Joseph Menges lived on this prosperous York County, PA farm during the Civil War. The Franklin Township farmer filed a damage claim for $225 citing the loss of two horses to "Stuart's Cavalry" during the 1863 Gettysburg Campaign). He lost a 14-yr-old gray horse and a 4-yr-old bay mare taken despite being "concealed in an out-of-the-way place" on his 125-acre farm. The losses occured on July 2, making it quite probable that the Confederates were from Brigadier General Wade Hampton's brigade of J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry division.
In the decade following the Civil War more than 700 different residents of York County, Pennsylvania, filed damage claims resulting from the Gettysburg Campaign. The vast majority of these so-called "border claims" asked for compensation for losses incurred to the invading Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, although a few dozen were from citizens whose property or horses were seized by either the Pennsylvania Emergency Militia that was defending the county or the Union Army of the Potomac, parts of which passed through southwestern York County on June 30 and July 1.
