The most endangered historic site in Harpers Ferry: The Weaver-Gillison house

BY ERIK ANDERSON Special to The News-Post

One wouldn’t normally expect the phrase “carriage services” to be a loaded euphemism. But in a 1944 letter written by Henry McDonald, the second president of the long-closed historically Black Storer College in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, those humble words bear a lot more meaning than meets the eye.

Thanks to recent historical research conducted by interested volunteers, we know McDonald’s acknowledgement of two local Black business owners for their contributions to the college was not made because they simply served as carriage drivers for students, teachers and guests. These men provided vital security for the fledgling black college against the direct opposition of the Ku Klux Klan.

The two drivers named in the letter, George “Buck” Weaver and his son, James Weaver, are receiving renewed public attention due to the joint efforts of their descendants and two local community leaders to restore the Weavers’ 19th-century home to livable condition.

Known today as the Weaver-Gillison house, the property on Union Street just inside Harpers Ferry city limits, has been unoccupied since a Weaver descendant last lived there in the 1970s. The small home and its shed are in near-dilapidated condition, but the town granted the property official historic status in 2009 in the hope of preserving what remains.

“The town doesn’t want to just let these structures be demolished, and that was even before we pulled together all the additional research about what a key role [George Weaver], the initial builder, played in the town and the founding of Storer College,” said Guy Hammer, chair of the Harpers Ferry Historic Landmarks

Commission and one of the volunteers leading the restoration effort.

April Hamilton, George Weaver’s great-great-granddaughter and a co-owner of the property, said her family has made various plans over the decades to repair the house, but the cost to restore it as a habitable dwelling, now estimated at around $500,000, always thwarted their efforts.

Hamilton said the family tried to sell it a few times, but some detail always got in the way of closing a sale. And despite not knowing about their ancestors’ civil rights activism until a few years ago, they never felt fully comfortable letting go of the property.

“Every time we had an offer on the house, I just had the weirdest feeling, like I don’t want this to go from the family,” Hamilton said. “I have a feeling had we sold that house years ago and somebody had permission to tear it down, the history would have never come to light like it has recently.”