To document the record of Arthur Buchanan and his wife, Dorcas, who were the first settlers of Lewistown, Pa., about 1754. Arthur died at Carlisle, Pa., in September 1760.
From the Pennsylvania Archives I, I, 504, we learn that Arthur was born in 1711, that his father lived in Ireland, and that his older brother, Robert Buchanan, was Sheriff in Lancaster Co., Pa., in 1735. The marriage records of Gloucester County, New Jersey, lists Arthur's marriage July 22, 1738 to Dorcas Holt. He was then a merchant of Lancaster, Pa. In 1741 he sold furs to Edward Shippen (Shippen Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia).
The Cumberland Co., Pa., tax lists show Arthur Buchanan in Middleton Township in 1751 and in Carlisle in 1753. In the later year, the Quarter Sessions Court of Cumberland Co. accused him of running a public horse without a license.
The traditional date of 1754 for settlement of the county is confirmed by an application for land by Arthur Forster in February of 1755. He said the land adjoined that of Buchanan.
Indian attacks drove Arthur back to Carlisle, where in 1757 he was again brought into Quarter Sessions Court for keeping a tippling horse. He stated that he "was drove to his town by the savage cruelties with the total loss of his effects... He then flying with his family for the preservation of their lives... and rendered unable to support his family without following in to some kind of business for their support."
Letters of Administration were issued to his widow, Dorcas Buchanan, Sept. 29, 1760. She was then living on East High Street in Carlisle. Additional data on Dorcas can be found in: land records (July 5, 1762), Donegal Presbytery records (Sept. 1767), the 1798 Direct Tax (her son, Arthur, had a two-story house 30x28 with 11 windows and 147 panes) and the Western Star (Lewistown, Pa.) newspaper, which reported that she died Feb. 22, 1804, leaving 118 descendants.
