"A small but significantly Historical Village"

Hunterstown, Pennsylvania is located on Route 394 one mile east of the Hunterstown Exchange of Route U.S. 15 North of Gettysburg.

After the American Indians made their trade routes west of the Susquehanna River through this area, immigrants started to settle along their trails. Many were Scotch-Irish. The Penn proprietors of the land through this area, which is now Hunterstown, granted Michael Drumgold a warrant for 100 acres on June 8, 1749. In October the same year surveyor Thomas Cookson laid out a total of 182 acres for Drumgold. It was on October 8, 1760 Michael and Margaret Drumgold sold this land to David Hunter. On March 14, 1764 the Penn heirs awarded Hunter a patent deed for the 182 acres granting him the full and complete title he desired to establish a village.

On April 2, 1764 David Hunter gave William Galbreath a deed for the first lot "situate in the town of "Straban" as it was called then. Later it was referred to as "Woodstock". As lots were sold, small log homes were built. Later weather-board and brick dwellings appeared.

As the year 1800 was drawing nigh the village was appropriately named after its founder and called Hunterstown. A county seat was being sought for the new county of Adams and Hunterstown vied for that status. It was centrally located as far as population in the county and it was located on "The Great Road" from York to Pittsburgh by the way of "Black’s Gap". The town of Gettysburg received the final honor as County Seat.

One special landmark in Hunterstown is the Historic Tate Farm and Blacksmith Shop. In October 1794 President George Washington had the occasion to stop here. Because of the taxation put on liquor, many in western Pennsylvania were rebelling and decided they were not going to abide by the law. President Washington called up troops from four states and he himself went by carriage and horseback to review the troops, 15,000 strong, in Carlisle and Bedford and planned how they were to quell what was called the Whiskey Rebellion. This was accomplished without any major fight. On returning to Philadelphia, the capitol at that time, a horse in the President’s party threw a shoe and they stopped in Hunterstown at the Tate Farm blacksmith shop near Beaver Dam Creek to have it shod.

Just fields away from the Tate Farm is the Felty and Gilbert Farms where Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer’s Cavalry under the direction of Brigadier General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick met in battle with General Wade Hampton’s Division of J.E.B. Stuart’s Cavalry on July 2, 1863. This battle, now referred to as North Cavalry Field, is viewed as having a significant bearing on the remainder of the Battle of Gettysburg. Here Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer set a "trap" for the enemy in which he narrowly escaped losing his own life. Kilpatrick reported 32 dead and wounded of his division of some 3,500. The confederates suffered around 100 casualties in the fighting of 2,000 involved.

In the center of Hunterstown is the Grass Hotel built before the Civil War. The hotel served as temporary Union headquarters for Brig. General Judson Kilpatrick during the battle of Hunterstown and afterwards served as a hospital for the north and south. A number of officers died here.

The Great Conewago Presbyterian Church was organized in 1740. They met in a log structure until a fieldstone church was built in 1787. It is still in use today. It also served as a hospital during the Civil War. The adjacent cemetery contains gravesites of Revolutionary War soldiers and Civil War veterans along with generations of local inhabitants.

In 1885 the Galloway Brothers opened a copper mine just north of the village. After several years it closed and the township used the copper/gold bearing rock for the streets and roads. So they claimed "the roads were paved in gold." The mine was opened once again by the Reliance Mining and Milling Company of Arizona in 1905. Although it was not hugely successful it employed 20 local men working "around the clock." The mine was abandoned in 1916.

Through the 19^th and 20^th century the village had a two-room country school and a Methodist Church on the main street, both are still existing but not used today.

Among the early inhabitants of the village were a doctor, undertaker, watchmaker, shoemaker, carpenter, tailor, and wagon maker. During the 1830’s John C. Studebaker, a blacksmith, and his skilled employees built conestoga-type wagons in a shop between Hunterstown and Heidlersburg. He ventured to Ohio and then to South Bend Indiana to have the largest company for manufacturing wagons and carriages and later through his descendants the Studebaker automobile.

Over the years Hunterstown had many small country stores, a post office, creamery, fruit-packing house, millinery shop, gun club and horse race track. As many as ten families made chairs as early as 1830’s into the early 1900’s. It once had a military guard unit and a baseball team. The village currently has two churches, a dog kennel and grooming establishment, a horse-boarding farm with lesson programs, a childcare center, a tea room, go-cart track, car body shop, transmission shop, and vintage car shop.

Hunterstown, population 100, a village rich in history where the desire of its people is to restore and preserve what it now has to share with others. Here you can’t help but feel the heart beat of the past and imagine those who walked and rode these once dusty roads. You may hear the distant toll of the school bell, the happy sounds of children at play or music from the old church pump organ. You may hear the hoof beats of the cavalry approaching or the sound of the artillery that echoed over the village. Memories linger of the mournful groans of the injured and dying in the fields and makeshift hospitals and the prayers of the faithful as they gave their last full measure here.Hunterstown, Pennsylvania – A quaint little village with

A story to tell!

Linda K. Cleveland

Straban Historical Reflections

Historian – Hunterstown Historical Society

Revised - 2009