The Cove During Wartime in 1863

Spring is being ushered out by the blazing summer sun and thousands of locals find themselves looking up at the sky. They’re not looking for a rain cloud but rather to offer a prayer that the Confederate soldiers will look elsewhere in their search for supplies to meet the needs of war time life.

The year is 1863 and as the southern armies cast their gaze away from significant defeats, the commonwealth of Pennsylvania starts coming into sharper focus.

Middle school history class focuses on the burning of Chambersburg and Gettysburg, the battle of them all.

Many summer afternoons were spent climbing the Victorian tower or eating cold meatloaf sandwiches on the boulders at Devils Den.

While southern troops ended their aggressive push into the keystone state 90 miles east of here, the anxiety that the war would be fought in Morrisons Cove was palatable and with good reason, said Jim Snyder.

“Look at what we had here” said Snyder, president of the Blair County Genealogical Society.

The operating iron furnaces were of huge value along with barns filled with grain, horses and cattle.

The many woolen mills were turning out blankets and the Pennsylvania Railroad, Altoona shops were keeping the northern war machine pumping.

While the material benefits of the Blair-Bedford region were numerous, a step taken nearly a year before Gettysburg likely played a significant role in eyes pointed toward the central part of the state.

General Robert Lee, venerable leader of the confederacy took as a personal affront a two day meeting held in Altoona.

“It would have greatly pleased the confederate army to humiliate the city of Altoona since it was there, at the Logan House, on September 24 and 25, that 12 loyal War Governors of the northern states met and held a War Conference,” wrote Cloyd E. Neely in his paper titled “The Morrisons Cove Volunteer Militia, June of 1863.”

Over the next couple weeks we’re going to take a closer look at the cove residents and the way they rose to the call to save their homeland.