The Home Becomes A Battlefield wayside marker is south of Harpers Ferry on the Murphy Farm Trail. The marker is next to the farmhouse, just east of the Murphy Farm parking area. (39°18’44.0″N 77°45’38.1″W: map)

From the marker:

Home Becomes A Battlefield

The Civil War affected not only the soldiers who fought but the families whose homes and towns became battlefields. Edmund H. Chambers bought this farm in 1848 and lived here with his family until the Civil War. Although Chambers was a loyal Unionist, the Union confiscated his farm in 1862, forcing the family from their home. The U.S. Army arranged for an appraisal of the farm in the event of damage. At the war’s end Chambers found the property destroyed and filed a claim demanding restitution. In 1888, 23 years after the end of the war, he was still trying to settle his claim. There is no evidence that he was ever paid. He died in 1890.

I am now very poor and am eighty years old.
I am the son of a Revolutionary soldier…
and I think I have a very good record.

Excerpt from Edmund H. Chamber’s
letter to the Secretary of War, 1888

Caption from the painting:

Harpers Ferry painting attributed to Edmund Chambers’s daughter Jenny, 1891.

(go to the main Murphy Farm page)
(go to the main Tour the Harpers Ferry Battlefield page)