Harrisburg Historical

The US Colored Troops Grand Review: Harrisburg Welcomes Home the Black Veterans of the Civil War

2024-06-29T18:06:03+00:00

When Civil War soldiers were recognized in a Grand Review march in Washington, DC, the United States Colored Troops (USCT) were excluded. The city of Harrisburg held its own Grand Review march on November 14, 1865, to recognize the struggle and participation of the Black soldiers in their fight for freedom.

On the morning of November 14, 1865, the streets of Harrisburg echoed with the footsteps of regiments from the United States Colored Troops (USCT). Beginning at 10 a.m., the soldiers marched from Filbert and State Street (now Soldier’s Grove), through the Eighth Ward, up Market Street, and along Front Street past Simon Cameron’s home. Cameron, Lincoln’s former Secretary of War, watched approvingly from his porch. His remarks, reprinted in the North American and United States Gazette in Philadelphia on November 15, 1865, honored the troops: “I cannot let this opportunity pass without thanking the African soldiers . . . for the great service which they have been to their country in the terrible rebellion.”

These soldiers marched in the Harrisburg Grand Review, a historic event planned to honor the thousands of Black soldiers who fought in the United States Civil War for the Union Army. The Garnett League, Harrisburg’s chapter of the Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League, determined that the USCT deserved recognition for their contributions to the Northern victory and, alongside Harrisburg community members and political figures, organized the Grand Review. Thomas Morris Chester, who served as both Chief Marshall and Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements, led the march. A Harrisburg native himself, Chester served in the USCT and was the United States’s first Black war correspondent.

Many festivities marked the reception, including live music, speeches, and a dinner for the soldiers. Thousands of Harrisburg citizens, white and Black, lined the streets, showing their support and gratitude to the men who fought for their own freedom in the United States Civil War. Railroads into the city even cut their rates by half to encourage turnout. After the procession, William Howard Day, Orator of the Review, delivered a long address on the steps of the Capitol Building, and a letter from Generals George Meade and Benjamin Butler was read to the attendees.

The controversial decision to permit Black Americans into the United States Army was made in the midst of the Civil War. Toward the beginning of the conflict, the Northern armies still followed the Militia Act of 1792, allowing only white male citizens to participate in militias. The Northern armies attempted to abide by this act, but midway through the war, states struggled to meet their volunteer quotas and sought a new way to recruit soldiers. Then came the Militia Act of 1862. Enacted on July 17, 1862, the new act authorized a state militia draft when volunteer quotas were not met, and for the first time, allowed African Americans to serve in militias as soldiers or laborers. Abolitionists in the North praised this controversial decision as a step toward equality.

Many Black residents of Harrisburg served in the Civil War through the USCT. One such man was Henry C. Keith, who enlisted in September 1863. Keith enlisted in the 8th USCT Company B, which underwent rigorous training at Camp William Penn near Philadelphia before deployment to the Easter Theater. Company B fought in significant combat, particularly during the Battle of Olustee on February 20, 1864, which ended in a Confederate victory. Keith survived the intense combat that characterized the Civil War and eventually started a family and became a policeman in 1885.

Ephraim Slaughter was another USCT soldier with ties to Harrisburg. In 1863, he escaped slavery in North Carolina and joined Company B of the 3rd North Carolina Colored Infantry (later the 37th USCT) in January of 1864. After the war, Slaughter settled in Harrisburg’s Old Eighth Ward, where he was a real estate investor and active member of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. When he died in 1943, Slaughter was Harrisburg’s last surviving Civil War veteran.

Roughly 179,000 Black men served as soldiers in the United States Army, while 19,000 more served in the United States Navy. By the end of the Civil War, almost 40,000 Black soldiers died, of those, 30,000 as a result of infection or disease. They served in artillery and infantry while also performing all the non-combat functions that supported and sustained the armies. According to the National Archives, Black carpenters, guards, laborers, nurses, spies, scouts, and surgeons contributed to the war. There were almost eighty Black commissioned officers. Confederate troops often targeted Black soldiers, who faced crueler conditions if captured. Black Americans proceeded to enlist anyway, a testament to their bravery and sacrifice.

