Hanover: October 2009 Archives

Mt. Olivet Cemetery sprawls on a hilltop southeast of Hanover, Pennsylvania in extreme southern York County. During the Civil War, it was of course much smaller than today, and the heights became a platform for Confederate horse artillery during the June 30, 1863 Battle of Hanover. Following the war, the graveyard became the final resting place for many of the Civil War veterans of the Hanover region, and a stroll through the cemetery grounds yields dozens of headstones for these veterans.

Among those men buried in Mr. Olivet is Samuel Fitz, whose story can be pieced together from studying the rosters of Pennsylvania Civil War soldiers. The typical image of a Civil War soldier conjures up images of heroic charges across farm fields while bullets whistle past and shells explode overhead. For many soldiers, this indeed was the case. For tens of thousands of others, including Hanover's Sam Fitz, their military service was much more mundane and tedious.

In 1863, this brick building in downtown Hanover, Pennsylvania, was the Central Hotel. It served as the nerve center for Union cavalry under Brigadier General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick during and after the Battle of Hanover.

Thousands of cars and trucks pass through downtown Hanover, Pennsylvania, each day, often creating a traffic jam that can back up the queue at the various signals. Patience is a must for the modern traveler visiting this historic town, as similar to the nearby town of Gettysburg, a network of roads converge in Hanover conveying traffic into downtown.

That network of roads led to the June 30, 1863, unplanned collision between Major General J.E.B. Stuart's Confederate cavalrymen coming up from Maryland and a column of Federal troopers from H. Judson Kilpatrick's division.

Like the modern traffic flow, the point of congestion and contention was the intersection of the roads in downtown Hanover.

"The Rebels have come! The Rebels have come!"

As news spread throughout southwestern York County, Pennsylvania, on Saturday afternoon, June 27, 1863, that Confederate cavalry was raiding f arms and stealing horses in the region, hundreds of residents went into their barns, stables, and fields and made preparations to take their horses and livestock to safety. Some hid their animals in out-of-the way woods, ravines, or hollows. Others took to the roads in an attempt to make it to Lancaster County or deeper into rural southern York County, correctly (as it turned out) assuming the Rebels would concentrate their raiding to those towns and farms along the railroad.

This snippet from a period Baltimore newspaper is illustrative of the chaos and migration caused by the raid of Lt. Col. Elijah V. White and the 35th Battalion,Virginia Cavalry.