Gettysburg Campaign

Chambersburg, PA · est. 1948

Benjamin Chambers settled at the forks of the Conococheague in 1734 and laid out "Chambers Town" in 1764; two decades later it became the seat of the newly formed Franklin County. During the Civil War the town sat squarely in the path of Confederate operations—raided by J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry in 1862, occupied by Confederate troops in 1863, and finally put to the torch in 1864 when residents refused a ransom demand.

Chambersburg, PA · est. 2003

Educated in Chambersburg as the son of a free mother and an enslaved father, Martin Delany became one of the most formidable Black voices of his century. He published the antislavery newspaper The Mystery, joined Frederick Douglass in the abolitionist cause, and in 1865 became the first African American commissioned as a field officer in the United States Army. Physician, editor, and activist, he pressed for freedom on many fronts.

Chambersburg, PA · est. 1969

This Federal-era house, built around 1807, later served as the home of Dr. Jacob Suesserott, a well-regarded physician and surgeon. Its place in history was sealed on July 30, 1864, when Confederate cavalry under orders to extract a ransom set fire to Chambersburg; the flames that consumed much of the town were halted at this point. The burning of Chambersburg remains the only major Northern town destroyed by Confederate forces during the Civil War.

Chambersburg, PA · est. 2002

Consecrated in 1844, this Chambersburg burial ground was established by a Jewish Holy Burial Society so that the area's small but growing Jewish community could bury its dead according to Jewish law. It stands as the first Jewish cemetery west of Philadelphia, opened during the wave of mid-19th-century migration that carried Jewish families inland from the coast. Among those interred is Isaac Burgauer, remembered as the only Southern Jewish soldier who fell at Gettysburg to rest in a Northern Jewish cemetery.