Recent

The Deterioration of the Seminary Rule System at Irving College, 1909-1926

Irving College, located between Simpson and Main Streets in Mechanicsburg from 1856 through 1929, once offered the same type of curriculum, administrative trends, and student organizations that existed at many women's colleges throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Irving was founded in 1856, during the initial rush of female colleges, when no less than seven women's colleges were within a 50 mile radius of the county seat.

Bishop Henry Heisey Brubaker, Missionary from Mechanicsburg

While it may not be an historian's job to "praise famous men," it is his job to tell of men and women, famous or less so, and remember that they were human beings with a human capacity for the remarkable. Henry Heisey Brubaker—in the formal custom of the day, he always styled himself "H. H. Brubaker"—was an imposing figure in the Brethren in Christ Church during the middle years of the twentieth century.

Americans Shall Rule America! The Know-Nothing Party in Cumberland County

In 1854 Americans took a detour from the road to civil war. It was the year of the Kansas-Nebraska act, which allowed slavery to spread into the formerly free Kansas territory. This act, the warfare between pro- and anti-slavery settlers in Kansas that followed, and the rise of the free soil Republican party, so inflamed hostile feelings between North and South that the firing on Fort Sumter took place less than seven years later.

Historical Miscellanies

CELEBRATING THE FOURTH, 1796 Carlisle, July 6 Monday last being the Anniversary of American Liberty and Independence, was celebrated with the usual Festivity, by the Inhabitants of the Borough--The Volunteer corp of Light Infantry in military order proceeded to Mr. Holmes' Spring, where they together with a number of Citizens dined in great harmony.

A Traveller in the County, 1802

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.

Newville as It Is (1858)

On November 25, 1858 the Newville weekly newspaper, The Valley Star, published the first installment of a history and description of the village. It was entitled "Newville as it Was, and as it Is," and its author was identified simply as "A Citizen of Newville." The first essay, on early history, was received with so much interest and applause that the entire printing of the issue was quickly sold out, and the printer had to reprint it the citizens of Newville would "insist" that the author publish the sketches in book form. 

Pages