Dr. John O’Neal had many occasions to visit the John Rose family shortly after the battle—he treated their daughter for a nervous condition and he became one of the best sources about Confederate burials in the town and surrounding farms. History mostly remembers him for his work reuniting Southern families with the remains of their loved ones, but his work in Gettysburg won him acclaim and fame in the area for most of his life.

John William Crapster O’Neal was born on April 21, 1821, in Fairfax County, Virginia. He was the only child of Walter O’Neal (born c.1788) and Evelina “Evaline” L. Crapster. His parents married in January 1820 in Maryland, uniting the O’Neal family line with the Crapster family of Maryland. Tragically, Dr. O’Neal’s father died in 1827 when John was just six years old, after which young John was raised largely among his mother’s Crapster relatives. The Crapster name became part of his own, reflected in his full name, John William Crapster O’Neal, honoring his maternal lineage.

Growing up, John O’Neal straddled both Southern and Northern influences—born in Virginia but coming of age in the Maryland/Pennsylvania region. In the autumn of 1840, at age 19, he left home (then in Taneytown, Maryland) and rode on horseback to Gettysburg to further his education. His family background and upbringing instilled in him both a strong sense of heritage and a commitment to community, traits that would later define his long medical career in Gettysburg.

Marriage and Children

In 1846, at age 25, John O’Neal married Ellen Maria Wirt of Hanover, Pennsylvania. The wedding took place on September 8, 1846, at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in Hanover. Ellen Wirt (born March 20, 1825) came from a prominent Hanover family and was about four years younger than John. The couple initially made their home in Baltimore, Maryland, where Dr. O’Neal was beginning his medical practice. They later relocated to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in the early 1860s, where they would spend the rest of their lives.

Dr. O’Neal and Ellen had a large family. Catherine E. O’Neal, their eldest, was born in 1848 and later lived to 1932. Their oldest son Dr. Walter Henry O’Neal was born in September 1849; he would follow in his father’s footsteps in medicine and community leadership. Another son, John William O’Neal Jr., was born in 1851 but sadly died in childhood in 1858. They also had three younger daughters: Mary Ellen O’Neal, Anna Wirt O’Neal, and Elmira Virginia O’Neal. Elmira, notably, was born in Gettysburg and later married Rev. John T. Huddle. The O’Neal children grew up during turbulent times, with some of their formative years coinciding with the Civil War. Despite the challenges, the family remained close-knit. Ellen Wirt O’Neal died in Gettysburg on July 10, 1884 after a long illness (consumption). Dr. O’Neal never remarried; he continued his medical practice and civic activities for nearly three decades more after Ellen’s passing, with the support of his grown children and extended family.

Education and Medical Training

John W. C. O’Neal’s education began with a strong liberal arts foundation in Gettysburg. He enrolled as a freshman at Pennsylvania College (now Gettysburg College, where Dr. Michael Jacobs would later teach and where Dr. J. Lawrence Hill sent his children) in the fall of 1840. His surviving diary from his college days reveals a typical 19th-century student life – rigorous studies in Greek and theology, mixed with youthful pranks and social outings. O’Neal was an active and occasionally mischievous student, once getting into disciplinary trouble for a dormitory prank (stealing pies from the campus bakehouse) that led to a brief suspension. He learned his lesson and ultimately completed his studies. O’Neal graduated with the Pennsylvania College Class of 1844, and even before formally graduating, he had set his sights on a medical career.

Immediately after college, O’Neal pursued medical training. He enrolled in the Medical Department of the University of Maryland in Baltimore (often referred to then as “Maryland Medical School”). In 1844, the same year he finished college, he earned his M.D. degree from the University of Maryland. This dual accomplishment at age 23 highlights O’Neal’s ambition and ability; he managed to overlap or accelerate his studies in order to begin practicing medicine as soon as possible. His medical education in Baltimore gave him exposure to advanced medical knowledge of the era and connected him with the professional network he would later leverage in his practice. Over the years, Dr. O’Neal remained intellectually engaged, publishing articles in medical journals and experimenting with pharmaceutical techniques. In fact, he is credited by some sources as an innovator of the idea of sugar-coating pills to make medicines more palatable – a practice that became common in pharmacology.

