Hanover Junction: November 2009 Archives

The farm of Henry Hoff III during the Civil War; all photos by Scott Mingus taken in November 2009. Taken from Zeigler's Church Road looking west.

This typical Pennsylvania German farm is tucked in a shallow valley paralleling Zeigler's Church Road (foreground) in North Codorus Township in southern York County, Pennsylvania. Many of the old 19th century farms in this region still have the original houses, summer kitchens, and the characteristic huge bank barns which are often painted red. Other than electricity, indoor plumbing, and the cars and trucks parked in the farmyards, not much has changed since Major General J.E.B. Stuart's Confederate cavalrymen rode through this scenic and tranquil rural region on Tuesday, June 30, 1863 during the Gettysburg Campaign.

During the Civil War, the prosperous farm was owned and occupied by Henry and Rosanna Hoff and several of their children. A portion of Stuart's lead brigade, that of Brigadier General Fitzhugh Lee of Virginia, passed by this house in the afternoon. When a squadron peeled off from the dust-clouded column and rode down to the Hoff property, the family knew trouble was approaching.

Here is the story of Rosanna Hoff, excerpted from an article I wrote for The Gettysburg Magazine.

During the week before the Battle of Gettysburg, the attention of the Union Department of the Susquehanna's commander, Major General Darius N. Couch, was on protecting vital railroad bridges and other transport and communications routes in south-central Pennsylvania between Harrisburg and the Mason-Dixon Line. Among his particular areas of interest were the bridges on the Northern Central Railway in York County.

Couch dispatched the newly raised 20th Pennsylvania Volunteer Militia under Colonel William B. Thomas to protect the NCR. Thomas, one of the earliest backers of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, was a political ally of President Lincoln and through patronage had received the coveted and influential post or Port Collector of Philadelphia, in charge of the Customs House and the tax revenue collection. He raised a regiment of nearly 1,000 emergency militiamen in mid-June 1863 and obtained arms and uniforms from the state at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg before entraining for York County.

Colonel Thomas made his headquarters in a hotel in downtown York and scattered his men in an 18-mile line on several farms from York Haven in northern York County down past Seitzville well to the south. Their positions can be determined from a study of York County Border Claims in Harrisburg and from the records of known troop movements.

Several companies were assigned to patrol the railroads south of York, including protecting bridges near Reynolds Mill, Hanover Junction, and Glen Rock, as well as the Howard Tunnel. Lt. Colonel William H. Sickles set up a campsite on the sprawling Jacob Bowman farm along today's state route 616 south of Hanover Junction at a place later known as Larue.

Here are some photos of the general area, as well as a description of the damage claim of farmer Bowman...