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Father Jones' Harrisburg, 1850-1860

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Harrisburg's Market Square and Sheds

postcard of Harrisburg's Market Square in the 19th century.

Commercial and Social Center of Harrisburg

John Harris the founder had his son-in-law, William Maclay, draw up a plat for the town of Harrisburg in 1785. The plan allowed for 207 quarter-acre building lots aligned along streets set to a standard width of fifty-two feet, six inches. Market Street, envisioned as the grand avenue of the new town, was planned at eighty feet wide. Where it intersected with Second Street, Maclay planned in ample setbacks to allow for a “Market Square,” which has remained a prominent feature of Harrisburg to this present day.

The first crude market sheds appeared on the square in 1792, to be replaced between 1807 and 1809 with a pair of timber-framed one-story sheds. The sheds, frequently rebuilt and added to, provided local farmers with a place to market their produce to Harrisburg housewives for the next eighty years. African American businessman Curry Taylor, who came to Harrisburg from Columbia, sold fresh fish and vegetables from a market stall in the south market shed. Taylor brought the large variety of produce from Philadelphia twice a week.

The sheds played roles in the town's anti-slavery history, also. An anti-abolition, pro-colonization rally was held in one of the sheds when rally organizers found the Courthouse closed to them. The September 1835 rally was loud and boisterous in the summer heat, and featured speeches by J. J. Clendenin, publisher Henry K. Strong, and attorney Charles C. Rawn. Over the course of the next few years, Rawn would re-think his anti-abolition views, to the point that he would become a passionate foe of slavery.

AI generated image of the capture of Daniel Dangerfield in Harrisburg's market Square, 1859.

On Saturday, April 2, 1859, fugitive slave Daniel Dangerfield, who had been staying and working on the John B. Rutherford farm, in Swatara Township, was captured in a butcher stall in one of the sheds by federal marshals John Jenkins and James Stewart. Dangerfield's subsequent trial in Philadelphia became a rallying point for abolitionists. Dangerfield was freed largely upon the testimony of Harrisburg's Dr. William Jones.

 

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All original photographs and text on this page copyright © 2010 George F. Nagle and Afrolumens Project.

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