Chambersburg, a borough and county seat of Franklin County, lies midway between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in southern Pennsylvania.

A frontier settlement of Scotch-Irish immigrants, the early town had little in common with the Quaker establishment in Philadelphia.

(Early settlers owned slaves, for example).

It’s location, on the successive trails, post roads, and turnpikes running east and west, and the trails and wagon roads to the Shenandoah Valley in the South, led to growth as a trading and transportation center.

Last summer, I shared a post related to the repeated invasions and the eventual burning of the city by Confederate forces in the Civil War.

Proximity to the Mason-Dixon Line meant that both the Underground Railroad and southern kidnapping rings were active in Chambersburg.

Southern rage was fueled by the refusal to pay an exorbitant ransom and by the presence of schools for African American children, and the history of escaping slaves receiving assistance from citizens of the town.

This postcard photograph was mailed from Chambersburg in 1935; it may have been printed some years earlier.

Dorothy and Eddie were visiting Cousin Willis and staying at the same “tourist house” as Eva and Tommy.

This news was sent to Mrs. W. J. Simmonds of Chester, PA.