The Western one-third of Cumberland County contains a multitude of historic structures; approximately two thousand of these were surveyed from September 1984 to September 1985 as part of a project sponsored by the Cumberland County Historical Society and the Pennsylvania Bureau for Historic Preservation.
It was an early summer day in 1792, and a gloomy man was in a bad mood. Charles Nisbet, a Presbyterian minister in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, wrote a letter to his bookseller, William Young, in Philadelphia. The two had been corresponding about twice a year since 1790; Nisbet was beginning his sixth letter to Young.
The early history of Pennsylvania is sprinkled with the exploits of daring, energetic, and forceful individuals. One of the most fearless and dedicated, yet least remembered of these personalities, was Christian Frederick Post. A humble man of God, he spent over forty years among the Indians and Whites of colonial America, spreading the Gospel and working for peace. He passed some of this time traveling through or living within the present borders of Cumberland County.
Two hundred and fifty years ago Cumberland County was the focus of one of the three battles in 1758 that would change the outcome of the French and Indian War in North America. Carlisle, the new seat of Cumberland County, was the launching point for the third military expedition to attempt to take Fort Duquesne from the French and open up the Ohio country to English traders. General John Forbes would lead this campaign and succeed where others had failed.
In 1978, Cumberland County Government and Cumberland County Historical Society (CCHS) entered into a formal agreement to transfer older government and court records. The records, officially on long-term loan to the Society according to the agreement, are housed at the Society in an archival environment. Acid free supplies are used to store the records and the Society's archives provide a temperature and humidity controlled environment to better preserve these early documents.
Considering the time and the place, the first army seen in Cumberland County was of quite respectable size. Made up entirely of British regulars, it comprised two foot regiments, a detachment of artillery, and three independent (or unregimented) companies. With these units at less than full strength, the whole force numbered about twelve thousand.
Ten rural religious societies of Presbyterians evolved in the Cumberland Valley of Pennsylvania prior to 1745. This account of the chain of self-starting societies in the seventy-mile Valley is drawn principally from the Minutes of the Presbytery of Donegal, which exercised rigid control over ecclesiastical activity, including such matters as scheduling each Sabbath of sermons until such time as a resident preacher was in place.
In order to understand the early years of the German Lutheran and Reformed churches in Cumberland County, we need to know something about the beginnings of these two churches in colonial Pennsylvania and also about the pattern of the county's early settlement.
In 1754 and 1755, Great Britain suffered two humiliating defeats in North America at the hands of the French. First, Colonel George Washington faced the French at a hastily built fortification in western Pennsylvania named Fort Necessity. After a short skirmish, Washington conceded defeat and surrendered his predominantly provincial command to the combined French and Indian force opposing him.
Alexandria, [District of Columbia], 25 February 1810. Thomas Cruse sat down, opened his desk, took out a clean sheet of paper, dipped his pen in the bottle of ink and wrote “Dear Sir.” He was writing to his brother-in-law, Judge James Hamilton of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.