After four years of intense fighting and high casualty numbers, the Confederacy surrendered. A month later, on May 23–24, 1865, the Northern Armies completed their final military march, the Grand Review, which moved from the U.S. Capitol toward the White House. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was quoted, “You see in these armies, the foundation of the Republic: our future railroad managers, congressmen, bank presidents, manufacturers, judges, governors, and diplomats; yes and not less than a half dozen presidents.”

But not a single Black American who had bravely fought in the Civil War was represented in May’s Grand Review in Washington D.C.

The Militia Act of 1862 was perhaps the governmental change that enabled the Union to defeat the Confederacy in a war fought primarily over the future of Black Americans. Even so, the members of the USCT were intentionally excluded from the Grand Review march in Washington, D.C. In response, Harrisburg organized its own Review. This distinctive move towards equality was supported by formal committees and citizens alike, with a great number of citizens, white and Black, coming to pay respect to the soldiers of the USCT and their role in the Union Army victory.

According to the November 15, 1865, edition of the North American and United States Gazette, “The reception of these troops was, as it should be, respectful and honorable by the mass of the people of Harrisburg, and many a fair white hand did not shrink from waving a kerchief in welcome of those who escaped the perils of a contest in which they risked their lives, in defense of the national honor and support of the constitutional authorities.”

Orator William Howard Day believed the Union victory in the American Civil War represented a future of “improvement, social elevation, and the acquirement of political rights.”

134 Black Civil War veterans, including Chester, Keith, and Slaughter, are buried at Harrisburg’s Lincoln Cemetery. The city’s oldest surviving African American burial ground, Lincoln Cemetery was established in January 1876. In the words of Rachael Williams, Executive Director of Saving Our Ancestors' Legacy (SOAL), an organization working to restore and preserve Lincoln Cemetery, it “stands as a symbol of resilience and unity within the community.” Other notable Black veterans buried there include Aquila H. Amos, James M. Auter, and Harry F. Flowers. Their memories—and the memories of the thousands of other Black Americans who served in the USCT—are honored through the retelling of their stories and the significant role they played in the fight for freedom and equality during the American Civil War.

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Harrisburg's Role in the Underground Railroad: The Heart of the Central Route

2024-02-12T20:25:46+00:00

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania connected southern states and western cities to larger hubs along the Underground Route railroad, making it the heart of the central route. Anti-slavery committees, abolitionists, and advocacy groups created pathways, safehouses, and resources for freedom seekers to travel northward towards independence.

Harrisburg played a crucial role in the Underground Railroad. The city lay on the Central Route of the Northern Underground Railroad system due to its large Black population and long history as the capital city of a free state. Escape routes led to and from the city, creating four major exit routes for freedom seekers to travel.

A Pennsylvania state marker, located on Walnut Street near the Commonwealth Monument in the Pennsylvania State Capitol Complex, describes Harrisburg’s participation in the Underground Railroad. It identifies the roles of Wesley Union African Methodist Episcopal Church, Joseph Bustill, and William M. Jones in hiding and assisting freedom seekers. In the 1850s, the area connecting these individuals and institutions was known as Tanner’s Alley and numbered among the city’s most important Black neighborhoods. It is now recognized as a prominent location in Harrisburg’s Underground Railroad.

Wesley Union Church, the first Black church in Harrisburg, was founded in 1829. In 1836, the Harrisburg Fugitive Slavery Society, an informal society that sent freedom seekers to Philadelphia, began using the church and its influence among the Black community to promote abolition. Historical sources provide the names of a number of Harrisburg residents involved in the Underground Railroad.

One of these was Joseph Cassey Bustill, an African American schoolteacher who had been born in Philadelphia to a distinguished family. Joseph joined the Underground Railroad at age seventeen and was perhaps the youngest member of the movement. According to Bustill’s daughter, Bustill made use of homes, churches, halls, and lodging rooms to help the fugitives. Furthermore, he assisted in the formation of the Harrisburg Fugitive Slave Society, and often contacted William Still regarding the arrival of freedom seekers in Philadelphia, referring to them as “packages” nearing “delivery.”

