François Andre Michaux, botanist and silviculturist, a traveller in America, and author of a work on the forest trees of North America, first came to America in 1787 with his father, Andre, who established two nurseries in the young United States and proposed an exploration of the Missouri River and the American West in 1793, ten years before the expedition of Lewis and Clark.
Joshua Gilpin, a well-to-do merchant, manufacturer, and capitalist of Philadelphia and Delaware, travelled through Cumberland County from Chambersburg to Harrisburg in 1809 on his way home from a business and pleasure trip to western Pennsylvania. As was his custom on journeys of this kind, he made a record of observations and events. Although not notably different in content from those of other travellers on the same road at the same time, its relevant portion is nonetheless worth reprinting as a source of information about the county at the beginning of the nineteenth century.