AREA HISTORY:  Confederate Invasion, Manchester Township, York County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Kathy Francis

Copyright 2006.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/york/
_______________________________________________ 

History of York County, Pennsylvania.  John Gibson, Historical Editor.
Chicago: F. A. Battey Publishing Co., 1886.
_______________________________________________

CONFEDERATE INVASION – Page 618

On the 28th of June, 1863, Gen. Early, while advancing on York, and when at 
Weiglestown, sent Col. French, with a detachment on the Seventeenth Virginia 
Cavalry, across Manchester Township, to the mouth of the Conewago, to burn the 
railroad bridges there.  They halted, for a time, at Liverpool and Mount Wolf.  They 
took from the stores, boots, shoes, hats, and some other clothing, paid for them in 
Confederate currency, which they proudly affirmed would soon be “better than your 
greenbacks, as we are now on our way to Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and New York, and 
the war will soon be over.”

They cut down the telegraph poles, destroyed a number of small railroad bridges and 
the two large ones.  They compelled Benjamin Miller, an intelligent farmer, to go 
with them and direct them to the bridges, which they set fire to with coal oil.  In 
the afternoon they went to York.

About 400 Union soldiers had been encamped on Col. Hoff’s farm, to guard these 
bridges, but they crossed over the Susquehanna during the early morning of the same 
day, fearing the approach of a large army.  A few shots were fired at the last boat 
load by the Confederates.