A slightly longer then intended history of the Farm by the Ford, Gettysburg:

The Farm by the Ford at the dead end down the old Plank Road on the banks of Marsh Creek has been the Boritt Family home for almost 3 decades. It is located three miles from Gettysburg, PA. Local Indians used the area for trade.  Numerous stone arrowheads have been found in the ground. The first European settlement was by a Scotch-Irish doctor named Crawford.  In 1785 he built a cabin on a hill overlooking the property.  The old well is still there. Crawford built a barn and around 1799-1800 he built a house from the abundant red shale stone. His descendants owned the property until 1948

 

Before the Civil War the farm was occupied by a black tenant farmer named Basil Biggs, a horse doctor and farmer. During this time the farm became a stop on the Underground Railroad as fleeing slaves escaped Maryland, crossed the Mason-Dixon line, and made their way north, likely following Marsh Creek to avoid detection by slave catchers. Biggs then brought the fleeing slaves to the Quaker communities in northern Adams County, an illegal and dangerous act. During a brief raid into Pennsylvania in 1862, Confederate General JEB Stuart and his cavalry allegedly crossed the creek via the ford in front of the house. 

In the the summer of 1863 the Confederate army invaded Pennsylvania. Basil Biggs fled, as blacks were kidnapped by the Rebels and sent into slavery down south.  During the battle the farm became a hospital for Confederate Generals Semmes and Barksdale's brigades.  Barksdale was a a hot-blooded extremist Mississippian politician who vehemently supported slavery and the creation of the Confederacy.   On the second day of the battle he lead a charge toward the Union lines.  A Union colonel watched it happen: "It was the grandest charge that was ever made by mortal man."  After a mile long charge Union fire hit Barksdale.  Shortly after, he died a Union prisoner.

Surgeries were performed on the first floor where blood stains are still visible on floorboards of the house. The climax of the battle on July 3rd, Pickett's Charge, began barely a mile from the farm.  After the battle Basil Biggs worked burying bodies in the new Soldiers National Cemetery where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, calling for "a new birth of freedom."  Several dozen rebel soldiers were buried on the farm.  Bullets, bayonets, buttons and other relics are still found in the ground.  

Over the next 100 years the farm was worked continuously.  In the 1950s & 60s President Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower lived a half mile southeast of the property. The  farm was purchased by a relative of Richard Nixon's Vice-President Spiro Agnew who hoped to sell the farm for a tidy profit to the federal government. These plans fell apart when Agnew was forced to resign in disgrace and the farm fell into disrepair. It was abandoned, used only by local kids partying and driving their 4x4s up Marsh Creek.  Mispronouncing "abandoned," neighborhood kids called it the "bandit house."

In the early 1980s Liz and Gabor Boritt bought the run down property and restored it. Here they raised their three children Beowulf (Norse), Jake and Dan. In 1994, while his parents were in California, Jake and his friends held the epic Barnstock party.  Jake's youngest brother Dan married Katie on the farm on October 13, 2007, Norse's birthday.  Five years later, shortly after their engagement, Heather jumped on Jake's crazy suggestion to hold the wedding in the barn at the Farm by the Ford. Thus commenced a summer of restoration and renovation with  David Maclay, local timber framers and a team lead by Butch Poe and Dan Delaney.  Today you are sitting in the midst of over 200 years of history.