Another was William “Pap” Jones, an African American doctor whose home served as the site of his medical practice and a refuge for freedom seekers. The Jones residence was one of the primary stations on the Underground Railroad in Harrisburg, where Dr. Jones and his wife, Mary, provided a safe space to rest and ample provisions for the journey ahead. Dr. Jones transported freedom seekers to their next station on the Underground Railroad via a covered wagon operating under the guise of a “rag merchant.” Through his extensive knowledge of the routes leading North and collaboration with fellow guides, Dr. Jones took many freedom seekers closer to safety.

Harriet McClintock Marshall, born in Harrisburg in 1840, was also a conductor on the Harrisburg Underground Railroad, most likely working through the Wesley Union AME Church founded by her mother. Harriet and her husband Elisha Marshall, a former freedom seeker, opened their home as a safe house and offered refuge, food, and clothing to those seeking freedom.

Harrisburg also connected freedom seekers to the Vigilant Committee of Philadelphia. The Vigilant Committee was formed by Robert Purvis in 1837 to “create a fund to aid [Black Americans] in distress.” It was responsible for helping many freedom seekers and their families. The committee appointed officers, raised money, and made resources available to assist freedom seekers attempting to live in or pass through Philadelphia on their way further north. Although the original committee was disbanded in 1852, another quickly took its place with Purvis as the head of the general committee.

The travels of the Taylor family, a notable family aided by these committee resources, exemplify how the network functioned. In 1856, Owen and Mary Ann Taylor and their family fled Clear Spring, Maryland, in a desperate attempt to claim freedom. Owen Taylor and his brothers had been enslaved by a farmer Henry Fiery, his son. The Taylor brothers harnessed horses belonging to Fiery, placed their families in the carriage, and headed north. The eight freedom seekers traveled eighty-seven miles from Clear Spring to Harrisburg, crossing the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, and traveling through Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. From there, the group made their way to Philadelphia, where the Vigilant Committee met them.

Henry Fiery quickly realized the Taylors were missing and contacted Joseph C. Bustill, who assured Fiery he would work to return the group. However, correspondence between Bustill and other Underground Railroad conductors reveals just the opposite. Bustill, despite being in contact with enslavers, actively worked against them and aided freedom seekers, directing them to safe spaces farther north. The remarkable story of Owen Taylor and his family for many such narratives in Harrisburg’s rich history of the Underground Railroad.

Despite Harrisburg’s historic presence of Black freedmen, the anti-slavery fight faced adversity during the 1850s. The Fugitive Slave Act (1850) required the return of people to their enslavers even if they were in a free state. The same year, a Slave Commission Office opened in Harrisburg. Richard McAllister, a local attorney and commissioner, was infamous for seizing Blacks, fugitives or free, and sending them to the slave market. McAllister had a notorious reputation. As the historian, R. J. M. Blackett noted, McAllister boasted that “more fugitives have been remanded by me than any other U.S. Com.” He asserted the Fugitive Slave Law should be kept to protect the “peace and interest of the country.” The next year, the congregation of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Harrisburg gave McAllister an ultimatum: he could resign as commissioner or forfeit his position as Vestryman. McAllister chose the former and resigned as slave commissioner in 1852. By 1853, the Slave Commission Office ceased operations. After McAllister resigned, Harrisburg more freely aided countless freedom seekers on their journey north.

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania played a critical role for those seeking freedom for themselves and their families. There are many more stories of Harrisburg area residents who helped aid freedom seekers, including Henry Watson, Daniel Kaufmen, Jacob Shockley, Hiram E. Werz, James McCallister, Dr. William W. Rutherford of Front Street, and Reverend James Graham. Indeed, Harrisburg and its residents helped innumerable freedom seekers to safety. Their lives and the history of the city are forever intertwined in the fight against slavery, a time that represents a pivotal period in American history.

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A Gathering at the Crossroads: The Story of the Commonwealth Monument

2023-11-01T15:40:47+00:00

In 2020, as communities around the nation took down monuments symbolizing the legacies of American slavery, Harrisburg residents set up a monument to African American history and the power of the vote.

