From the Threatened Invasion of Harrisburg marker- “General Robert E. Lee decided to take the war into the North in June 1863, allowing Southern farmers an uninterrupted growing season, and perhaps convincing European powers to aid the Confederacy. As the rebels invaded Pennsylvania, Harrisburg made a tempting target as a key transportation hub that promised access to a large cache of military supplies at nearby Camp Curtin. Its loss, as an important Union state capital, would be a major blow to Northern morale. Union Major General Darius Couch was charged with the defense of Harrisburg. Low on troops, Couch did the best he could, hastily building fortifications on the heights directly across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg. Pennsylvania and New York militia troops manned the defenses. Confederate cavalry under Brigadier General Albert Jenkins captured nearby Mechanicsburg on June 28. The next day, his troops skirmished with Federals at Oyster Point (in present-day Camp Hill). On June 30, Couch’s troops met the Confederates at Sporting Hill, about five miles from Harrisburg. Throughout the afternoon, Union and Confederate forces fought the northernmost engagement of the Gettysburg campaign. Jenkins withdrew that day to join Lee’s army concentrating near Gettysburg. Harrisburg had been saved.”

The Jones House is no longer standing. The marker for it, shown below, was very dirty and unreadable. The text from the Historical Marker Database at the link reads “On this site, the southeast corner of Second and Market Streets on Market Square, stood the Jones House, a mid-Nineteenth Century Hotel, which later evolved into the larger Commonwealth Hotel and later, the Dauphin Building. It was here that Abraham Lincoln stopped on February 22, 1861, en-route to his inauguration in Washington DC. The President-Elect greeted and spoke to city residents in the Square and went by carriage to the State Capitol Building to address the Pennsylvania Legislature as the guest of strong ally Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin. Although Lincoln was scheduled to stay overnight at the Jones House, threat of an assassin forced his unscheduled early morning departure by way of a more obscure train station outside the city. And it was on this site, in an earlier log building, that George Washington stayed in October of 1794 while traveling to western Pennsylvania to suppress the “Whiskey Insurrection.” This log house was later renamed “Washington Inn” in honor of the President’s stay. The Jones House, built in 1853, was later known as the Leland Hotel and was subsequently enlarged in the same architectural style and renamed the Commonwealth Hotel. A major fire in 1921 resulted in the building’s total redesign and conversion to office space. Named the Dauphin Building because it it was owned by the former Dauphin Deposit Bank, the building was demolished in 1990 to accommodate the Bank’s new headquarters (now the M&T Bank), the Allfirst Tower.

The Harrisburg Cemetery- 521 North 13th Street- the graves of John Geary and Simon Cameron.

The marker below is very weathered and is no longer present. It stated “From virtually the first shots of the Civil War, the women of Harrisburg worked in a variety of behind-the-scenes roles that proved essential to the Union victory. When Camp Curtin opened on April 18, 1861, the ladies of Harrisburg were already at work sewing Muslin haversacks for soldiers. Enlistees had converged in the state capital in the previous few days, and until the army built a kitchen at the camp, local women cooked meals for the men at the nearby Pennsylvania State Lunatic Hospital and delivered food to the men by wagons. A few months later a cold snap hit. Women collected warm clothing and thousands of blankets to loan to the troops until supplies arrived from the army. Harrisburg residents worked vigorously to help soldiers in the first year and a half of the war but without formal coordination their efforts were disjointed. In September 1862, the Ladies Union Relief Organization of Harrisburg organized, consolidating several individual soldiers’ aid societies. In addition to serving as nurses, women also collected supplies, cooked meals, wrote out letters for soldiers, and offered much-needed emotional support.”