“John Proctor was a well-known figure in the industrial world of Carlisle in the early days; he made bits when they were made and filed and plated by hand, silver money being melted to get material for the plating.” Proctor was working in Carlisle as early as 1812 according to a bill he submitted to the County Commissioners for work done at the jail and the court house. The work included making locks, keys, and hinges for window shutters.
The story of Molly Pitcher is complex. It is a story that is part fact, part myth, and partly the combination of stories of multiple women during the Revolutionary War.1 Myths were built up and repeated without documented evidence to support the story.
Mary Hamilton, daughter of Judge James and Sarah Hamilton, was born in Carlisle on August 2, 1796. Letters between Mary’s father and his friend John Brown of Philadelphia provide details of her early life. Mary was nine years old in November 1805 when she was sent to Mr. and Mrs.
Sarah Hamilton's daughter, Susan Thorn, bequeathed the miniature portrait of her mother “in a square frame” to Mrs. Mary Moore. Its whereabouts are unknown. We are left to form a picture of Sarah Hamilton, or Sally as her husband and her sister Mary Veazey referred to her, from remarks about her in their letters.
Interview of Jean Eschenmann by Troy Ehrensberger for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library. Eschenmann discusses her life in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania and how the borough has changed over the years.
George Shrom, who grew up on East Street in Carlisle, wrote about John Spahr in an 1898 article in the American Volunteer newspaper.
The provincial town of Carlisle was fortunate to have among its mist for a short period a political theorist and talented lawyer, James Wilson. Born in 1742 at Carskerdo near St. Andrews, Scotland, Wilson studied at St. Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Emigrating to America in1765, he first took a tutoring job at the College of Philadelphia. Next Wilson studied law under John Dickinson...
A survivor of the infamous Libby Prison, Charles McClure Worthington was a man of many occupations; a telegraph operator on the Cumberland Valley Rail Road, a Civil War surgeon, a druggist, and finally, a Carlisle school teacher. Charles M. Worthington was born in Carlisle on September 22, 1835, the eldest son of Ann and Jefferson Worthington, a painter and County Commissioner. Worthington was educated in the Carlisle schools and read medicine with Dr. Baughman.
April 1 was known as “flitting day” in Pennsylvania. It was the day when yearly leases expired, and tenant farmers, businessmen, mechanics and private citizens either renewed their leases for another year and “stayed put,” or they moved. Local newspapers usually ran a column or two about the “flittings,” noting the changes in location of hotel keepers and businessmen, and musing on the day in general. The editor of Carlisle’s American Volunteer waxed emotional about “flitting day” in his column on April 5, 1866.
A landmark in Carlisle, the “Mansion House Hotel” operated on the south west corner of West High and Pitt streets from the late 1830s until the 1920s. Inns on that site had housed travelers since the days of the Revolutionary War. The first tavern on the site was kept by James Pollock in the eighteenth century.