During ten generations the area now known as Camp Hill has borne five other names: Hendricks, Fort Pleasant, Oysters Point, Bowmanstown, and White Hall. Since 10 November 1885 an incorporated borough, it is part of the West Shore community that in 1731 was offered to Indian tribes as a reservation and in 1750 became the Penn family's Manor of Lowther.
The name Hendricks was affixed soon after 1736 when Thomas Penn appointed Tobias Hendricks as the sole person permitted to live in the area. In carrying out his assignment to drive other settlers from the Manor Hendricks built a frame building at the intersection of the Great Road to the Potomac with a small run, present 24th and Market Streets, Camp Hill. When he fortified the house and tavern in the wake of the defeat of Major General Edward Braddock's army, he termed it "Ffort Pleasant."
By 1814 Abraham Oyster constructed a tavern at the intersection of the Great Road and Trindle Road. The V-shaped joining of the cross-country roads inevitably gained the name Oysters Point.
The purchaser in 1796 of the Hendricks business, John Bowman of Ephrata replaced the wooden tavern with one of stone which still stands at 2324 Market Street. Bowman and his son of the same name figured in sufficiently prominent fashion to cause certain persons to call the several houses Bowmanstown. The Bowmans in 1850 established a classical academy, White Hall, a few blocks to the east of the tavern. After the Civil War a member of the third generation, Squire Henry Bowman, converted it into the White Hall Soldiers' Orphan School, which operated until 1890. This name became the unofficial but customary address for letters sent to the students.
Dr. Silas C. Swallow had already established a widely circulated reputation for being a determined fighter against the evils of strong drink and drugs before he became a resident of Cumberland County. The good Doctor of Divinity had other lesser-known qualities of character which were revealed during the ten years he lived in Camp Hill.