Wherever you go on vacation, you should take one of the city’s ghost tours. Nothing gives you a better idea of the local folklore, history, and values. When you go to Gettysburg, you should definitely take one of the ghost tours . . . a different each night you’re there, even. Gettysburg claims to be the most haunted town in America, and the two centerpieces of the hauntings are the National Soldiers’ Orphans’ Homestead and the Jennie Wade House (really, Georgia McClellan’s house). The Wade House centers around the tragic shooting of Jennie Wade during the battle. The story of the orphanage is multilayered and hard to penetrate.

Background and Creation

The National Soldiers’ Orphans’ Homestead in Gettysburg was founded in the aftermath of the Civil War to care for children whose fathers had died in battle. Its creation stemmed directly from one poignant incident on the battlefield: on July 1, 1863, Union Sergeant Amos Humiston of the 154th New York Infantry was mortally wounded at Gettysburg. When his body was recovered, clutching a small ambrotype portrait of his three young children. This image moved Dr. John F. Bourns, a volunteer physician, to identify the soldier’s family. When the photo was published in northern newspapers, it turned into a national cause: donations poured in and Sunday School classes raised funds to support the Humiston children and other orphans, though rumors and gossip also started. In 1865, newspapers ran stories refuting various false claims rampant in the North about the Humiston children and family.

Perhaps we should have expected embellishments and falsehoods to follow the story through the ages. Whatever the case, this image moved Dr. John F. Bourns, a volunteer physician, to identify the soldier’s family. When the photo was published in northern newspapers, it turned into a national cause: donations poured in and Sunday School classes raised funds to support the Humiston children and other orphans. By October–November 1866 the Homestead for Orphans of Soldiers and Sailors opened in Gettysburg, housed in an enlarged former field hospital headquarters on Cemetery Hill. It soon sheltered dozens of children, including Sergeant Humiston’s own children (Frank, Alice, and Fred) who lived there with their widowed mother, Philinda. Philinda became the orphanage’s first matron, helping supervise school and daily life.

This early period was one of hope and community involvement. The Homestead was considered a model institution: in 1867 President Ulysses S. Grant himself posed for a photo with the orphan boys and girls on the front lawn (above). By 1869 the orphanage expanded again with a new three-story dormitory to accommodate nearly 100 children. The soldiers’ orphans of Gettysburg worked on its little farm, went to school, and attended local events. Each Memorial Day they traditionally marched in the cemetery decoration ceremonies, honoring fallen soldiers. The Humiston children remained resident for several years; as one historian notes, “the Homestead formally opened with fanfare in November 1866,” and included “Frank, Alice, and Fred Humiston, the first children to arrive in Gettysburg,” among its pupils. (Philinda remarried in 1869 and left Gettysburg, but the Homestead continued under new administration.)

Rosa Carmichael’s Arrival and Early Years

In late 1870 Dr. Bourns hired Rosa J. Carmichael as the new matron of the Homestead. Carmichael might be the ghostliest of figures in this whole story. It’s unclear where she came from, and when she later left her position, there’s no record of where she went. She is a historical phantom.

Carmichael’s background is obscure, but at first she seemed a dedicated teacher and guardian. Contemporary letters from children then at the Homestead speak warmly of “Mrs. Carmichael, our teacher” and describe the children enjoying lessons, sewing, and even outings on rainy days. In February 1872 one ten-year-old girl wrote home about Carmichael: “Mrs. Carmichael … is a most assiduous and faithful worker, laboring often beyond her strength in school and out.” Homestead founder Dr. Bourns himself praised Carmichael as “a teacher and disciplinarian … laboring often beyond her strength”. At this time the orphanage had grown to about 70 children, many of them enjoying sewing, games, and lessons, and caring for vegetable gardens and chickens.

For a few years Carmichael’s tenure appeared ordinary. An 1872 letter notes that the children were studying history and geography, tending gardens, and attending community events – even witnessing the exhumation of Confederate dead in Gettysburg. The orphanage superintendent visited and the children earned “good conduct” reward cards. In a letter to her children, one mother sent gifts for Carmichael’s birthday and called her “so good and kind.” These personal accounts suggest that early in her term the children often liked Carmichael, and they were not homesick nor neglected.

Allegations of Abuse and Investigation

Despite the early normalcy, troubling stories began to surface by 1873. Neighbors and veterans whispered that Carmichael was harsh with misbehaving children. In 1876 the absence of Homestead children from Gettysburg’s Memorial Day parade prompted formal concern. The local Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) veterans post sent investigators to the orphanage. By summer 1876 their suspicions peaked: Carmichael had refused the children’s traditional role in the cemetery ceremonies, and rumors were rampant of “general misconduct and tyranny” behind the orphanage doors.

On June 11, 1876, local authorities arrested Rosa Carmichael. She was formally charged with cruelty to a 12-year-old orphan (a boy in the Lunden family). The Homestead’s trustees allowed Carmichael bail, but the GAR quickly placed the boy in protective custody and convened a grand jury. By August a jury indicted Carmichael on three counts of aggravated assault and battery. The criminal trial was delayed until November (the prosecutor missed the August session), but when the case was heard Carmichael was convicted on one count of aggravated assault. She was fined only $20 (plus costs) and ordered to leave Gettysburg. Notably, Carmichael returned to the orphanage despite the court order. Historian Mark Dunkelman summarizes: “She was sentenced … and ordered to leave Gettysburg. She instead returned to the Homestead.”

