What's in a Name? How Much Do You Know About Harpers Ferry's Origins?

The confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers as seen from the lower point on the morning of August 15, 2013. Great blue herons are flying overhead. (NPS Photo/Hammer)

Imagine: the Confluence of the Patowmack and Skenandoa, 1740s. 

There are no real roads, and certainly no bridges. The railroad is not even a daydream. No neat brick buildings live on this hill, nor any picturesque gardens; there are no shops, no restaurants, no people. Camp Hill--a name no one has given it, a name the place does not yet even know itself--rises wild and free. This is a world of the unknown, of rocks and mists and untamed waters, a place yet to be captured even by artists and poets.

Welcome to Harpers Ferry--only we don’t call it that. Not yet. It’s just a gap. Just a pass through the mountains. A cut from the coastal civilization to a newer and, hopefully, greener one.

Some folks call it The Hole.

The Potomac River in Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. By AEMattison [CC BY-SA 4.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Do you know Harpers Ferry before it was Harpers Ferry? Put on your frontier thinking cap and try your hand at this short true-or-false quiz. 1. Robert Harper was the first white settler in Harpers Ferry. False. When Robert Harper visited the place that would eventually bear his name, he discovered a log cabin along the rivershore. This home was occupied by at least two men: a white man by the name of Peter Stephens, and a Native American called Gutterman Tom. Harper was a carpenter from Philadelphia who had been contracted to build a Quaker meeting house in Winchester. Following some advice to take a turn and see some pretty scenery, he stumbled upon “The Hole.” Something about the rugged scene grabbed his imagination, and he knew he had to make it his home. Harper purchased the cabin from Stephens in 1747. Stephens, sometimes described as a “Pennsylvania Dutchman,” had been living there since about 1733 with Tom, whose tribal affiliation has been lost to time. 2. Robert Harper did not establish the ferry at Harpers Ferry.

Early image of the ferry, showing a boat ferrying across the river to people waiting on the other side. “Early History of Harpers Ferry.” Printed in the Jefferson Farmers Advocate, April 1, 1933.

True. Peter Stephens and Gutterman Tom were already operating a ferry service when Harper arrived. In addition to the cabin, Harper also purchased the ferry business from his predecessors. His heirs would continue operating the Potomac ferry until 1824, when a bridge was erected, making the ferry somewhat redundant. 3. Robert Harper’s house is the oldest building in town.

Harper House as photographed for Historic American Building Survey. Library of Congress, HABS WV-168.

True! Desiring an upgrade from the riverside log cabin, Harper began building the stone house on the hill in 1775, at the dawn of the American Revolution. Construction moved slowly, however. Harper passed away in 1782, before the house was completed. Sadly, he never got to enjoy the home of which he had dreamed.

As the oldest structure in Harpers Ferry, sitting on a prime location overlooking the gap, the Harper House has truly been a witness to the drama of history. Today, visitors to Harpers Ferry National Historical Park can explore the restored house and experience some of its stories for themselves.

4. Harpers Ferry was not the original name of the town.

True. The Virginia General Assembly officially established the town of Shenandoah Falls in 1763. 

The interior of Virginia’s restored colonial capitol in Williamsburg, where the General Assembly met to approve legislation like the establishment of settlements such as Shenandoah Falls. 1930s photo by Frances Benjamin Johnson; Library of Congress image.

By then, Robert Harper was the owner of a successful milling operation,  but he continued to offer ferry service across both the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. In the era before bridges and railroads, Mr. Harper’s ferry at Shenandoah Falls provided a critical gateway between the colonial cities quickly growing in the east, and the frontier settlements rising in the Shenandoah Valley.

Mr. Harper’s Ferry at Shenandoah Falls was a precise term for both a point on the map and a means of reaching it. It was also quite a mouthful. Through time, common usage shortened the town’s name.

5. Robert Harper hosted Thomas Jefferson’s visit, showing him the view Jefferson would make famous as “worth a voyage across the Atlantic.”

Washington as a young surveyor. National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of the Interior. via Wikimedia Commons

False. Robert Harper died a year before Jefferson stopped by en route to attend Congress in Philadelphia.

There is only one president Robert Harper ever had a chance of meeting--and if and when it happened, he probably had no idea that the seventeen-year-old kid standing before him would become one of the most revered icons in American lore. 

George Washington is thought to have visited Harpers Ferry around 1749, shortly after Harper had established his home there and assumed operation of the ferry. At the time, our future first president was a surveyor for the colonial government, exploring Western Virginia. Washington’s travels through the region sparked what would be a lifelong appreciation for the Eastern Panhandle--and its economic potential as a source of water power.

How did you do? Whether or not you aced this quiz, we hope you enjoyed this journey into some of our earlier chapters. The next time you’re in Harpers Ferry, we invite you to stop by some of the older landmarks--perhaps visiting the Harper House, or paying your respects at the old Harper Cemetery. Or maybe just let a rugged mountain hike take you back, to the wildness at the root of Harpers Ferry.


Catherine Oliver