Edge Hill Cemetery
John Brown Raid Victims
Edge Hill Cemetery contains the graves of Fontaine Beckham and John Avis, two participants in the saga of John Brown’s Raid in October 1859. Beckham was the mayor of Harpers Ferry then and one of four civilian casualties. Ironically, though John Brown freed no slaves by capturing the United States Arsenal there, as he intended, the slaves that Beckham owned were feed at his death in accordance with his will. The first civilian that Brown’s men shot and killed was a free black man named Hayward Shepherd, a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad employee.
John Avis, John Brown’s jailor, is also buried here. Avis was kind to Brown while he was incarcerated for a month between his trial and execution and befriended him. As Brown left the jail to be hanged, he kissed Avis’s son. The jailor served as a captain in an antebellum militia company, the Continental Morgan Guards. When the Civil War began in 1861, the company, which wore Revolutionary War-style uniform, was mustered into Confederate service as Co. K, 5th Virginia Infantry.
About seventy graves in the front section of Edge Hill Cemetery contain the remains of Confederate soldiers. They died in local hospitals from wounds suffered at nearby Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, in the Battle of Antietam. Most of the soldiers were from North Carolina and South Carolina.
Marker is at the intersection of S Seminary Street and E Congress Street, on the left when traveling south on S Seminary Street.
Courtesy hmdb.org