On August 26, 2020, A Gathering at the Crossroads commemorated the anniversaries of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments through the installation of a monument to Harrisburg’s Black history. 150 years after the right to universal male suffrage was granted to the people of the United States, and 100 years after women's suffrage was established, 2020 marked the intersection of the legacies of past achievements, and the inconsistencies and obstacles of the present. Beginning in the Spring of 2020, protests against police brutality toward Black Americans swept the nation, calling attention to continued injustices in American society.
At the height of this racial reckoning, a new bronze monument was placed on the Irvis Equality Circle, which marks the south lawn of the Speaker K. Leroy Irvis Office Building in Harrisburg’s Capitol Complex. A little more than a century ago, neither the Circle nor the expansive Capitol building existed. The area where this monument now stands was once a part of the Old Eighth Ward known as Tanner’s Alley, a predominantly African American neighborhood. Instead of lush green spaces and domed ceilings, this part of Harrisburg was filled with thriving churches, schools, businesses, and private residences. In the early twentieth century, however, these spaces were torn down and families were forced out of their homes due to the Capitol expansion project. The City Beautiful movement started as a push to create new green spaces and waste disposal measures that would benefit the entire community, but by the 1910s, it had morphed into a drive to complete the Capitol Complex that stands today. The Old Eighth, home to significant Black, Jewish, and immigrant populations, was demolished and residents were forced to relocate. For many years, their names and stories were forgotten.
The monument at Irvis Equality Circle is, to date, the only monument on the Capitol grounds honoring Harrisburg's Black community. The Commonwealth Monument Project is an initiative of the the International Institute for Peace through Tourism and was led by Lenwood Sloan (Executive Director), Jeb Stuart (Secretary of Logistics and Installation), Kelly Summerford (Treasurer), Phyllis Bennett (Government and Business Liaison), and Valerie Leblanc (Planning and Development). It enjoyed bipartisan support from both the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and Senate, along with major financial contributions from the City of Harrisburg, the Foundation for Enhancing Communities, Peggy Grove, Dauphin County Commissioners, Messiah University, Senator Sharif Street, and many other generous donors.
Artist Becky Ault and Art Design Group crafted four life-sized bronze statues of African American orators, each of whom made major contributions to the quest for racial justice in America and have a meaningful connection to the city of Harrisburg. These include, from left to right:
Thomas Morris Chester (1834–1892), a Civil War correspondent and Harrisburg native. In 1863, he became the captain of one of Harrisburg’s Union companies. Through 1864, Chester reported on the war effort, particularly the contributions of African American troops. Most newspapers completely overlooked the African American soldiers, but through Chester’s journalism, papers such as the Philadelphia Press printed information about them. After the war, Chester returned to Harrisburg where he became the secretary of the newly founded Garnet Equal Rights League, which advocated for Black rights and freedoms. This section of Walnut Street is named the "T. Morris Chester Way" in his honor.
