Connections.

In America places can turn up that seem at first sight to have no connection. But then, on investigation, one discovers links that would have seemed unimaginable when events first unfolded. Harpers Ferry has strong links to the Ford Museum at Dearborn, Detroit; let me explain…

We were driving down to Washington, and stopped at Harpers Ferry at the extreme edge of West Virginia. It's one of those places that sounds familiar, but we weren't  quite sure why. We paid our ten dollars for State Park entrance, and boarded the shuttle bus to take us down to the river, or rather rivers, because it's here that the Potomac and Shenandoah join forces on their way to the Atlantic Ocean.

Potomac on left Shenandoah on right. The bridge put Mr Harper out of business.

Then...

...and now.

 And that's why Harpers Ferry got started. It was initially a trading route through the mountains - a cleft in the difficult terrain, where the first European explorers found an easier passage West.

It was here where they saw the potential of harvesting the power of the waters to build huge waterwheels and turbines to drive industry. At the same time a canal and railroad were built. So very  quickly this place grew from Mr Harper's ferry crossing into a powerhouse of industry.

Early days in a boom town.

And it was here that a US armoury was built; 600,000 guns were produced, using the then revolutionary method of making interchangeable parts that could be combined to produce the finished product. It seems an obvious way to do things in this day and age, but prior to Harpers Ferry Armoury and a Mr John H Hall,  who came up with the idea, every gun was made as an individual item. As he put it:

"I have succeeded in establishing methods for fabricating arms exactly alike, & with economy, by the hands of common workmen, & in such manner as to ensure a perfect observance of any established model, & to furnish in the arms themselves a complete test of their conformity to it."

It revolutionised production, and started the modern assembly line process, which of course was pioneered by Henry Ford in Detroit.

But that's not the only connection.

Britain had Wilberforce, the US had John Brown.

Because the US Armoury was stationed here, a revolutionary called John Brown, who believed that slavery should be abolished, mounted a raid. He wanted to seize the weapons, and use them to start an uprising to abolish slavery.

John's last stand was in the distant fire engine house, which used to be where the memorial now is.

It's been moved four - yes four times. The chap underneath looks as if he's holding it up.

Well it all went horribly wrong, and Brown, with his men who survived after the raid, were tried for treason at nearby Charles Town and executed. But their sacrifice was not in vain, because the whole affair laid bare the divisions in American society regarding slavery, and sowed the seeds for the Civil War that followed.

John Brown was tried and sentenced here, in Charles Town.

This all started on October 16, 1859. After the Civil War, a school was established for African Americans at Harpers Ferry, and at this school was the first meeting of the Second Niagara Movement, which later became the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP).

The school was never able to fulfil its potential, because of the segregation laws that existed.

And this is the second connection to the Ford Museum, because almost one hundred years after John Brown's raid, Rosa Parks refused to obey a bus driver's order that she give up her seat in the coloured section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled.

Rosa Parkes - nearly a hundred years after John Brown.

At the time, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. This helped fire up the civi rights movement, that finally ended segregation as recently as 1964, with the passing of the Civil Rights Act.

And where is that bus? Well it's in the Ford Museum in Detroit.

This is here because of revolutionary manufacturing - and John Brown's campaign.

Harpers Ferry still has a railway, but its heyday seems like distant history. However, while there we got chatting to a couple from Boston. The guy told us that his great grandfather owned a few hundred slaves, and lost everything after the Civil War, ending up destitute and homeless in Chicago. The way he told the story, we weren't sure whether he wanted us to feel sorry for him.

That brought home to us how America's short history still echos in the present.