Visiting Harpers Ferry

Saturday, June 29, was our last day of DAR activities. We did some final research in the Library, voted for a new slate of National officers, decided that the National organization would now take over the Insignia business for NSDAR, and attended the evening ceremony during which we honored our military and veterans with several prestigious awards!

Bob, Holly, Samantha & Suzanne at Chadwicks

Sunday, we were back to being tourists. We drove to Harpers Ferry VA to visit the National Historic Park. It is the 75^th anniversary of establishing that park (it started out as a National Monument) so they had special activities for the week end. There were portrayers of Civil War people and events and also events from 1944 and WWII when the park was founded. My favorite was the WWII Dogs for Defense tent where they showed dogs trained to search for fugitives. Lots of people had their dogs and were interacting with the trained dogs.

Suzanne at the Point

The park is in a beautiful location (it is so sad to hear about the devastation during the Civil War, but it has certainly recovered). The Shenandoah River enters the Potomac River here which made it an extremely important location for transportation and industry. And that made it an important location for both the North and the South. We took a drive through some of the battlefields and tried to imagine what it must have been like to be a soldier fighting here.

The town itself has been restored after being flooded out several times and almost neglected after the War. The streets are hilly, but we did manage to hike up to St. Patrick’s Catholic Church to look at it and the view.

There was a large Irish contingent in the town and this was their church. There were also sites telling the story of John Brown who led a slave insurrection in October 1859. We also learned about the “Green Book” a travel book for African-Americans traveling in the 1940’s and telling them where they could find lodging and food.