Formed January 27, 1750; named for county of Cumberland, England. One of the two or three rich agricultural valleys in the United States. Early industries were iron furnaces and forges. First settlers, Scotch-Irish, men of stout heart and wonderful nerve; almost contemporaneous with their building forts and providing means of protection for themselves and families, they established Presbyterian churches, the fine springs of the valley being selected as sites, namely, Silver Springs Church, nine miles west of the Susquehanna; Trindle Spring, now a Lutheran Church; Meeting House Spring, now First Presbyterian Church of Carlisle; curious old carvings are in Meeting House Springs burial ground; Big Spring Church, at Newville; and Middle Spring Church, above Shippensburg, a monument to Revolutionary soldiers is here; all continue in active existence. The early pioneer countenanced the institution of slavery, at one period as many as 307 negroes were held as slaves in this county, the last of them in 1840; on November 1, 1780, an act was passed, directing that all slaves and those held as such in Pennsylvania should be registered; but thereafter all should be free men and women. SHIPPENSBURG, population 4372, first permanent settlement in the county, founded in 1730, was the only town on the line of the “Great Road” when it was laid out from John Harris’ Ferry, on the Susquehanna, to the Potomac, from 1735-44; this road was the first effort to connect the wilderness west of the Susquehanna with the civilization in the earlier settlements. First bridge erected in the county was over Letort Spring, on east Main Street, Carlisle, about 1780, replaced in 1795 by a stone bridge; several stone arch bridges are over the Yellow Breeches Creek; at the eastern end is Miller’s Mill bridge, over one hundred years old, three arch stone, in good condition; Alexander’s bridge is one mile north of Carlisle on the Conodoguinet Creek, colonial with wooden cover, one span, is very old.