Camp Security
Springettsbury Township, York County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
A prison camp built in 1781 to detain British troops surrendered by Gen. Burgoyne at Saratoga, N.Y. and their families. Prisoners captured at Yorktown, Va arrived later. It was guarded by York County militia and Continental troops until operations ceased at the end of the American Revolution in 1783. The camp consisted of log huts and a large stockade. Archaeological evidence confirmed its location less than a mile to the south.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
As the Revolution wound toward victory, the American army needed somewhere to hold the enemies it had captured, and in 1781 York County became that place. Camp Security, a stockade ringed by log huts, detained British soldiers surrendered by General Burgoyne at Saratoga, later joined by prisoners taken at Yorktown, along with their families. Guarded by local militia and Continental troops, it operated until the war's end in 1783; archaeologists later confirmed its location just south of here.
Why it matters
A rare surviving trace of Revolutionary War prisoner-of-war camps, Camp Security illuminates the little-remembered logistics of captivity that accompanied the fight for independence.
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Related people
- · General John Burgoyne
Related events
- · Battle of Saratoga
- · Siege of Yorktown
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
James Smith
York, PA · est. 1949
James Smith, who lies buried in this churchyard, was one of Pennsylvania's signers of the Declaration of Independence. A York lawyer of Irish birth, he raised a company of Associators—citizen-soldiers—early in the Revolution and served in the Continental Congress. He was also an ironmaster, part of the frontier industry that helped arm the American cause.
York
Manchester Township, PA · est. 1947
Laid out in 1741 on William Penn's proprietary land, this was the first Pennsylvania town planted west of the Susquehanna River, an outpost of colonial settlement pushing toward the frontier. Its greatest hour came in the fall of 1777, when the Continental Congress fled British-occupied Philadelphia and made this county seat the temporary capital of a young nation at war. In the months that followed, the delegates here debated and adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first framework binding the thirteen states into a union.
York County Prison
York, PA · est. 1949
From about 1750 to 1855, the county prison stood on this site, serving frontier York County through the colonial era and into the industrial age. During the early years of the Revolution, it held prominent British prisoners of war, making this jail a small front in a continental conflict far from any battlefield.
Articles of Confederation
York, PA · est. 2001
In 1777, with the Revolution's outcome still uncertain and Philadelphia in British hands, the Continental Congress met in the York County Courthouse. There, on November 15, they adopted the Articles of Confederation — the young nation's first written constitution, binding the thirteen states into a single government. The Articles carried the United States through the war and the difficult 1780s until the present Constitution replaced them in 1789.