Fulton County
McConnellsburg, Fulton County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Formed April 19, 1850 out of Bedford County. Named for steamboat inventor Robert Fulton. Scene of Confederacy's first casualties in the Gettysburg Campaign, and its last campsite (1864) in Pennsylvania. McConnellsburg, county seat, incorporated 1814.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Established from Bedford County in 1850, Fulton County honors Robert Fulton, the Pennsylvania-born pioneer of the steamboat. Its seat, McConnellsburg, was incorporated in 1814 in the ridges of south-central Pennsylvania. During the Civil War the county saw the first casualties of the Confederacy's Gettysburg Campaign, and in 1864 it hosted the last Confederate campsite on Pennsylvania soil.
Why it matters
Named for an inventor who transformed American transportation and touched by the Confederacy's high-water march north, Fulton County links industrial progress to the war that tested the nation.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Fulton County came into being in 1850, when it was set off from Bedford County. By then the United States was a very different place than it had been in the frontier era. The country was crisscrossed by canals, early railroads, and, on its rivers, the steamboats that had transformed how Americans moved goods and people. Naming a county for Robert Fulton, the pioneer of the steamboat, was a fitting salute to that age of transportation.
The county sits in the folded ridges of south-central Pennsylvania, a landscape of long mountains and narrow valleys. This is harder country than the open farmland to the east, and getting through it always mattered more than settling it — the passes and roads here were the point. McConnellsburg, the county seat, had already been incorporated in 1814, a mountain town astride the routes west.
Within little more than a decade of the county's founding, that geography would take on grim importance, as the roads and gaps of this quiet region found themselves in the path of a great war.
People & events
The county's namesake, Robert Fulton, was a Pennsylvania-born inventor whose work with the steamboat helped open America's rivers to reliable, powered travel. He never set foot in this county, but by 1850 his name stood for the промise of technology and the shrinking of distances — an apt patron for a place defined by the challenge of moving through the mountains.
But the events most closely tied to this ground came with the Civil War. During the Confederacy's great push north in the Gettysburg Campaign, this county witnessed the campaign's first casualties — the opening losses of an invasion that would climax at Gettysburg. For a rural mountain community, the war arrived not as distant news but as something that happened on its own roads.
The war left a second mark here, too. In 1864, this county hosted the last Confederate campsite on Pennsylvania soil — a final footprint of the Southern armies before they left the state for good. Together, those two moments bracket the war's reach into Pennsylvania, from its first spilled blood in the campaign to its last encampment.
Its place in the American story
Fulton County joins two of the great themes of nineteenth-century America: the transformation of transportation and the trial of civil war. Its very name honors the steamboat revolution that helped bind a growing nation together, while its soil carries the memory of the conflict that nearly tore that nation apart.
The Gettysburg Campaign was one of the turning points of the Civil War, and the fact that its first casualties fell in this county places a small Pennsylvania community at the very start of that decisive chapter. The high-water mark of the Confederacy reached into the North, and this ground was on its edge.
That a single county can hold both the name of a great inventor and the trace of the war's northernmost reach is a reminder of how closely progress and conflict ran together in that century — the same decades that built the machines also fought the war.
If you visit
Drive into Fulton County and let the terrain set the mood. The long ridges and narrow gaps make it obvious why this was always a place of passage rather than sprawl. As you follow the roads through the mountains, remember that armies once moved along routes like these.
Make McConnellsburg your anchor. As the county seat, incorporated in 1814, it's a small mountain town with a long memory, and it makes a natural base for exploring the surrounding valleys and passes at an unhurried pace.
This is a place to think about how big history touches small ground. The campaign that reached its climax at Gettysburg began, in its earliest losses, here — and ended its Pennsylvania chapter here too, in 1864. Standing in these quiet ridges, it's worth pausing over how a peaceful rural county came to bracket one of the most consequential campaigns of the Civil War.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Robert Fulton
Related events
- · Gettysburg Campaign
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sachs Covered Bridge
Freedom Township, PA · est. 1997
David S. Stoner raised Sachs Covered Bridge across Marsh Creek in 1852, using the elegant lattice-truss design patented by Connecticut architect Ithiel Town to span 100 feet of water. Little more than a decade later, both Union and Confederate soldiers crossed its planks during the 1863 Gettysburg Campaign, giving the quiet farm bridge a place in one of the war's most famous chapters. Retired from traffic after 1968 and battered by a 1996 flood, it was lovingly restored by Adams County as a scenic landmark.
Gettysburg Campaign
Ayr Township, PA · est. 1947
This corner of the Cumberland Valley changed hands repeatedly during the 1863 invasion, occupied three times by Confederate columns pushing north. General Albert G. Jenkins' cavalry came first on June 19, followed by General George H. Steuart's troops in late June and, after a brief skirmish with Union forces, General John D. Imboden's command on June 29. Each passage marked the shifting tide of Lee's campaign.
Last Confederate Bivouac
Ayr Township, PA · est. 2021
In the summer of 1864, Confederate cavalry under General Bradley T. Johnson camped on this ground on July 31, just after McCausland's raiders had burned Chambersburg in retaliation for Union destruction in the Shenandoah Valley. They proved to be the last Confederate troops ever to camp on Pennsylvania soil. Union cavalry under General William W. Averell gave chase and routed the raiders a week later at the Battle of Moorefield in West Virginia.
Gettysburg Campaign
Ayr Township, PA · est. 2021
As Robert E. Lee's army pushed into Pennsylvania in June 1863, Confederate raiding parties fanned out into Fulton County to seize horses, livestock, and supplies. On June 29, troopers of the 1st New York Cavalry struck one such party, killing two enemy soldiers, wounding several, and capturing 32 men including their captain. The two Confederate dead were buried here by local residents.