Margaret MacDonald was born on June 22, 1760, one of Duncan and Sarah MacDonald’s four children.1 Her father, described as “the old Scotch highland piper,”2 likely served in one of the British regiments sent to Carlisle during the French and Indian War.
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.
Ephraim Steel, the youngest child of Ephraim and Esther Steel,1 was born in Carlisle on November 13, 1795. His father was a merchant and an Associate Judge of Cumberland County who died in 1814. 2 Ephraim, Jr., likely apprenticed with one of the many silversmiths working in Carlisle in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
James W. Sullivan was born on March 9, 1848, to Timothy and Elizabeth Hagan Sullivan. The family lived at 17-19 North East Street in Carlisle. Sullivan, a good student, finished all but his last year at Carlisle High School.
In Carlisle’s Old Graveyard at the corner of East South and South Bedford Streets is located an eight foot Celtic cross commemorating the burial place of Brigadier-General William Thompson.
As a tribute to Mr. and Mrs. Trout’s standing the community, the Daily Evening Sentinel ran a lengthy obituary on December 28, 1893. “Death of Mrs. Trout. A Prominent Carlisle Woman Passes Away.
Born on May 9, 1801 in Carlisle, Watts was one of 12 children born to David and Juliana Miller Watts. Watts’ Cumberland County roots extended to nearly its founding when his grandfather Frederick Watts emigrated from Wales purchasing a large tract of land in 1760 on the banks of the Juniata River in present day Perry County. Watt’s father, David was a well-known lawyer in the county and a member of the first graduating class of Dickinson College in 1787.
When the Septennial Census of Carlisle was taken in 1814, it included the names and occupations of all the borough’s taxables. Nineteen of them, including two women, were identified as weavers, and at least half of them were born in Ireland.
Miss Minerva White and her mother, Matilda Vickers, came to Mt. Holly from Virginia in 1859. Minerva worked for several years in the paper mills in Mt. Holly, but about 1870 she and her mother took charge of the toll gate and ran a small store.1 After her mother’s death in 1885, Minerva continued to operate the Mt. Holly toll gate for another 19 years.
Williams came to Carlisle in 1841 and opened a studio in Beetem's Hotel. The October 27, 1841 edition of the Carlisle Weekly Herald extolled his talent for representing faces on ivory and canvas and urged people to visit his studio. Painting portraits was not Williams' only talent.