History around us: The Killing of Frank Jones: Murdered by Union Soldiers in Chambersburg, June 1861

​On June 1, 1861, just weeks after the Civil War began, a mob of Union soldiers murdered Frank Jones, a 41-year-old free Black man, in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

Jones lived in Wolfstown, a free Black neighborhood on the western edge of town along West Loudon Street, Washington Street, and Water Street, near the Conococheague Creek. He ran a small hotel and sold whiskey there.

That evening, soldiers from the 2nd and 6th Pennsylvania Infantry tried to force their way into his home. When Jones and his wife Sarah refused them entry, one soldier threw a rock at Sarah’s head. Jones fought back, grabbed a double-barrel shotgun, and shot two soldiers in the legs with buckshot.

He fled out the back and ran north along the creek, across West Market Street, up Franklin Street past Cedar Grove Cemetery, and reached the home of District Attorney George Eyster on Federal Hill, near the intersection of Franklin and Pleasant streets.

Mrs. Eyster hid him in the kitchen chimney, but the soldiers found him and dragged him out. Lieutenant Morgan Bryan of the 7th Pennsylvania Infantry shot him at point-blank range on the front lawn. As Jones attempted to get up and run, Bryan continued shooting and then repeatedly stabbed him with his sword. Other soldiers joined in, firing their weapons and using bayonets. Jones was struck with more than twenty wounds.

Sergeant Michael O’Reilly of the 8th Pennsylvania Infantry wrote home two days later. After describing the chase, he noted that once word spread that soldiers had been shot by a Black man, “then commenced the fun.” His letter reveals the casual, callous attitude some Northern soldiers held toward Black lives in the early days of the war.

Bryan deserted the next day. He surrendered nearly three years later, was convicted only of manslaughter in 1864, sentenced to two years, but served just nine months before being pardoned.

Sarah Jones and their four children, ages roughly two to fourteen, disappear from local records after the murder. Their fate remains unknown.

Today, Wolfstown is the site of the Southgate Mall along Water and West Loudon streets. The Eyster house on Federal Hill was demolished in the 1970s; the site is now an empty yard.

This murder of a free Black man by Union troops in a Northern town has been largely erased from Civil War memory, but he deserves to be remembered.

Stay safe Bob 

Sources:

•  Jake Wynn’s research at wynninghistory.com (primary source for locations and details)

•  Sergeant Michael O’Reilly’s letter, published in the Luzerne Union, June 1861

•  Contemporary accounts in the Semi-Weekly Dispatch and Valley Spirit (Chambersburg newspapers)

•  Trial records and Brian Stamm’s article in the Journal of Franklin County History