The tragedy of young James Culp only multiplied the sorrows in the Culp family and the inexplicable horrors the town had experienced. Two months after the Battle of Gettysburg, shallow graves still dotted the farms; visitors poured in from around the country, seeking to reclaim their fallen loved ones; scavengers and souvenir collectors of all sorts made their way around countryside picking up anything from guns (for which they were sometimes arrested and forced to help reinter the dead) to bullets and shells to ramrods, pieces, of bones, and even skulls. Bones from the dead were sometimes discovered in the woods around Culp’s Hill, while other bones were uncovered through rainstorms.

Local residents began acting as impromptu tour guides, leading the outsiders around different spots on the battlefield. The sale of souvenirs started almost immediately. For the sprawling Culp family, they already had much to mourn. John Wesley Culp had estranged himself from most of the family, save his sisters, by siding with the Confederacy, joining the Stonewall Brigade, and fighting against local men on at least two occasions (once at the first Battle of Falling Waters and again at the Second Battle of Winchester). Then, Wes became the only combat death at the battle from his regiment on Day 2 of the fight.

By that time, Wes’s parents were already dead—his mother had died about six years before the war, and his father just as war was breaking out. His cousin Jane died in 1862 at just 24 years old. After Second Winchester, his cousin David was captured and sent to the Confederate prison at Belle Isle near Richmond.

The Culp family must have found these experiences tragic, bewildering, maybe pointless. Perhaps the worst of it might be the death of James Major Culp whose death prefigured the similar but better-known death of young Allen Frazer just two months later.

James Culp was seventeen years old when the armies fought at Gettysburg. He was the son of Daniel Culp and Mary Paxton as well as the brother of Jane Culp who had died at 24 just eleven months before. According to the Gettysburg Compiler, James went up to the cemetery grounds—meaning, Cemetery Hill—where he recovered shells, disarmed them, and retrieved the lead from them. He had done this with at least several shells when one exploded during his process. The explosion shredded his hands and legs, and shrapnel entered his abdomen.

Local residents heard the explosion and raced to the site of the accident where they found James breathing and clinging to life. He was rushed to his parents’ home on Baltimore Street where he lingered for about an hour before dying. Thus, James added to the growing list of locals whose deaths could be directly or indirectly attributed to the battle. Jennie Wade died during the battle, Allen Frazer died in front of the Solomon Powers house from a souvenir artillery shell, Louisa Sheads would die in 1865 from what her family said were the effects of exposure to embalming chemicals, and in 1868, Wesley Culp’s sister Julia would die similarly with the Culp family also blaming embalming chemicals.

For the Culp family, it added to the untold woes that preceded the war, stretched through it, and continued for years after.