Cumberland Valley apple orchard Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018 |
I admired the
picturesque apple orchards dotting the landscape and stopped to smell the fresh
air, the soil, and to hear birds singing. Even in its dormant state, the sunny
day, the stillness, the beauty of the fertile trees as far as the eyes could
see, was captivating.
We were
bound for Carlisle, Pa, the seat of Cumberland County. Carlisle has a
population of 19,162 (2016) excluding the students who attend Dickinson
College, a liberal arts college focusing on international education and global
education.
Carlisle
Barracks is one of the oldest U.S. Army installations and the most senior military
educational institutions in the United States Army. The U. S. Army War College
is also located on the grounds of Carlisle Barracks.
Cumberland
County was crossed by major roads and had an important role in the westward
migration. It is interesting to note that the historic district is constantly
crossed and clogged by eighteen-wheeler trucks.
Carlisle Square in Historic District
Photo: Ileana Johnson
The
settlement of Carlisle was planned in 1751 by John Armstrong Sr. Immigrants from
Scotland and Ireland settled in Carlisle and farmed the Cumberland Valley. They named it after Carlisle, Cumberland,
England, and even built the former jail house in the shape of The Citadel in
the English city. This jail is now used as general government offices.
Photo: Ileana Johnson
Entrance to Hessian Powder Magazine
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018
When a march
was planned in favor of the United States Constitution in 1787,
Anti-Federalists initiated a riot in Carlisle. During the Whiskey Rebellion of
1794, Pennsylvania and New Jersey troops assembled in Carlisle under the
leadership of President George Washington. The Presbyterian Church in the
historic district was the place where President Washington worshipped while in
Carlisle.
A local
lawyer, Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence,
founded Carlisle Grammar School in 1773 and established its charter as
Dickinson College, “the first new college founded in the newly recognized
United States.” One famous alumnus, who graduated in 1809, was the 15th
U.S. president, James Buchanan.
Another
prominent lawyer and scholar, James Hamilton (1793-1873), left a $2,000 gift
and a 60’ X 60’ lot in his will that would be used to construct in 1881 a
two-story brick building that became the Hamilton Library Association, dedicated
to housing its collection and eventually a research library about Cumberland
County.
According to
the Historical Society, another signer of the Declaration of Independence,
George Ross (1730-1779), was a prosecutor for the British Crown in Carlisle in
the 1750s and 1760s. He had been loyal to King Gorge III, but switched over to
the Revolutionary movement. He was the last of the Pennsylvania delegation to
sign the Declaration of Independence and the uncle of Betsy Ross.
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018
Carlisle was
a stop for the Underground Railroad, leading up to the American Civil War. As
part of the Gettysburg campaign, General Fitzhugh Lee, attacked and shelled the
town on July 1, 1863. There is a cannonball dent still visible on one of the
columns of the historic county courthouse.
Many of the
early settlers of Pennsylvania were Scots-Irish who brought with them their
Presbyterian faith. By 1730, they were settling in Cumberland Valley, in the
fertile land near the Conodoguinet Creek.
The First
Presbyterian Church of Carlisle, the oldest public building in Carlisle, was constructed
in 1757. Colonists met there in 1774 to declare their independence from England
and President Washington worshipped there in 1794.
In an attempt
to force Indians to reject tribal culture and adapt to western society, U.S.
Army Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt established Carlisle Indian Industrial
School in 1879, a federally-supported school for American Indians off a
reservation. The school was closed in 1918 and the property transferred back to
the War Department to be used as a military hospital for soldiers wounded
during WWI.
The Indian
School memorabilia was packed up and employees helped students return home or transfer
to other schools. The school’s 39-year history came to a sad end on September
1, 1918. There was no formal job placement in place and society at large did
not rush to hire their graduates.
Additionally,
those students who chose to go back to their traditional lives were not
accepted back with open arms, they were considered having gone “back to the
blanket.” According to the Carlisle Archives, “other Native Americans
considered them ‘apple Indians,’ red on the outside and white on the inside.” Some
graduates became the reservation’s translators and interpreters. The trades they had learned in the western
school were often useless on the reservation.
The museum
archives describe how Asa Daklugie, an Apache, remembers the ‘civilizing’
process which stripped children of all outward signs of traditional life. “We’d
lost our hair and we’d lost our clothes: with the two we’d lost our identities
as Indians. Greater punishment could hardly have been devised.”
