On June 27, 1863, anxiety filled Hanover Junction as Confederates from Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army swarmed across the Pennsylvania countryside, seizing goods and horses, cutting telegraph lines, burning bridges, and destroying the railroad. At this junction, where the Hanover Branch Railroad met the critical Northern Central Railway, the telegraph from nearby Hanover went silent at 12:30 p.m. after sending the message, “The Confederates are here.” Around 2 p.m., Confederate Gen. Elijah White and his “Comanches,” the 35th Virginia Cavalry Battalion, appeared and were seen galloping along the highway, over the creek, and across the railroad. Two locomotives barely escaped the station under fire. Two hundred members of the 20th Volunteer Militia regiment, assigned to defend the junction, had built light fortifications on the hill to the right and formed a skirmish line in front of the depot, but when White’s 125 screaming, shouting, pistol-firing raiders came into view, the skirmishers quickly retreated up the hill. Black smoke rose as the raiders burned the adjacent bridge, the railroad turntable, and railroad cars, while other squads burned more bridges and cut telegraph wires farther along the tracks. The telegraph office inside the station was ransacked, but not before 16-year-old apprentice telegrapher John Sheared sent a final message. Late in the afternoon, the “Comanches” rode on north, with some heading toward the Howard Tunnel.

Photo: Larry Gertner

Photo: Larry Gertner

Photo: via Library of Congress

Photo: Larry Gertner