Jacob T. Compton (1836–1905), sergeant in Company D of the 24th United States Colored Infantry (USCT) and local musician. In the Harrisburg community, Compton was known for leading the choirs of both African Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal Zion churches, and for founding the Excelsior Band. Compton was also a carriage driver. Among the ranks of his passengers was Abraham Lincoln, soon to be the sixteenth president of the United States. In February 1861, before his inauguration, president-elect Abraham Lincoln visited Harrisburg. When an assassination plot was uncovered, it was Compton who drove the getaway carriage.
The third figure, Reverend William Howard Day (1825–1900), was a prominent educator and orator, and one of America’s most renowned civil rights activists of his time. His contributions to Harrisburg were plentiful. In the 1870s, Day was appointed to the Harrisburg School Board of Directors. He successfully led the board in allocating funds to public schools for new textbooks and blackboards. Day fought for better education for African Americans both by improving the schools that existed for African American students and by beginning the process of integration at Harrisburg’s all-white Boys High School. Day was also an active community leader at the Wesley Union African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church on South Street.
The final figure on the right is Francis Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911), who fought for the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and temperance. This statue of Francis holds the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed universal male suffrage. She is depicted passing the document back to Day, demonstrating that there was still more to do: women were not yet enfranchised. Harper was a renowned antislavery journalist, poet, and public speaker, who gave lectures in cities across the United States, including Harrisburg. One of her most famous speeches, “We Are All Bound Up Together,” expressed the frustrations of Black women at being largely excluded from the women’s suffrage movement and called for universal voting rights.
These four visionaries surround a pedestal at the center of the monument. A model of the Old Eighth Ward sits on top. A blue star indicates the location of the monument relative to the vanished landscape of the Old Eighth Ward. The sides of the pedestal bear the names of one hundred influential Black residents of Harrisburg. These individuals were freedom seekers, abolitionists, suffragists, church leaders, doctors, businesspeople, poets, and more. All called Harrisburg home, and all fought for a better, more equitable city.
The impact of the many Black Americans honored by A Gathering at the Crossroads is not confined to this space on Walnut Street. Their legacies are everywhere: in Harrisburg’s school system, churches, cemeteries, and homes. Some of their stories have been explored throughout the “Chester Way” tour. Each location highlights a moment in time when Harrisburg’s residents spoke out against oppressive structures and ushered in radical change in areas of education, politics, and social life. As you reflect on each stop on the tour, you may discover something new about the capital city’s history and find yourself at a different kind of “crossroads,” as the struggles, hopes, and triumphs of the past intersect with the aspirations of the present.
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The Lincoln Street School: Educational Inequity and Reform during the Nineteenth Century

