The youngest child of James and Sarah Weikert, David was fourteen years old at the time of the battle. Like other residents, he watched as the battlefield became a mix of memorial, playground, and marketplace. Within days of the battle, residents and citizens from nearby communities poured into the community, collecting souvenirs, finding wounded and dead relatives, and buying up keepsakes. Youth were known to collect bullets, artillery shells, and other discarded weaponry to sell to tourists. We don’t know for sure that David Weikert was among these youth, but growing up on a former field hospital amidst the temporary graves of the killed would have given him a lot of access to discarded material (after all, his father turned a drummer boy’s drum into a beehive).

Initially, David worked on the railroad, helping to extend the line from Harrisburg to Gettysburg, but he lost his eyesight in a blast from the work. In the course of time, “Blind Davey” as he came to be called garnered the sympathy of town members and set up a refreshment and souvenir stand near the Round Tops. As a number of authors have noted, he became something of a town legend. Blind Davey was frequently seen and photographed with his gun in one hand and his dog in the other . . . why did a blind man carry a gun?

The dog seems not to have met a happy end, though. If you’re the sort who doesn’t like the movies where the dog dies, you may wish to stop reading.

Today, thanks to pet vaccines, encounters with rabies are rare, and exposed humans can generally be treated. But rabies presented a grave threat to communities before vaccines. In late January and early February 1910, a “mad dog” began to terrorize the citizenry of Gettysburg.

The February 16 Gettysburg newspapers were full of stories, letters to the editor, and advice from veterinarians on the subject. In the piece shown here, a vet called for the extermination of all dogs within Gettysburg. Whether all were actually put down is unclear, but according to the papers, Blind Davey’s dog definitely was.

As the article notes, David’s oldest daughter Ida was playing with the dog when it uncharacteristically bit her. Fearing that the dog had been exposed to the mad dog, the Weikerts put down the family pet.

David lived out his life in Gettysburg on and around the family land. At his passing, his obituary took note of his souvenir and refreshment stand and his visibility among the citizens.