower. Nearby are five other houses with towers, all sitting on a hill at Coover and Market Streets.
Interview with Grace Zuna at her home in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, on June 11, 2002, with Heather Egan as a part of the Cumberland County Women During World War II Oral History Project. Zuna discusses her early childhood growing up during World War II including collecting tin cans, babysitting for working mothers, and war activities with the Girl Scouts. Zuna also talks about her older siblings experiences in the war including a brother who served in the military a sister who worked at the Navy Depot in Mechanicsburg.