2023-10-25T23:59:48+00:00

The Lincoln School was one of several institutions founded in the 1860s and 1870s to address the lack of quality education opportunities for Black students in Harrisburg. It stood as a testament to the strides toward educational reform in the late nineteenth century and the work left to be done.

More advantages should be procured for the further advancement of our children in knowledge, so as to fit them to occupy the various positions that are every day opening to our people, and not only that, but to sufficiently qualify them for the business pursuits of life.
— William Howard Day, speech quoted in the Harrisburg Telegraph, Dec. 11, 1874
In early-nineteenth-century Harrisburg, Black children had limited access to formal education. The public school system was segregated and the provision of classroom spaces fell upon Black churches. In 1817, the Wesley Union Zion African Methodist Episcopal church-run Franklin Hall opened its doors to pupils. Such church schools served as Black Americans’ primary form of access to education until after the Civil War. Some Black students enrolled in the Lancasterian School on Walnut Street, founded in 1827. The school provided free education to a racially diverse group of students until the city closed it in 1834 on the grounds that it was not sufficiently profitable. Harrisburg’s “first integrated school” was then replaced by the all-white DeWitt School for Boys.
One approach to addressing the educational inequity in Harrisburg was to establish schools specifically for the Black population. Under the guidance of State Superintendent of Public Instruction James P. Wickersham, Harrisburg constructed several schools in majority-Black neighborhoods in the Sixth and Eighth Wards. One such institution was the Lincoln School, which opened at the corner of North and Fifth Streets in 1871. Led by Principal Spencer P. Irvin, the Lincoln School was widely known for its robust extracurricular offerings, including Christmas festivals, musical ensembles, and skilled athletics teams.
As much a testament to racially restrictive policy as to progress, the Lincoln School suffered from Harrisburg’s unwillingness to prioritize funding for Black institutions. While white schools received grants to expand their buildings and upgrade equipment, the Lincoln School went decades without receiving finances for renovations. Parents protested the injustice, noting how their children and teachers frequently contracted illness from the poorly ventilated rooms. Something more needed to be done.
Major strides in educational reform for Harrisburg’s Black population were made under the leadership of one of the most celebrated civil rights leaders of the era: Reverend William Howard Day. Originally from New York City, Day was an activist and orator who spoke out against slavery and, later, the subjugation of Black Americans in the United States. He also served as the Superintendent of Colored Schools in Maryland and Delaware in the late 1860s. Day arrived in Harrisburg in 1871 to work as the secretary for the auditor general-elect, but in 1874, he became directly involved in Harrisburg’s education system when he was appointed to the Pennsylvania Department of Education Board of Examiners. He held numerous other offices, serving as the first African American member of the Harrisburg School Board in 1878 and, in 1891, rising to become its president. At the time, he was the only Black school board president in the nation. While in office, Day oversaw the enhancement of schools for all children in Harrisburg, but was especially committed to improving the quality of education for the city’s Black students.
Recognizing the disparity between resources provided to white and Black schools, Day advocated tirelessly for the desegregation of Harrisburg’s education system. He called for the “abolition of white schools,” acknowledging that this was the surest path to ensure equitable access to resources for both Black and white students. Day also successfully decreased truancy rates across the city by implementing a more effective attendance system and allocated city funds toward the purchase of textbooks for all schools, including the majority-Black institutions.
Day also served as a mentor to Black students, encouraging them to own their education and pursue excellence. In the late 1870s, he advocated for two Black students at the Lincoln School, John P. Scott and William H. Marshall, to be admitted to the all-white Boys' High School. After excelling on their entrance exams, Scott and Marshall were the first Black students enrolled at the Boys' School in 1878. That same year, two African American girls, whose names have been lost to history, were the first to be admitted to the Girls’ School. These four students marked the first major victory of a century-long battle to integrate Harrisburg’s schools. When they graduated in 1883, both Scott and Marshall read commencement addresses. Scott pursued a career as an educator, remaining in the Harrisburg school system for forty-seven years. He ultimately returned to the Lincoln School as principal and, working alongside Day, helped establish a new library for its students.
The reforms of the 1870s and 80s were not the final strides of the education justice movement but its first steps. William Howard Day, John P. Scott, and their contemporaries helped bring the call for educational reform to the center stage of Harrisburg politics amid continued resistance from white residents. It would be their twentieth-century successors who picked up the mantle, and the students of the 1970s who would see the full realization of the dream for integrated schools. As for the Lincoln School, it was renamed the Day School in 1903, memorializing its friend and strongest supporter, William Howard Day. In 2020, Harrisburg unveiled a bronze statue of Day as part of the monument group called "A Gathering at the Crossroads" — a fitting reminder and celebration of the orator's legacy of change.
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Harrisburg's African Methodist Episcopal Churches: The Road to Emancipation

2023-10-24T20:35:55+00:00

During the nineteenth century, the African American churches of Harrisburg were much more than houses of worship; they were agents of enfranchisement and liberation.

