On the evening of December 23, 1949, Floyd Rice's tractor-trailer engine broke down on the Camp Hill By-pass.It was a Friday, and traffic in the usual Christmas rush continued around the stranded vehicle. Not far from Rice's truck, a family gathered awaiting the arrival home of a husband and father. The table was set with the traditional Christmas dinner, and neatly wrapped presents lay beneath the decorated tree.
Life for the Scottish Carothers clan in East Pennsborough, now Silver Spring Township, was neither calm nor peaceful in that tiny fragment of time between 1798 and 1801. Four murders occured within two of the families, the John Carothers and the Andrew Carothers.
Although the actual frontier or line of settlement of Europeans crossed beyond Pennsylvania during this time period, this study of the primary records of Allen Township demonstrates that the area retained a frontier mode of living. By the 1790's Georgian two story houses were built, but the majority of residents were huddled in one or two room log houses.
Robert Lowry Sibbet, a physician of Carlisle in the last third of the nineteenth century, once described himself, somewhat deprecatingly, as not associated with any medical school or connected with any medical journal, not a military or naval surgeon, not a specialist.
Shippensburg, the second oldest town west of the Susquehannah river, was named for Edward Shippen, but the founding and naming of the town is much more than these simple facts.
Cumberland County History prints below excerpts from the 1912 entries in the diary of John A. Smith of Dickinson Township, taken from the original in the possession of his, the Editor. Besides giving insight into life three generations ago in the County, the entries represent an expansion of a matter mentioned in passing by Dr. Warren Gates in his article in this journal one year ago.
Wife-sale was never acknowledged officially but seems to have been an ingenious (if sexist) answer to a bad marriage among the less respectable parts of society in eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries England and America. Divorce at the time was out of reach for all those who could not afford great expense but were willing to see their reputations ruined in a lengthy court trial.
A number of authors writing during the period knew of his enterprise. An 1882 work described the factory as "One of Mechanicsburg's industries worthy of more than passing notice" and went on to state that "this thriving town (Mechanicsburg) had no industry of more promise of enlargement and growth than this establishment which bids fair to become one of the largest houses of its line of manufacturing to be found in the country."
This paper focuses upon three contemporary issues: 1. According to the Constitution, who has the power to make war? 2. According to the Constitution, what is the nature of the Senate's role in confirming presidential nominees to the federal courts? 3. How should one attempt to understand or interpret the Consitution?
The frontier in American history, in fact and in fiction, was everywhere the site of excesses, violence, and license. Cumberland County from its first settlements through the post revolutionary years was no exception.