Camp Hill

Camp Hill in Harpers Ferry reflects layers of local and national history. In the early 1700s, town founder Robert Harper ran a ferry business and a gristmill in the Lower Town area, and he and other notables were buried in Harper Cemetery at the end of Fillmore Street. The area took its name from an encampment of US Army soldiers there in the late 1700s. From 1848 to 1861, Camp Hill included armory housing, and the hilltop position of the armory paymaster's house made a statement about the presence and power of the paymaster and the armory; along Fillmore Street, three of the original four armory mansions have survived. During the Civil War from 1861 to 1865, the armory and its Camp Hill housing were abandoned at the outbreak of war, Camp Hill became an encampment for both Union and Confederate troops, and its buildings served as hospitals, prisons, bivouacs, or quarters. From 1867 to 1955, Storer College stood there as an oasis of learning and freedom in the segregated South, open to all regardless of race or gender, and in 1906 the Niagara Movement, a precursor to the NAACP, held its first conference in the United States on the campus.

Lovettsville, Maryland · United States