It was January 1, 1863. To many residents of Harrisburg, it was likely just a typical New Year's Day, but to the city's African American community, it held far greater significance as it marked the day the newly passed Emancipation Proclamation took effect. That evening, three chosen men met at the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church on Short Street to write a response to this momentous occasion. Not only did they encapsulate the joy and approval that African Americans felt, but also the anger and frustration that stemmed from two centuries of racial discrimination and dehumanization, warranting such a proclamation in the first place. By the end of that night’s worship service, the response was approved via a vote, simultaneously celebrating a win for African Americans worldwide while also acknowledging that work was far from over — work that Black churches in Harrisburg had already been doing for decades and would continue in the years ahead. The resolution composed by schoolteacher John Wolf, prominent community member Samuel Bennett, and Reverend David Stevens of the Wesley Union AME Zion Church may have captured what Harrisburg’s African American community felt about slavery, but their actions spoke louder. Despite its small stature, under the leadership of Reverend Mifflin Gibbs, the Bethel AME Church “included many of those who did man's work by day and the Lord's work by night, maintaining an active presence in that shadowy operation known as the Underground Railroad.” Understanding the difficulties that resulted from escaping slavery, the church provided housing for freedom seekers and found them employment in the local coal, iron, and steel industries, helping them settle into their new lives in the North, whether Harrisburg was their final home or merely a stop on the way. Later, following the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, Bethel AME took things a step further by registering new voters and offering classes in civic education, ushering in a new era of voting rights for the city. Although the Short Street church played a crucial role in the antislavery movement and in advancing the rights of African Americans, it was not alone. At the corner of Third and Mulberry Streets sat the small log building that housed the Wesley Union Church. Its neighborhood of “Judy’s Town” was a key spot for African American social and spiritual life, so it is unsurprising that it became the first of Harrisburg’s regular Underground Railroad stops, becoming the epicenter of the movement in the city by 1829. As at Bethel AME, many freedom seekers found refuge at Wesley Union, a direct result of the sermons that congregants heard during worship services, filling them with a sense of love and duty that inspired them to put everything on the line to help total strangers. One early Wesley Union congregant, William “Pap” Jones, was known for being one of the most effective Underground Railroad conductors in the area, using his extensive knowledge of northern routes to create guides for freedom seekers. Another congregant, Harriet McClintock Marshall, assisted freedom seekers by providing them with shelter, food, and clothing before ushering them to their next stops on their journeys to freedom; her husband’s status as a formerly enslaved man likely strengthened her resolve to help others on their journeys to freedom. In fact, Harrisburg’s African American community was participating in Underground Railroad activities long before the Underground Railroad was established. For instance, Reverend David Stevens of Wesley Union Church encouraged his congregation to “strive for self-reliance and community,” a mission they fulfilled by assisting the needy in every way possible. The “needy,” of course, included enslaved people who had escaped from their bonds and were settling in the North. These actions led to the formation of a sort of network that connected different members of the Harrisburg African American community throughout the 1820s and 1830s under a common goal. Stevens and fellow African American minister Jacob D. Richardson publicly denounced slavery and opened the church to anti-slavery meetings and events, even attempting to start their own anti-slavery newspaper — Zion’s Wesleyan Connection — in 1841. The church continued to grow until their small log building in Judy’s Town was no longer big enough, leading founding pastor Stevens to seek out a new location at the corner of Tanner’s Alley and State Street, east of the Capitol building, where the congregation moved in its entirety in 1839. The construction of new buildings on the same site in 1862 and then again in 1894 demonstrates Wesley Union's success throughout the nineteenth century as it continued to flourish in spite of adversity. Churches such as Bethel AME and Wesley Union played a pivotal role in organizing Harrisburg’s Underground Railroad. From holding recruitment meetings for Black Civil War regiments to hosting national-scale anti-slavery speakers, houses of worship stood at the forefront of the city’s efforts to resist slavery and to support freedom seekers. Indifferent or discriminatory residents of Harrisburg may have viewed these African American men and women as "radicals" or lawbreakers, but in reality, they were fighting for justice and human dignity as children of God.
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Harrisburg's Lincoln Cemetery : Restoring Dignity in Death

2023-10-09T17:20:17+00:00

The Lincoln Cemetery in Penbrook, Pennsylvania, features the largest burial ground for African Americans in the Harrisburg region. Founded in the 1870s, the cemetery is the final resting place for some of the Commonwealth's most influential Black citizens.

