It was around 12:30 on Sunday, June 14, 2009, as my friend Bob and I departed Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in search of more famous and thrilling sites in this fine state. We had already dramatically altered our itinerary by spending quite a bit of time in Gettysburg. In fact by this point just two days into our travels, the itinerary basically went out the window because we decided to zip on over to Harrisburg and get the state capitol tour completed – an activity which hadn’t been scheduled until Friday. Obviously, our original route was a bit questionable.
We got to Harrisburg in about an hour, but before going to the State Capitol, we first visited the National Civil War Museum located nearby. The museum was constructed in Harrisburg because of its relatively close proximity to Gettysburg. Within its two-floor structure, the museum contains 17 galleries pertaining to the entire span of the Civil War and beyond without bias to either side. Many original artifacts had been collected and are on display including the last battle map used by General Lee during the Appomattox campaign.
There was documentary screening room that Bob and I visited for a bit and at the end of the tour there was a great video showing two Civil War veteran’s reunions at Gettysburg. The first was the 50th reunion from 1913, and the next was the 75th from 1938. At that time there were only 8000 Civil War vets still living, and only 1845 could attend. The highlight of this reunion was the lighting of the eternal flame in the Eternal Light Peace Memorial by President Franklin Roosevelt. We had just seen this memorial during our visit to Gettysburg.
At the entrance to the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg
A touching sculpture out front: Moment of Mercy (2001) by Terry Jones
John Brown shows up again
What would a Civil War Museum be without a face in the cannon
The framed swatch of wallpaper on the right was hanging in the hallway next to the room in the Peterson home where President Lincoln died on April 15, 1865
Addressing the masses at the National Civil War Museum
The museum was great but we only spent a little under an hour there before heading off to the State Capitol, not far from the museum. This was my eighth state capitol visit and although I am still a bit of a novice in this journey, so far this was by far the most impressive one I had seen. It was constructed almost like a palace or church that I was used to seeing in Italy. In fact the capitol’s dome was designed to resemble the one in St. Peter’s Basilica, and I impressed the other members of the tour by whipping out the photo on my digital camera of the dome picture that I had taken during my visit to the Vatican. Our tour guide had never got to actually compare the two while standing under the one in the capitol.
The tour was the standard fare of visiting the Senate and House galleries, and the state supreme court. All were magnificent in their artistic glory, but one of my favorite things was the little plaque on the floor of the capitol foyer indicating that President Theodore Roosevelt had stood in this spot when he dedicated the new capitol building (the third in Harrisburg) on October 4, 1906.
I’m actually there in this picture of the State Capitol. Another game of Where’s Brado anyone?
The historical marker outside the capitol
I get playful while waiting for our tour to begin
…and then bored on the grand staircase in the capitol rotunda
The plaque indicating where President Theodore Roosevelt dedicated the capitol building
The copycat dome
In the senate chambers – or at least high above them
Pleading my case to the state Supreme Court
Squeaker of the House
After our tour of the capitol, we headed south for about an hour’s drive until we arrived at York around 4:30pm. Here we began our quest for finding the graves of the signers of the Declaration of Independence – and the United States Constitution. To be honest, I wasn’t exactly thrilled about visiting so many graves during the trip, especially when we had cut out the visit to Baltimore and Annapolis that I had hoped to do. However, once we began finding the graves, I soon got interested in the quest – just like most of the things that Bob has ‘persuaded’ me to add to my bucket list.
For starters, most of the signers of these two vitally important documents are relatively obscure to the everyday Joe like me, so I enjoyed familiarizing myself with them from a historical perspective. Bob had brought along the biographical entries of these men as taken from the Find A Grave website. Secondly, I enjoyed the search for the graves once we arrived at the cemetery. I am very adept at matching the photos up to the sites where they were taken by observing the visual cues found in the picture. And lastly, again I see this as a fun scavenger hunt that will take me to different parts of America. So even after this trip, I visited my first pair of signers on my own when my family and I visited Charleston, South Carolina.
So who was the first? Well in actuality, I had already visited the graves of three of the signers of the D.O.I. (Jefferson, Harrison, and Wythe) during my visit to Virginia in 2007 – but the first visit during this trip was Philip Livingston (1716-1778). Oddly enough, Livingston – the first signer’s grave we visited in Pennsylvania – was not actually a Pennsylvania delegate. He had represented New York in the Continental Congress. Livingston died unexpectedly while attending the sixth session of Congress in York and was buried there in Prospect Cemetery.
The first Declaration of Independence Signer of the trip – Philip Livingston in York
Our second D.O.I. grave visit was also in York. Located in the First Presbyterian Church of York was the commonly named James Smith (1719-1806). Smith was in fact a Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress.
Declaration of Independence Signer James Smith
After our two grave visits in York, we began to make our way east toward Delaware. Lancaster was right on the way, but we decided not to visit the James Buchanan sites located here since his Wheatland home would not be open on Sunday. It was a bit tempting since we were in the city of a Presidential grave to just go see it, but we only stopped for dinner in Lancaster.
Bob fumbles with Maggie the GPS
We ate at the historic Revere Tavern (est. 1740). I had a decent pork chop dinner, but it wasn’t until we were finished eating that Bob noted a plaque on the wall of the waiting area that indicated that the building had in fact once belonged to President James Buchanan from 1854 to about 1865, at which time it was a tavern. Previously to that it had been owned by Buchanan’s brother Jame Edward Buchanan and his wife Eliza Foster Buchanan. Eliza was the sister of Camptown Races songwriter Stephen Foster. Such an odd and pleasant coincidence that Bob would have chosen this place to dine!
The Revere Tavern – who would have thunk?
Dining in President Buchanan’s old digs
Plaque indicating the unique history of the restaurant
We weren’t quite done for the night as we began to make our way southward at about 7:00. There would be just a bit more to see that night…but we would be doing it in yet another state.
The trip will continue in Delaware…
Met the ghost of Stephen Foster at the Hotel Paradise. This is what he told me as I gazed into his eyes:
Rooms were made for carpets, towers made for spires, ships were made for cannonade fire off from inside them.
Gwine to run all night.
Gwine to run all day.
Camptown ladies never sang all the doo dah day.
No, no, no.
Chris
August 8th, 2009
I like those Civil War Reunion films. The boys from the south actually do “The Rebel Yell” on the 1938 film.
Visiting the graves of all the signers of both documents ought to be fun. You two always have such ambitious goals. I hope you both managed to visit the original documents at The National Archives. They also have The Articles of Confederation, The Gettysburg Adrress, and an original Magna Carta on display there.
Dave Chasteen
August 8th, 2009