Note: The following discusses and lists the known Confederate burials on the George Bushman farm. The average age of men killed at Gettysburg was between 23 and 24. Accordingly, most of the killed were unmarried and childless. Of course, today, those men do not have direct lineal descendants, and very few people retain any remembrance of them. We encourage you to click a few of the links and discover some of the stories, where known, of these men and others who died without descendants. You may wish to visit similar pages about the Rose, Plank, and Bream farms.

The George Bushman farm, located along the Baltimore Pike southeast of Gettysburg, became a Confederate burial site in the wake of the failed assaults on July 2 and July 3, 1863. Among those interred there were numerous men of the 11th Mississippi, part of Cadmus Wilcox’s Brigade in A.P. Hill’s Third Corps. These soldiers had fought fiercely along the Emmitsburg Road on July 2 and again advanced during the left wing of Pickett’s Charge the next day. Many were mortally wounded in those actions and evacuated from the fields west of town to Confederate rear-area hospitals situated south and east of Gettysburg.

The Bushman property was one of those hospital sites. Its barns, outbuildings, and surrounding fields were quickly adapted for the treatment of wounded Confederates brought in by ambulance over country lanes and the Baltimore Pike. In the Civil War’s grim reality, men who died at such hospitals were often buried within sight of the operating tables, and the Bushman farm’s level, cultivated ground made it a practical place for those burials.

By the time S.G. Elliott surveyed the battlefield in 1864, the Bushman farm was marked with a notable cluster of Confederate graves. While Union dead were soon gathered into the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, the Confederates remained in their wartime graves until the 1870s and 1880s, when Southern reburial details transported many to cemeteries such as Hollywood in Richmond. Today, the Bushman farm stands as a reminder that the cost of Pickett’s Charge was borne far from the famous stone wall — in the quiet farm fields where the wounded fought their final battles.

The following are the known Confederate burials on the George Bushman farm. Where possible, Find-a-Grave links are provided.