The village of West Hill is located one mile west of Plainfield on Route 641 in West Pennsboro Township. The 1872 Atlas of Cumberland County shows the village consisting of six houses, a Methodist Episcopal Church, two stores, and a blacksmith shop.
“Introduction of Gas!” proclaimed the Carlisle Herald in its June 4, 1856, edition, while a headline in the June 5, 1856, edition of the American Volunteer reported:
The village of Greason is unknown to most people traveling on Cumberland County's major roads. It sits between Newville Road in the north and Ritner Highway (Rt. 11) in the south. It is less than one mile south of Plainfield and grew up along the old Cumberland Valley Railroad line. Approaching the village today, the first thing you notice is the abandoned warehouse. Vines cover the gable end of the warehouse and cling to its board walls that show little of the paint that once covered them. The railroad tracks are gone, and their route is now part of the Rail Trail walking path. The Station Depot is gone, the Greason Academy building, with its many additions, is a private home, but many of the dozen or so houses remain and evoke an image of what the village was like in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Doing research into the history of a place can be a confusing exercise because county and township boundaries changed over the decades as well as the names of towns and villages.
Carlisle Herald, September 1, 1870. “MAGNIFICENT BIRTHDAY DEMONSTRATION—Splendid Pyrotechnic Display.—Mr. James W. Bosler, a citizen of this place, residing in the suburbs of the borough, gave a grand birthday party, pyrotechnic display, etc., in honor of his little son Charlie’s fifth birthday.
From 1857 until the 1880s, residents of Cumberland County migrated en masse to the plains of central Kansas.
Richard Martin’s son, Reverend Joseph Martin, wrote that his father’s daily book was the English Bible. “He read widely and of the best. He was a great admirer of Shakespeare and could recite passages by the page.
In October 1866, A. K. Rheem, the publisher of the Carlisle Herald, visited Mechanicsburg to look at improvements in the town. He wrote the following article about his visit: “The most important and noticeable new buildings are the Market House and the Merchant's Hotel. The former is a splendid brick edifice beautifully built and running through the entire depth of a square.
In the spring of 1900, Commodore Porter of Plainfield, had recently finished his twentieth sale of the season. A Chambersburg newspaper reported that he was “in his sixty-fourth year and is still hale and hearty and hopes to call many more sales.”1 It was not to be.
An elegant three-story Federal brick town house stands on the south east corner of High and Bedford streets in Carlisle. Known as the Duncan-Stiles House, it was built c. 1811 by Carlisle attorney Thomas Duncan for the marriage of his son Stephen and his bride, Margaretta Love Stiles.