Wrightsville: September 2009 Archives

York County Heritage Trust sanctioned Civil War tour guide Scott L. Mingus, Sr. stands in front of the historic Strickler farmhouse off the Lincoln Highway near Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. Confederates under Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon deployed near this farm for their attack on the Union earthworks protecting the crossing over the Susquehanna River about a mile from this spot.

Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide Bobby Housch is a school teacher in Hanover PA when he's not guiding tourists around the sprawling battlefield. A couple of weeks ago, he and I spent a pleasant Sunday afternoon filming a series of a dozen or so short video clips covering the June 28, 1863, Civil War skirmish at Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. The fight was the second largest military encounter in York County during the war, behind the Battle of Hanover.

Part 1 of the multi-part Wrightsville tour series is now on-line for your viewing pleasure at Bobby's very popular blog, Gettysburg Daily. In the weeks to come, he will post the rest of the videos, which include stops at Bair's Mill, the Union skirmish line, the line of the Confederate advance through the picturesque George D. Ebert farm, the riverfront and canal, the "heroine of the Susquehanna" feeds breakfast to the Rebels, and the African-American cemetery in neighboring Columbia.

Viewing these videos and reading my book Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Gordon Expedition, June 1863 should give you a good grasp of the strategic importance of the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge, deemed so important by the Confederate high command that Robert E. Lee sent one of his finest divisions to go take it by force.

August 28, 1862, started out as a quiet day for the citizens of Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. People went to work at the bustling factories along the riverbank or shopped in the stores that lined Hellam Street. People idly gossiped or discussed the news of the day, because the newspapers brimmed with the latest war news from down in distant Virginia, where names such as Jubal Early were becoming prominent. However, in a startling portent of General Early's unforeseeable official visit to Wrightsville less than a year later, dark plumes of smoke filled the might sky and flames reflected off the Susquehanna River. By nightfall, much of the riverfront section along Front Street was engulfed in one of the most significant fires in the town's history.

However, this major event largely remains forgotten today, especially in the wake of the subsequent fire less than a year later on June 28, 1863, when much of the same vicinity was again consumed by a significant conflagration, this one ignited by flaming embers from the burning Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge. In the 1862 fire, the fire fighters were Wrightsville and Columbia volunteers; in 1863, they were the Georgia Volunteers (Confederate infantry, that is).

Philadelphia Public Ledger, September 2, 1862. Image courtesy of NewsInHistory.com.

Many of the same businessmen mentioned in this article would be filing damage claims after the war for the destruction of their property caused by the 1863 bridge inferno. A few never recovered from the double destruction.

Concurrent with the Confederate movement by John McCausland's brigade of cavalry into Franklin County and Chambersburg, fears spread throughout Adams and York counties that the raiders would turn eastward, as had the Rebels in late June of 1863 en route to the Susquehanna River.

Here is an article from the July 16, 1864 issue of the Columbia Spy which illustrates the typical fear that was again gripping the region. For the second time in 12 months, merchants packed up their inventories, residents began taking horses out of Adams and York counties, and refugees clogged the turnpike through York to the river. Now, because the toll bridge that had burn down June 28, 1863, had not yet been rebuilt, a series of small steam-powered ferries carried the fleeing populace into Lancaster County (for a fee, of course).

It was all a false alarm. No Confederates entered York County.

The ferry boat owners were the big winners.

Here's the short article...

The verbiage of this article echoes the fears of 1863. Luckily for the war-weary population, this was the last time that York Countians were in the potential path of Confederate raiders.

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The scenic Kreutz Creek in Hellam Township, York County, Pennsylvania. This creek roughly parallels the old rail bed of the Northern Central Railway and played a role in the June 28, 1863, Skirmish of Wrightsville. This was the line of approach used by a portion of the 35th Battalion, Virginia Cavalry to screen the movements of three regiments of Georgia infantry under Col. Clement A. Evans.

Cannonball reader Gerry Boehm is a history buff from Berks County, Pennsylvania. He has had a special interest in the June 28, 1863, Skirmish of Wrightsville, a subject that of course has special meaning to me. Gerry is working his way through my recent book, Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Gordon Expedition, June 1863, which focuses on the expedition of part of Jubal A. Early's Confederate division to seize the mile-and-a-quarter-long covered bridge spanning the Susquehanna River between Wrightsville and Columbia.

Copyright 2007, Scott Mingus and Tom Poston, all rights reserved. Map of the June 28, 1863 skirmish of Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. No reproduction without written permission.