Once condemned, Hopkins House is on its way to becoming Gettysburg’s newest world-class museum
By Karen Hendricks | Photography by Dave Johnson
On a late November day, the sky above Gettysburg’s South Washington Street was overcast and colorless—matching the white housewrap encasing a two-story home. The water-resistant layer rippled in the wind as light rain fell.
The home wasn’t exactly under construction; it was being deconstructed. Mint green siding had been removed from the outside of the Civil War era-home, now guarded by orange traffic cones and twisting yellow caution tape. From the outside, it was a somber scene.
Yet inside, it was anything but somber. History was being revealed.
Encased within that old green siding and plastered walls was an original log cabin. Inside, with the plaster removed, red oak logs were seeing the light of day for the first time in decades. They seemed to glow with new life, as workers filled the gaps with new chinking. Excited chatter filled the air; the restoration team sharing their progress with Andrew Dalton, president and CEO of the nonprofit Gettysburg History, along with Jean Green, president of the nearby Lincoln Cemetery Project Association.
“It’s the only surviving Civil War structure in the Black community here in Gettysburg,” says Dalton, noting the plethora of plaques gracing other Civil War-era buildings throughout town. “We are saving the very, very last piece of Black history—visible, concrete evidence of Gettysburg’s Black community.”
Not only will the home earn a Civil War-era plaque of its own, but as the Hopkins House, it will welcome future generations of visitors to learn about another layer of history as Gettysburg’s only museum devoted entirely to the town’s Black history.
“With this taking place,” Green says, “all the history in Gettysburg will be complete.”
If Walls Could Talk
As time-worn logs were revealed as the plaster came down, the first thing Green did was lay her hands upon them.
“It was very important to me,” says Green, 73, a lifelong Gettysburg resident. “I guess because I’m a person of color, and I sort of bond with my ancestors, you know, and just feel a connection.”
Green has the same habit at Lincoln Cemetery, where she often lays her hands upon the stones as she shares stories of Gettysburg’s Black citizens with visitors. She’s been involved in Lincoln Cemetery’s preservation and publicization for 25 years, including a leadership role since 2023.
Renovation efforts at Hopkins House are a joint project between Lincoln Cemetery and Gettysburg History. They acquired the property in 2023, saving it from being condemned by Gettysburg Borough. The first steps included removing an insect infestation and asbestos. The next process involved peeling back the layers of time: removal of the outer walls and inner plaster.
“We were thrilled when we realized that the logs are still intact in many cases—totally structurally sound and just as strong as they were when the house was built in the 1840s,” says Dalton.
With that knowledge, plans for the museum could proceed: The log cabin will serve as a cornerstone for the future Hopkins House Museum. Dalton says it’s a major discovery for the community and visitors alike.
“It’s special,” says Dalton. “We have a responsibility to tell everybody’s story, and I think for too long the story of this neighborhood—this community—hasn’t really been available for people in the community to come in and understand and learn from. But also, tourists have not had this available to them when they visit Gettysburg either.”
Hopkins House History
The history of Hopkins House goes back to the 1840s, when U.S. presidents included Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James Polk and Zachary Taylor.
“The house was built, we believe, in the 1840s by a free Black family,” says Dalton. “And then it was sold to Abraham Brian, who famously owned a farm on the fields of Pickett’s Charge.”
Brian owned it for five or six years, then sold it to the Hopkins family.
“Jack and Julia Hopkins lived here in the 1850s through the time of the Civil War,” says Dalton. “It’s the only home that’s still standing that was owned by and lived in by a Black family.”
The lives of the Hopkins family, like many neighboring Black families of the Third Ward, became intertwined with the greater Gettysburg community. Jack Hopkins worked as a janitor at Gettysburg College, but he also was an integral link in the Underground Railroad.
“It’s very likely this house could have been part of the Underground Railroad, although documents about proving these things are few and far between,” Dalton says. “We have every reason to believe that they were not only helping to shepherd escaping slaves to the area, but helping Black residents get set up with jobs and houses and an opportunity here.”
The Hopkins family’s three children were baptized around the corner and raised in the Catholic Church. Son Edward, after serving in the U.S. Colored Troops and surviving the Civil War, returned to Gettysburg. He not only ran a successful restaurant, but became the first Black elected official in the town’s history in 1880.
And the genesis of all those conversations, relationships and family life took place within the walls of the log cabin at 219 S. Washington St.
Preserving History
Ryan Shannon has been building and restoring log homes since 2009. But he’s never worked on a project like Hopkins House.