Early Medical Career in Maryland and Hanover

Armed with his medical degree, Dr. O’Neal began his practice in the mid-1840s. From 1844 until 1849, he worked as a physician in Hanover, Pennsylvania, not far from his wife’s family home. During these first years of his career, he built a reputation as a competent young doctor. His ties to Hanover were strengthened by family connections (the Wirt family was well known in the area) and by the local community’s needs. In Hanover, O’Neal would have treated everyday illnesses and injuries and established himself professionally.

In 1849, Dr. O’Neal decided to expand his horizons and returned to Baltimore, the city where he had trained. From about 1849 up to early 1863, he practiced medicine in the Baltimore area. Baltimore was a booming city with a diverse population, and here Dr. O’Neal gained wide experience in treating patients from various walks of life. The city was also a border-state metropolis during the lead-up to the Civil War, which meant O’Neal was exposed to the sectional tensions of the time. While in Baltimore, he and Ellen continued raising their growing family (several of their children were likely born during this Baltimore period). By the early 1860s, Dr. O’Neal had nearly two decades of medical practice under his belt and was well-respected in his field.

In February 1863, with the Civil War raging, Dr. O’Neal made a pivotal move: he relocated his family and practice to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He did so to accept an appointment as the Adams County Physician, a public position in which he was responsible for the medical care of the county’s dependents – including inmates at the county jail and the poor or infirm at the county Almshouse (poorhouse). This was a prestigious and challenging role, effectively making him the chief public health officer of the county. In Gettysburg he established a home and office at the northeast corner of Baltimore Street and High Street downtown. (In April 1863, he advertised in local papers that his medical office was open at that location – today the site is occupied by the Adams County Library). Thus, on the eve of one of America’s greatest battles, Dr. O’Neal was settling in as a prominent new physician in the Gettysburg community.

Gettysburg in the Civil War: Dr. O’Neal’s Role in July 1863

Dr. O’Neal’s move to Gettysburg could not have been timed more dramatically. Only a few months after he arrived, the town became the focus of the Gettysburg Campaign. In late June 1863, Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee invaded Pennsylvania, and Gettysburg’s citizens braced for conflict. As a newcomer with Southern roots (and by inclination an outspoken Democrat sympathetic to the South), Dr. O’Neal suddenly found himself at the epicenter of the war but on the Union side of the lines. Despite any personal Southern leanings, O’Neal’s primary loyalty as a doctor was to care for the suffering, without regard to uniform.

On June 30, 1863, the day before the battle began, Dr. O’Neal was summoned to aid a sick Confederate soldier – a Louisiana infantryman who had collapsed from exhaustion and illness while seeking shelter in a barn on the Mummasburg Road just northwest of town. O’Neal rode out to assist and did everything he could for the soldier, but the young man tragically died despite his care. As O’Neal headed back, he was captured by Confederate troops (brigades moving toward Gettysburg at that time) and held briefly on June 30th or early July 1st. According to later accounts, he encountered elements of General J. Johnston Pettigrew’s command during this time. The Confederates soon released Dr. O’Neal on July 1, recognizing his status as a civilian physician. In his own recollections, O’Neal noted that he rode for a time with the Confederate column (under a form of duress but also professional courtesy as a doctor) until being let go, after which he returned to Gettysburg as the battle was erupting on the town’s outskirts.

During the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Dr. O’Neal tirelessly served the wounded of both armies. He divided his efforts between his private practice and his public duties. Notably, O’Neal spent much of July 2 and 3 working at the Adams County Almshouse Hospital, which had been pressed into service as an emergency medical station. There, alongside other local doctors and volunteers, he treated scores of injured Union and Confederate soldiers without rest through the horrific fighting of those days. Gettysburg civilian accounts recall physicians like O’Neal making rounds through improvised hospitals in churches, schools, and homes. As he moved about town and surrounding farms attending to the wounded, Dr. O’Neal carried a notebook – recording in his journal the identities, units, and burial locations of Confederate soldiers who died or were buried around Gettysburg. This was a personal initiative of his, born of humanitarian concern: he knew each of those fallen soldiers was someone’s son or husband, and he wanted to ensure their graves would not be forgotten. Dr. O’Neal’s medical work and note-taking during the battle exemplified the crucial role Gettysburg’s civilians played. Though a newcomer, he acted decisively amid the crisis, saving lives where possible and meticulously documenting the dead where he could not.

