Built by Dr. Allen C. Hamond in 1838, Hammond House survived the Civil War and a 1978 fire, but the war era brought irreparable personal loss to the Southern-sympathizing Hammond family. In October 1859, George Newkirk "Kirk" Hammond, a Virginia Military Institute graduate and the son of Allen C. Hammond, joined Capt. E.G. Alburtis' county militia after learning of John Brown's Raid on the Harpers Ferry armory. The company marched to Harpers Ferry, freed some of Brown's hostages, and forced the raiders to withdraw into the armory fire engine house, now called Brown's Fort; George Hammond was wounded in the action. When the Civil War began, Hammond joined Col. J.E.B. Stuart's 1st Virginia Cavalry and became captain of Co. B, the Berkeley Troop, and both Hammond and Stuart were mortally wounded at the Battle of Yellow Tavern on May 11, 1864. During the Antietam Campaign in 1862, Confederate Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's men camped here on September 11 after cutting the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at North Mountain Depot north of Martinsburg to prevent surrounded Union forces at Harpers Ferry from escaping by rail. In July 1864, Confederate Gen. John McCausland began his cavalry raid into Pennsylvania from this house and burned Chambersburg in retaliation for the Federal destruction of houses in the Shenandoah Valley. Union troops also used the home; in December 1862, Lt. Richard G. Prendergast of the 1st New York Cavalry attacked a nearby 7th Virginia Cavalry detachment, wounding and capturing 13 of them.