Harrisburg, Carlisle, Chambersburg, and Gettysburg: four communities in south-central Pennsylvania with their own rich histories. However, one rather surprising fact unites them all: each contains a burial ground called the Lincoln Cemetery. Following the Civil War, this name became common for Black cemeteries nationwide, many of which were founded in response to discriminatory policies that barred African Americans from decent burials elsewhere. Black Americans achieved dignity in death despite discriminatory policies, as exemplified by Harrisburg's Lincoln Cemetery on South Thirtieth Street in Penbrook. Through the dedication of its founders, church, and volunteer caretakers, this cemetery has persevered through challenges to serve the local community and remains an essential landmark of Harrisburg's Black history. The plot of land that would become the Lincoln Cemetery officially fell under the ownership of the Wesley Union Church on November 17, 1877. The church, together with solicitor David Mumma, had widely advertised their plans for a new cemetery the previous year. Their proactive efforts in alerting the Black community led to well over one thousand bodies to be disinterred from other cemeteries across the city and reinterred in Lincoln Cemetery. By some estimates, the majority of the Black burials of Harrisburg's preexisting cemeteries — at the African Burying Ground, Wesleyan Church Cemetery, and Harris Free Cemetery — were moved to Lincoln Cemetery at this time.
Both white and Black citizens attended the cemetery's dedication ceremony on a windy Sunday afternoon, enjoying music provided by the church, as well as addresses from speakers such as William Howard Day, who also read aloud the deed transferring ownership to the church trustees. In the few years following the opening of the Lincoln Cemetery, all appeared well; the Wesley Union African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church was praised for owning all of its properties, including Lincoln, with no debt, and one April 1882 article of The Patriot described it as being “in a most flourishing condition.”
Lincoln Cemetery was segregated, as was common to all nineteenth-century cemeteries in the city. Though segregation is often associated with the South, it was prevalent in northern cities as well. In Harrisburg, the dilapidated condition of Wesley Union’s older burial ground reflected the cards that Black residents had been dealt in this regard. The realities of segregation made the Lincoln Cemetery necessary to provide African Americans with proper, dignified burials. Thanks to the actions of the Wesley Union AME Church, Harrisburg gained an essential new center for Black burials. In fact, the Lincoln Cemetery is so significant that numerous influential members of Harrisburg's African American community have made it their final resting place. One of these is none other than William Howard Day, who had delivered a speech at the cemetery’s opening about twenty years before his death in 1900. His funeral was the first to be held in Wesley Union’s auditorium, and hundreds of guests came to pay tribute to this highly influential Black school board president, scholar, and activist. Another notable figure buried in the cemetery is T. Morris Chester, the famed Black Civil War correspondent and lawyer whose successes began at his family’s oyster house in Harrisburg before expanding internationally. Harriet McClintock Marshall, Wesley Union Church member and Underground Railroad conductor, is not only buried there, but she contributed to a monument for African American Civil War veterans in the cemetery as well. Those veterans include Ephraim Slaughter, who was the city’s last living Civil War veteran and namesake of American Legion Post 733. The gravesites for four of these figures can still be visited in the Lincoln Cemetery alongside thousands of others. However, dignity was not always accessible to African Americans, even in death. While Black cemeteries elsewhere in Harrisburg attracted attention for their extreme states of neglect in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Lincoln Cemetery faced its own troubles well into the twentieth century, demonstrating how the effects of segregation persisted long after these harmful policies were supposedly abolished. Even as recently as the early 1990s, vandals and motorbike riders toppled around two hundred gravestones, causing an estimated $20,000 to $25,000 in damage. Jeanne E. Jones, chairwoman of the church’s cemetery committee, did what she and other volunteers could to restore as much as possible, but the Wesley Union AME Zion Church struggled with a lack of adequate funding for the job. Today, Saving Our Ancestors' Legacy (SOAL) plays the important role of safeguarding the cemetery. The 1990s saw an increase in recognition of the Lincoln Cemetery as an essential part of Harrisburg’s history as well. Amid the cleanup efforts following vandalism, the Lincoln Cemetery was chosen as a recipient of the 1991 Historical Preservation Award by the Historic Harrisburg Association. Then, during the summer of 1994, the cemetery received its historical marker in a dedication ceremony sponsored by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and the Wesley Union AME Zion Church. Nevertheless, a lack of adequate funding and other resources for maintenance still haunted the Lincoln Cemetery for years, even after receiving its honors, leaving it in an “extreme state of neglect” as of June 2021. Today, restoration of the Lincoln Cemetery is overseen by SOAL, a grassroots volunteer organization founded by the descendants of those buried there. SOAL has conducted a regular program of physical restoration, including cleaning and repairing grave markers, groundskeeping efforts, uncovering lost graves, restoring the landscape, and protecting against ongoing vandalism. SOAL has also collaborated with a range of institutions, including Messiah University and the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, to document and share the cemetery’s story with wider audiences. SOAL is committed to restoring and preserving “Harrisburg’s Oldest Black Cemetery” both in the physical world and in the digital one, helping ensure that the stories of the people buried there — as well as those of the cemetery as a whole — will be honored for generations to come, bringing some much-deserved dignity to one of the city’s most significant unsung landmarks. A full list of the resources used in this story can be found here.
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