Aftermath of Battle: Burying the Dead and Healing the Town

When the guns fell silent after July 3, 1863, Gettysburg was left with thousands of corpses and a devastated community. Dr. O’Neal emerged from the battle physically exhausted but determined to continue aiding in the aftermath. He was particularly instrumental in the burial of the dead, especially Confederate dead who did not have the Union Army’s systematic reburial program to rely on. Immediately after the battle, O’Neal joined efforts to properly inter bodies that had been hastily buried in field graves or left where they fell. His diary and burial register became one of the most important references for locating Southern graves around Gettysburg. In the weeks and months following the battle, he collaborated with Mr. Samuel Weaver, a local undertaker hired to rebury Union soldiers in the new National Cemetery, to compile a list of at least 1,200 Confederate soldiers’ names and their burial sites.

O’Neal’s compassion extended beyond simply making lists. For the next several years, he acted as a point of contact for families and Southern organizations seeking to recover their loved ones’ remains. In June 1866, Dr. O’Neal took the remarkable step of publishing the names and grave locations of 600 Confederate dead in the Gettysburg Compiler, the local newspaper. This public disclosure was motivated by “common humanity,” as one article put it, to help Southern families make a pilgrimage to Gettysburg or reclaim their dead once the war was over. It was an unusual move in a Northern state so soon after the war, and not everyone appreciated it – some Unionist neighbors viewed O’Neal’s actions as overly sympathetic to the enemy. Dr. O’Neal, however, saw his actions as an ethical obligation of his profession and faith.

By the late 1860s, formal efforts in the South to rebury Gettysburg’s Confederate dead gained momentum. Ladies’ Memorial Associations from states like Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas raised funds and coordinated with Gettysburg officials. They enlisted Dr. O’Neal’s help, given his extensive knowledge of the grave locations. In 1871, the task of large-scale exhumation began, led primarily by Samuel Weaver’s son Dr. Rufus Weaver (who had inherited his father’s records). Over 1871–1873, the remains of more than 3,300 Confederate soldiers were disinterred and shipped to Southern cemeteries. Dr. O’Neal personally assisted in many of these exhumations, often at his own expense. He continued to update his journal as new graves were found and identified. Ultimately, O’Neal and the Weavers succeeded in sending home thousands of soldiers who would otherwise have been lost to history. Sadly – and frustratingly for O’Neal – many of those carefully identified remains ended up reburied in mass graves in the South without individual markers, thwarting some of his work to preserve identities. Nonetheless, his records proved “invaluable in the removal of Confederate dead to Southern cemeteries beginning in 1870,” as noted by the National Park Service. Dr. O’Neal’s post-battle efforts earned him respect from bereaved families and Confederate veterans’ groups, even as some neighbors in Gettysburg continued to eye his Southern ties with suspicion.

One notable post-war medical case highlights both the lingering trauma of the battle and Dr. O’Neal’s continued service to the community. In March 1870, nearly seven years after the battle, Dr. O’Neal was called to the Rose Farm, south of Gettysburg, where some of the battle’s fiercest fighting had occurred. There he treated one of the daughters of the Rose family, who was suffering a severe mental breakdown. O’Neal’s records show that he visited the Rose farm on four different days that month to attend to the young woman, ultimately resorting to the use of a straitjacket as the prescribed treatment. While details are sparse, later historians have speculated that the woman’s mental illness (and the extreme measure of a straitjacket) might have been related to “madness associated with the scenes around the Rose farm following the battle of Gettysburg.” The war’s psychological aftereffects on civilians were little understood at the time, but Dr. O’Neal did what he could to help the Rose daughter. This incident, drawn from his journal, underscores that Gettysburg’s civilian population continued to bear invisible wounds from the battle for years, and physicians like O’Neal were on the front lines of that quiet, ongoing struggle.

Community Leader and Civic Roles in Gettysburg

Dr. O’Neal’s life in Gettysburg spanned 50 years after the Civil War, during which he became a pillar of the community. Professionally, he continued his medical practice until his death – nearly half a century of tending to Gettysburg’s citizens in peace as he had in war. He was known to be kindly but frank, and he treated generations of local families regardless of their background or politics. O’Neal also took on significant civic responsibilities. In 1873, shortly after the war, he was among the physicians who founded the Adams County Medical Society, aiming to raise standards of medical care and cooperation in the region. He stayed active in this society, mentoring younger doctors and advocating public health initiatives.