“On the historic side, we’ve restored 20 to 25 log homes, but this one is really neat because it’s probably one of the oldest,” says Shannon, of Shippensburg’s Renew Services. “And this is probably the first one I’ve seen that was constructed by a Black man.”
Preserving Hopkins House, but turning it into a museum, presents some challenges, says Shannon.
“As far as the chinking and all the components, it’s staying in the era. So, this one is unique because we want to mix modern technology to preserve it and the integrity, but also make it look like something from the 1800s,” Shannon explains.
The majority of Hopkins House’s logs, Shannon says, are red oak. He points out several that are rotted or compromised. His team will carefully replace them with 1800s-era logs from his warehouse.
The Hopkins family, Dalton says, lived primarily in the cabin’s two first-floor rooms, climbing up a ladder into a loft to sleep at night. A kitchen, added onto the home over the years, will be demolished so that the structure is returned to its original size and shape. Hanover’s Conewago Enterprises—which also constructed Gettysburg History’s Beyond the Battle Museum—is Hopkins House’s general contractor.
Response to the project’s capital campaign, which launched in the fall, has been extraordinary, says Dalton, with $1.2 million committed toward a goal of $2 million.
The Transformation: From Condemned to Celebrated
The hope, Dalton says, is for the Hopkins House Museum to open in 2027—likely in the fall—with three components, including the cabin as “the focal point of the experience,” a patio and a new modern building.
The structures will support the project’s vision: “The museum will take you through the whole history of this neighborhood of Gettysburg,” Dalton explains, “from the early days in the town, all the way through to the mid- to late-1900s.”
“It’s comprehensive,” adds Green. “It will be the only museum that will actually tell the whole story of Gettysburg’s Black history from the beginning. And I think that’s very important, because people still might not know that there was and is a Black presence here in Gettysburg.”
Inside the log walls, visitors will hear the story of the Hopkins family through light, sound and projections told by actors and actresses—interrupted by dancing at times, as well as historic happenings including Underground Railroad events and sounds of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Outside, visitors will be able to explore an exhibit-filled patio area. And from the patio, visitors can enter a yet-to-be-built modern building. Not only will it house an office for Green and the Lincoln Cemetery, from which cemetery tours will be led, but it will include “a community-oriented wall of faces,” Dalton says. These portraits will pay homage to Black residents who lived within a several-block radius of Hopkins House and contributed to the greater Gettysburg community.
Green leads a Committee of Descendants that meets monthly to review the project’s plans, stories, artifacts and photos. And they’re sifting through a treasure trove of artifacts: the archives of the Adams County Historical Society, under Gettysburg History’s umbrella—and the entire collection of the previous Gettysburg Black History Museum, a one-room museum at United Lutheran Seminary launched by sisters Mary Alice and Jane Nutter several years ago, with help and support of many committee members. It took decades of grassroots efforts to bring the former Gettysburg Black History Museum to life, and Hopkins House will carry that vision forward.
This is despite a national landscape that has some questioning stories of Black history. The Trump Administration in 2025 ordered government-owned National Park Service sites and websites to remove stories of Black history, including mentions of slavery and the Underground Railroad.
Green says she’s glad that the Hopkins House project is privately funded and not subject to those government mandates.
“It hurts my heart to know that’s trying to be erased,” says Green. “It’s mind-blowing. History is history—and even as bad as it was, we still need to never forget. Slavery is a part of our heritage, and I want visitors to embrace it because our ancestors were very resilient and they endured. I draw my strength from them.”
“More history,” adds Dalton, “is never a bad thing. That’s what we’re doing—we’re creating more opportunity for people to learn history.”
Many visitors to Gettysburg, for example, have likely never thought about what it was like to live in the Civil War-era town, located only eight miles from the Mason-Dixon Line, says Dalton.
“These families lived with an incredible fear, but also an incredible resilience, knowing their freedom, their lives, their families were at risk, pretty much every second of the day,” Dalton says. “That’s a story of incredible courage, and we want to make sure that’s central, here at the museum.”
Gettysburg is already a place that’s revered and hallowed for its place in American history. Green says Hopkins House and its stories of Black history add Gettysburg’s final missing piece of history.
“We belong and our story matters,” Green says. “This completes the whole story—the whole Gettysburg story.”
For more information, see gettysburghistory.org and follow their social media channels for updates on the Hopkins House project.
Also see Celebrate Gettysburg’s story on the previous Gettysburg Black History Museum, published in the Jan./Feb. 2023 issue. And check out our YouTube channel for a video tour of the previous Gettysburg Black History Museum with Jane Nutter, as well as a tour of Lincoln Cemetery with Jean Green.