The archives
recall, “One by one, the boys’ long hair was cut, a traumatic experience that
caused resistance and deep resentment. Their clothing was replaced with
military uniforms for the boys and Victorian dresses for the girls. For many
students, who had arrived dressed in their finest garments made by family
members, losing their familiar regalia was painful.”
The most famous
student was Jim Thorpe (1887-1953), a halfback football hero who led its team
to upset victories against the powerhouses Harvard, Army, and University of
Pennsylvania in 1911-1912. Thorpe was also an Olympic gold medalist and coach,
considered and named in 1950 “the greatest athlete in the world” of the first
half of the 20th century.
Old Courthouse with Liberty Tree
On the site
that had been chosen for Carlisle, there were five major Indian paths that
converged, paths of culture, trade, and war. Cumberland valley was settled by
Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands, Susquehannock, Iroquis Confederacy,
Lenape, and Shawnee peoples. The Cumberland valley connected Iroquois lands to
the Cherokee and Catawba in the Carolinas.
In the 19th
century, the Cumberland Valley Railroad opened new ways for goods and people to
travel and the speed of life changed. Scientific agriculture was introduced and
allowed habitation of legal immigrants who settled in the area. Eventually the
railroad system would give way to automobiles, trucking, and to the development
of our modern but aging highway system.
Many areas
and buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places such as
the Carlisle Historic District, Carlisle Indian School, Hessian Powder
Magazine, Carlisle Armory, and Old West, Dickinson College.
Location of the former Green Tree Inn
Photo: Ileana Johnson
James Wilson
(1742-1798), born in Scotland, who rose to the rank of Brigadier General of the
Pennsylvania State Militia, cast the deciding vote for independence for
Pennsylvania, was one of the six original justices on the Supreme Court, and a
founding father of Dickinson College. He was a signer of the Declaration of
Independence, and was twice elected to the Continental Congress.
James Smith
(1719-1806) was another signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was born
in Ireland and studied law at his brother’s office in Pennsylvania.
Daniel Drawbaugh
Historical Society Museum Archives
Carlisle
made national news when the McClintock Riot took place in 1847. Pennsylvania
was a free state but three fugitive slaves were captured and brought to
Carlisle on their way south - a girl named Ann, a man named Lloyd Brown, and a
woman named Hester Norman, married to a free man, George Norman of Carlisle.
At the time,
300 freed men and women lived in Carlisle. The owners of the three fugitive
slaves, Kennedy and Hollingsworth, were seeking certificates from a local
justice to transport the fugitive slaves south, and permission to keep them in
the county jail while they conducted other business.
Historic Old Courthouse
Photo: Ileana Johnson
The faces of immigrants who built Carlisle post office
Museum Archives
Iron furnaces
existed in Cumberland County as self-sufficient plantation communities: farms,
mills, workers’ homes, school, offices, church, cemetery, and a company store.
The labor was composed of free laborers, indentured servants, some of whom were
white, slaves, and apprentices. Women mended clothes, farmed, supplied wood,
and finished iron casting. A 1800s ironworker made anywhere from 51 to 86 cents
a day for 12 hours of work. Most people in this time period worked on farms or
in farm-related fields such as milling, blacksmithing, and tanning.
According to
the museum archives, due in part to the tanning and iron industries, slavery
lingered in Cumberland County even though it was abolished in Pennsylvania on
March 1, 1780, one of the first states to do so. “In 1810, half of all the
slaves held in Pennsylvania were in Cumberland County… Twenty-four Africans
were still in bondage in 1840; 1847 was the first year that the county no
longer held slaves.”
The museum
archives explain that “Cumberland County was not a stronghold for
abolitionists. Many residents had family and friends in slaveholding Maryland,
southern born soldiers were in training at the Cavalry School at Carlisle Barracks,
and nearly half of Dickinson’s students were from the south. Newspapers in the
area were anti-abolitionist and slave catcher gangs roamed the county. After
1945, local churches forbade abolitionist meetings in their establishments.”
New Courthouse
Photo: Ileana Johnson
Twice a week
markets were held here and overseen by the Clerk of the Market who used scales
to validate the weight of the goods and produce sold. Three different buildings
were erected to hold these markets, two open-air ones and one elaborate
Victorian building.
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018
Et tu, Flamingo!
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018
The food will be delicious and expensive ($30) but the dinner sounds like a political drive in support of the debunked man-made climate change scheme rather than just an opportunity to sample locally grown and prepared food and to meet other like-minded progressive neighbors.