Beyond medicine, Dr. O’Neal had a hand in Gettysburg’s business and infrastructure development. He was a founder of the Gettysburg Water Company, which was formed to provide a reliable public water supply to the borough. This was a critical improvement for the health and growth of the town in the late 19th century. (His son, Dr. Walter H. O’Neal, would later serve as president of the Water Company in the early 20th century.) Dr. O’Neal also helped establish the Adams County Building and Loan Association, a financial cooperative that assisted local citizens in obtaining loans for homes and businesses. In these endeavors, O’Neal’s leadership and credibility as a respected doctor reassured investors and neighbors alike. He was a man people trusted – whether with their health or their money.

Politically, John O’Neal was known as a Democrat in a predominantly Republican town, and he did not shy from expressing his views. Hailing from Virginia and having been sympathetic to the Southern cause, he sometimes clashed with the Radical Republican sentiments in Gettysburg during Reconstruction. In an account he wrote in 1905, O’Neal acknowledged that he had “not been very popular” in certain circles during the post-war years. Nevertheless, his decades of humanitarian service gradually earned him admiration even from former skeptics. He became a living repository of Gettysburg’s Civil War memory – often consulted by researchers, journalists, and descendants of soldiers due to his first-hand knowledge of the battle and burials. He corresponded with families seeking information on loved ones and kept those wartime journals safely for posterity (one of his journals is now on display at the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum). In later years, local residents who once doubted him came to appreciate Dr. O’Neal as an embodiment of reconciliation: a Virginian who had devoted himself to a Pennsylvania town and to caring for friend and former foe alike.

Final Years and Legacy

Dr. John W. C. O’Neal practiced medicine in Gettysburg well into old age. He finally slowed down only in his 90s as his health began to fail. On April 24, 1913, Dr. O’Neal died at his home in Gettysburg at the age of 92. His passing marked the end of an era – he was one of the last local figures who had been an adult participant in the events of 1863. The Gettysburg community mourned the venerable physician who had ministered to their ills for so long. He was remembered not just as the town doctor, but as a link to the great battle and a figure of charity and courage.

Fittingly, Dr. O’Neal was laid to rest in Hanover, Pennsylvania, in Mount Olivet Cemetery. He was buried alongside his beloved wife Ellen in her family’s plot (the Wirt family plot, Old Section G of the cemetery). This cemetery is also the resting place of several of his children. The choice of Hanover for burial, rather than Gettysburg, reflects the strong ties to his wife’s family and perhaps his own wishes. His grave is unpretentious, marked by the surname “O’Neal” – a quiet testament in stone to a life of service.

Dr. O’Neal’s legacy in Gettysburg is significant. He left an indelible mark on local public health and historical memory. His meticulous journals of Confederate grave locations ensured that over a thousand fallen soldiers were identified and, eventually, reinterred properly. This contribution was recognized by veterans’ organizations and historians as crucial documentation of the battle’s aftermath. In the field of medicine, O’Neal’s long practice and participation in professional societies helped elevate the standard of care in Adams County. Many younger doctors whom he mentored carried forward his ideals. His own son, Walter Henry O’Neal, became a prominent physician in Gettysburg and served in leadership roles (including the Water Company and local bank) up until his death in 1929, extending the O’Neal family’s public service tradition.

Perhaps one of the more poignant legacies is how time softened the view of this “Gettysburg Virginian.” Early on, some neighbors questioned Dr. O’Neal’s loyalties due to his Confederate sympathies, but over the decades most came to regard him with respect and even affection. By the time of his death, he was celebrated as a humanitarian who had seen the worst of war but remained devoted to healing. In a broader sense, Dr. John W. C. O’Neal’s life story mirrors the healing of the nation: born in the South, living in the North, torn by civil war but ultimately devoted to reconciliation and the welfare of all, blue or gray. Gettysburg remembers him as a skilled doctor, a community benefactor, and the man who cared for the living and the dead with equal compassion.