Daily stories of Pennsylvania

by Frederic Antes Godcharles

It was in a valley loved as the home of the Indians and on the great pathway through the Tuscarora Mountains and was the scene of many terrible Indian incursions both before and after the French and Indian War.

As the County of Franklin was not erected at the time of the Revolutionary War its activities were not written into the martial story of Pennsylvania as a division of the great State.

In the War of 1812 the county played an active role and sent to the front eight companies organized within its limits.

But it is of a latter period that this county suffered at the hands of an invading host and on three occasions had its homes raided, stores plundered and part of Chambersburg, the county seat, destroyed by firebrand.

The Civil War was hardly begun when it became potent to every one that the Cumberland Valley would be the objective of any Confederate raid into Pennsylvania.

Easy of access from the Potomac and with the fertile fields as fresh foraging grounds for guerilla cavalry, the people realized that they were uncomfortably situated. This fear was well grounded from the fact that our southern border was virtually unprotected.

The first Confederate raid into Pennsylvania was planned and successfully executed October 10, 1862, by Generals J. E. B. Stuart and Wade Hampton with about two thousand troops.

This force crossed the Potomac River and by hurried marches pushed into Pennsylvania, reaching Chambersburg on the evening of that day. With the fall of night came a drizzling rain, in the midst of which the sound of fife and drum was heard, heralding the approach of a squad of officers and men under a flag of truce, who rode to the public square and there demanded the surrender of the town in the name of the Confederate States of America.

There was no military authority in the town to treat with the invaders, so the civil authorities, represented by the Chief Burgess, formally delivered up the town into their custody, and in a few moments the streets of the borough were filled with gray-uniformed soldiers, the tramp of horses, the rattling of sabers and spurs, and the dull thud of axes busied in demolishing store doors and in felling telegraph poles, which made sad music for the frightened inhabitants.

Chambersburg could hardly have been in worse condition for a raid. No soldiers were stationed there, and an enormous quantity of military stores was within its confines.