Confederate General Albert G. Jenkins’s advance toward Harrisburg stalled near Oyster’s Point, named for an Oyster family tavern at the junction of Carlisle Pike and Trindle Springs Road, where those roads formed a fork in 1863 around the 3000 block of Market Street. Recognizing the strategic importance of controlling these roads, select Union forces moved out from Harrisburg’s defenses and gathered nearby. The surrounding community, known as White Hall, consisted of about a dozen homes, and in the days before the Confederates arrived, Union militia looted local houses and farmsteads, taking goods, food, blankets, and livestock. Fighting began in the early afternoon of June 28, 1863, when Confederates fired artillery from the vicinity of Peace Church and the Samuel Albright House on East 36th Street, while Confederate skirmishers and Union pickets fought north and south of the pike, with the lines shifting through the afternoon mainly between the 3100 and 3300 blocks of Market Street. On June 29, under orders to scout Harrisburg’s defenses and report to infantry in Carlisle, Jenkins used a ruse by bombarding the Union position for about two hours and then sending mounted Confederates charging down the pike, driving back Union militia as far as Limekiln Lane, present-day 28th Street in Camp Hill. This became the farthest advance toward Harrisburg by any Confederate force, and while those troops remained under fire for at least another hour and held Union attention, Jenkins rode south to observe Harrisburg’s defenses.
