McAllister's Mill

A stone grist mill along Rock Creek, purchased in 1822 by James McAllister, became a stop along the Underground Railroad where McAllister and his family gave temporary shelter to hundreds of enslaved people seeking freedom in the North, resting and feeding them and guiding them away from bounty hunters who patrolled this area above the Mason-Dixon Line. As part of a network of secret locations around Adams County, the mill was the site of a meeting of local abolitionists on July 4, 1836, when attendees, sons and grandsons of Revolutionary War soldiers, unanimously adopted 14 anti-slavery resolutions, including the declaration, "If liberty is the right of all men, no human being can be rightfully held in slavery." During the Battle of Gettysburg, Union artillery was placed on Powers Hill behind this site, Union reinforcements rested here on the afternoon of July 2 before moving to the other side of the Federal line, and hundreds of Union soldiers sought refuge around the McAllister farmhouse and mill, with many buried on the property. The mill fell into disrepair soon after the war and was eventually dismantled. In the decades after the war, the surrounding area became the Gettysburg borough dump, and later a miniature golf course opened here. Today, the site is part of The National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom and was restored in 2024 by the American Battlefield Trust.

Pennsylvania · United States