Striking and magnificent as our country is in its peculiar attitude and rapid growth, presenting at one view the combined ideas of ability to resist the strong, and power to defend the weak, it is scarcely less majestic than beautiful, and in attempting to convey to you in language befitting some of the important facts connected with its early history, and the birth of its flag, would seem little less absurd, than...
John B. Frantz and William Pencak, eds., Beyond Philadelphia: The American Revolution in the Pennsylvania Hinterland. (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1998) viii, 273, maps, index. Hardback $55.00 (ISBN 0-27 1-01 766-X) Paperback $ 19.95 (ISBN 0-271-01767-8).
Wayne Bodle, The Valley Forge Winter: Civilians and Soldiers in War. University Park PA: Penn State University Press, 2002. Map. Notes. Index. Pp. xlll, 325. $35.
Images of patriots toppling New York's equestrian statue of King George III and molding the material into musket balls, or of Philadelphia ladies sacrificing their table service to provide lead for suppling the Continental Army with ammunition capture the popular imagination.
Tiny Carlisle, with perhaps half a hundred males of fighting age, contributed no fewer than eight colonels or generals to the War of the Revolution. None of these, from Armstrong to Watts, made quite the contribution to victory that Ephraim Blaine did.
Northeast of Carlisle borough near the intersection of Cavalry Road and Route 11 sits a distinguished, white-washed, brick home known as the Wilson House. That impressive structure bore witness to a part of the compelling story of Revolutionary War officer Major James Armstrong Wilson. He has frequently been confused with another James Wilson (1742-1798) who signed the Declaration of Independence and was a resident of Carlisle for a time.
John Harris, Jr., the founder of Harrisburg, born on the Pennsylvania frontier in 1727, grew up in Paxton Township on the east side of the Susquehanna River in what was then Harris's Ferry. In 1748 he inherited the land from his immigrant father, and from that time until his death in 1791 he contributed to its development from a fragmented frontier settlement to a structured community town.
Two women trudged alongside the American soldiers through 350 miles of uninhabited primeval wilderness in Maine, following a faulty map of an unmarked route to Quebec. The terrain with its hills and deep ravines, the rivers, rapids and ponds with their bogs and marshes, and the forest with its fallen trees and rotting debris were obstacles that would have challenged the best of woodsmen.
Our Commonwealth possesses no richer treasure than the fair fame of her children. In the revolutions of empires, the present institutions of our land may perish, and new ones, perhaps more perfect, may arise; but the glory of our national existence cannot pass away, so long as the names of those who, in it, enlarged the boundaries of knowledge, gave tone to its morals, framed its laws, or fought its battles, ate remembered with gratitude.
“Every man in Cumberland County is a rioter at heart,” lamented Governor John Penn the year he ordered his family’s land in Lower Manor subdivided and sold. The concurrence of his remark and his order to sell may have been mere chance, but young Penn in this instance established himself as seer and prophet. When he used the word “rioter” he spoke of the seething Scotch-Irish, who were virtually the only group then living in the County.