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CHAMBERSBURG
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CHAMBERSBURG, a borough and the county-seat of Franklin county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., at the confluence of Conococheague Creek and Falling Spring, 52 in. S.W. of Harrisburg. Pop. (1890) 7863; (1900) 8864, of whom 769 were negroes; (1910) 11,800. It is served by the Cumberland Valley and the Western Maryland railways, and is connected by electric lines with Greencastle, Waynesboro, Caledonia, a beautiful park in the Pennsylvania timber reservation, on South Mountain, 12 M. east of Chambersburg, and Pen Mar, a summer resort, on South Mountain, near the boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland. Chambersburg is built on an elevated site in the broad and fertile Cumberland Valley, and commands a fine view of the distant hills and dales. The borough is the seat of Chambersburg Academy, a preparatory school; Penn Hall, a school for girls; and Wilson College, a Presbyterian institution for women, opened in 187o. The Wilson College campus, the former estate of Col. A. K. McClure (1828-1909), a well-known journalist, was laid out by Donald G. Mitchell (" Ik Marvel "), who was an enthusiastic landscape gardener. The shops of the Cumberland Valley railway are at Chambersburg; and among the borough's manufactures are milling machinery, boilers, engines, hydraulic presses, steam-hammers, engineering and bridge supplies, hosiery, shoes, gloves, furniture, flour, paper, leather, carriages and agricultural implements; the total value of its factory product in 1905 was $1,o85,185. The waterworks and the electric-lighting plant are owned and operated by the municipality. A settlement was founded here in 1730 by Benjamin Chambers, in whose honour the borough was named, and who, immediately after General Edward Braddock's defeat in 1755, built a stone fort and surrounded it with a stockade for the protection of the community from the Indians. Chambersburg was laid out in 1764 and was incorporated as a borough in 1803. On the 3oth of July 1864 Chambersburg was occupied by a Confederate cavalry force under General McCausland (acting under General Jubal A. Early's orders), who, upon the refusal of the citizens to pay $1oo,000 for immunity, burned a large part of the borough.