On Site with Camp Security
On Sunday November 4, Jonathan Stayer, Supervisor of Reference Services at the Pennsylvania State Archives, will give an in-depth talk about Camp Security, speaking at the South Central Pennsylvania Genealogical Society’s monthly meeting. The public is invited to the 2:15 p.m meeting, which will be held at Good News Free Will Baptist Church, 530 Locust Grove Road, just off East Market Street in the Stony Brook area. (This is the former site of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.)
The church tract was once part of the 280 acres owned by David Brubaker in 1781. According to contemporary accounts, Camp Security, the last undeveloped Revolutionary War prisoner of war camp, occupied around 40 acres of Brubaker’s land from 1781 until the end of the war in 1783.
Stayer has been researching Camp Security for more than 30 years. He will review the history of the camp that held as many as 2,000 British soldiers and their family members and show images of documents and artifacts. He will also share exciting new findings and give an update on the ongoing preservation efforts. The weather forecast looks good for Sunday, and much as of the Camp Security site is visible from the church grounds, the program will probably include an outdoor component with Stayer pointing out conjectured sites of the secure stockade and of Camp Indulgence, the village inhabited by low-security prisoners and their families.
For more on the program follow this link to the South Central Pennsylvania Genealogical Society site.
In my next post, I’ll relate a story about how one of the huts from Camp Security was said to have been moved and recycled. It was still standing less than 50 years ago.
