The Thaddeus Stevens Society will hold the grand opening of its new museum at 46 Chambersburg Street in downtown Gettysburg, PA on April 4 from 5 to 7 p.m. The date is also the  232nd birthday of Stevens and the twenty-fifth  anniversary of the founding of the Stevens Society. Tom Jolin, Civil War period musician, will provide entertainment at the event.

 

The facility will be the first stand alone museum dedicated to Stevens. The 815 square-foot space will feature the Society’s extensive collection of Stevens artifacts including Stevens letters, period newspapers and stoves made at iron mills owned by Stevens. There will also be hundreds of books and documents available for research on Stevens. 

 

The storefront is across the street from where Stevens’s home was located at 51 Chambersburg Street until it was torn down a hundred years ago. Stevens lived in Gettysburg from 1816 to 1842. While there, Stevens became a prominent anti-slavery and pro-education state legislator and operated two iron mills in the area. He then moved to Lancaster, PA in 1842 where he was elected to Congress and was instrumental in the legislative destruction of slavery and became the Father of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which requires equal treatment under the law and extends civil rights to the state level.

 

The storefront  is one door to the west of the historic Christ Lutheran Church, where Stevens rented a pew, as he did in other churches in Gettysburg and Lancaster.

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