Story from the Gettysburg Connection
January 29, 2024 by Ross Hetrick
With the help of members and supporters, the Thaddeus Stevens Society has reached its goal of raising $28,000 for a new museum. The society has leased a storefront at 46 Chambersburg Street in downtown Gettysburg for the first Thaddeus Stevens museum.
The grand opening is planned for April 4, 2024, the 232nd birthday of Stevens and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Stevens Society. Planning for the event is in the initial stage and further details will be announced in coming months.
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.