Repasz Band
Williamsport, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Founded in Williamsport in 1831 and named for its honored director Daniel Repasz, it is one of the oldest American community bands. The band played at Lee's surrender at Appomattox in 1865 and at its 150th anniversary in 2015, and at Grant's Tomb dedications in 1897 and 1997. As the band of the 12th Pa. National Guard, members participated in the presidential inaugural parades of T. Roosevelt and W.H. Taft. "The Repasz Band March"ย is performed worldwide.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Founded in Williamsport in 1831 and named for its cherished director Daniel Repasz, the Repasz Band is among the oldest community bands in America. It reportedly played at Lee's surrender at Appomattox in 1865, marched in the inaugural parades of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft as the band of the 12th Pennsylvania National Guard, and performed at the dedications of Grant's Tomb a century apart. Its signature "Repasz Band March" is still played the world over.
Why it matters
The band is a living thread of American civic life, carrying town-band music from the early republic through the Civil War and into the present.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- ยท Daniel Repasz
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Freedom Road Cemetery
Loyalsock Township, PA ยท est. 1993
Daniel Hughes, a Black raftsman who steered timber down the Susquehanna River, used his travels to a darker purpose for slavery's defenders: in the years before the Civil War he guided fugitives from Maryland to his home here, sheltering them before they moved north to freedom along the Underground Railroad. Hughes gave part of his land for a cemetery, where nine known African American veterans of the Civil War are buried. Known as Freedom Road Cemetery since 1936, the ground honors both the escape network and the men who later fought for the Union.
Eli Slifer
Kelly Township, PA ยท est. 1968
Eli Slifer (1818โ1888) lived in this house during the crisis years of the Civil War, serving as Pennsylvania's Secretary of the Commonwealth. As a close aide to the state's wartime governor, Andrew Curtin, he helped organize the enormous task of raising troops and marshaling supplies for the Union effort. A veteran state legislator and treasurer, he was one of the administrative hands behind Pennsylvania's war machine.
Clinton County Civil War Monument
Lock Haven, PA
This statue honors the men of Clinton County, Pennsylvania, who marched off to preserve the Union during the Civil War. Like hundreds of similar monuments raised across the North in the decades after 1865, it turned a rural county's grief and pride into bronze and stone, naming the local contribution to the nation's costliest conflict. It stands as a permanent civic thank-you to a generation of volunteers.
Fishing Creek Confederacy
Benton, PA ยท est. 2009
In August 1864, rumors of draft resistance and Confederate sympathy in the Fishing Creek Valley brought 800 federal troops into this quiet corner of Columbia County. Peace Democrats โ Northerners who backed the Union but opposed Lincoln's wartime policies โ were interrogated near a church at this site, and 44 were arrested and jailed at Fort Mifflin without access to civil courts. Their ordeal fed a national debate that, in 1866, led the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that military trials of civilians were unconstitutional.