Richard J. Coyer, ed., “Carlisle Barracks—1854-1855: From the Letters of Lt. Thomas W. Sweeny, 2nd Infantry,” Cumberland County History 16 (1999): 100-115. This article contains nine letters to Ellen Sweeny about Lt. Sweeny’s experiences and acquaintances at the Carlisle Barracks.…

While Dickinson College Professor “John McClintock spent twelve long, difficult, though happy years in Carlisle,” Martha C. Slotten notes that for him any “sense of belonging…was quickly dispelled in the riot on the square” in June 1847. Two slaveowners from Hagerstown,…

In 1848 Maryland slaveowner Mary M. Oliver filed a lawsuit in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania against Daniel Kauffman and two associates for helping thirteen fugitive slaves escape. Early in October 1847 two families of slaves – four adults and nine children…

This courthouse was the third on the Carlisle Public Square.  The first Cumberland County courthouse was a temporary log structure on the north-east corner of the square built in 1753.  In 1766, a new brick courthouse was built on the…