Newspaper accounts and veteran testimonies then went public with dramatic accusations. A GAR committee member published scathing claims that Carmichael inflicted cruel punishments unseen in official records. They alleged she once locked a child out in an outhouse on a freezing night, forced girls to stand on desks for hours, made girls wear boys’ clothes as humiliation, and even appointed a “bully” orphan to beat other children. Most infamously, critics charged that Carmichael had fashioned a pitch-black “dungeon” in the basement, where unruly children were chained to stone walls as punishment. (When the orphanage later auctioned off furnishings, the Gettysburg GAR post famously purchased the iron shackles said to have been left behind.)

It is important to note that official records do not confirm some of the lurid details now told in legend. There were no reports of child deaths at the Homestead, nor any missing children listed in city records, despite rumors. The evidence against Carmichael rested on witness testimony (including the abused 12-year-old) and investigations that alleged that “she had locked and chained children in a dungeon-like room.” In June 1877 the charges and scandals were widely publicized in the press, and officials moved to shut down the Homestead.

Closure of the Homestead and Aftermath

By early 1877 the Homestead’s board and local leaders had decided the institution could not continue. A Philadelphia-based directors’ committee took over the investigation and eventually closed the orphanage. On December 3, 1877, the remaining 80 or so children were quietly moved out and placed elsewhere. The Orphanage property was sold and the Home formally ended by April 1878. (Dr. Bourns himself was later accused of embezzlement from the orphan fund, compounding the scandals that caused the shutdown.) Rosa Carmichael was forcibly removed from town; one contemporary noted the orphanage building would henceforth serve other uses. In later decades the old orphanage became a duplex, a boarding house, and eventually a Civil War museum. (Actor Cliff Arquette bought it in 1957 and ran “Charley Weaver’s Civil War Museum” there, famously touring visitors through the basement dungeon.) The building closed to visitors after 2014.

After 1878 Rosa Carmichael essentially vanishes from the historical record. Newspapers made no mention of her beyond 1877, and no grave or family trace has ever been conclusively tied to her. Her own life after leaving Gettysburg is a mystery. Genealogical researchers have checked local directories, census rolls, and court records but found no obvious matches for a “Rosa Carmichael” (or variant spellings) in the region. Tracking her would involve the typical tools of family history: scouring the 1880 and later U.S. Census for any Carmichael of matching age, poring over county marriage and death registers for the name, searching newspapers for any mention of her departure, and even checking church or immigrant records if she had moved elsewhere. For example, genealogists examining the Homestead have used census snapshots (the 1870 census lists several Homestead orphans by name) and orphanage documents, but Carmichael herself never appears once the orphanage closed. In short, the trail went cold.

Each of these methods might turn up a lead – for example, an 1880 census record for a “Rose Carmichael” aged appropriately in a nearby town – but to date, no definitive record has been found. As various writers have noted, Carmichael seems to have simply disappeared.

From History to Haunted Legend

In the decades after the Civil War Homestead closed, the story became part of Gettysburg’s lore – but it was transformed into a ghostly legend. By the mid-20th century, tour guides and paranormal investigators had begun to tell sensational versions of the Carmichael saga. In this retelling, the orphanage is depicted as a dungeon of terror and Rosa Carmichael as a monstrous villain. Ghost tour literature today routinely claims that Carmichael inflicted cruel punishments unheard of in the historical record: “Children were reportedly locked away for days at a time, with no food or water,” some accounts claim, and the “notorious dungeon” in the basement is said to hold the spirits of tortured orphans. Modern paranormal shows have featured the site: the Ghost Adventures TV crew spent a night in the empty basement in 2011 searching for Carmichael’s spirit, and the Travel Channel’s Most Terrifying Places visited Gettysburg’s orphanage in 2019. Investigators even claim to have photographed a shadowy figure believed to be Carmichael, and EVP sessions have picked up unseen voices that tour guides attribute to the orphans.

Yet these spine-chilling tales are embellishments that grew well after the orphanage closed. Early written accounts of the Homestead (like the Lunden children’s letters from the 1870s) do not support many of the gruesome details now recounted. For example, one Homestead child remembered the Fourth of July of 1876 as a normal day (she and a friend were “in the prison” only in a joking way). Others remembered their years with some nostalgia and pondered having a reunion. The official investigation records simply list assault charges – they do not confirm stories of iron collars or nightly abuse. Similarly, the claim of missing children has no corroborating evidence beyond rumors: civic authorities removed all remaining children in 1877 and never reported any unexplained disappearances.

In contrast, surviving letters suggest a more ordinary orphanage life: children received sewing classes, outdoor playtime, holiday celebrations, and praise from staff. In February 1872, Ada Lunden wrote that Mrs. Carmichael took the girls out on pleasant evenings and played with them, and that “we enjoy ourselves very much.” Her mother Sarah replied that Carmichael was “so good and kind,” and sent the teacher a birthday gift – a testament to a positive relationship. Another former orphan reminisced fondly in 1883 about Decoration Day outings and the children singing in the cemetery as they decorated soldiers’ graves. One alumna admitted, wryly, “I would like to see the old Homestead once more…Although we spent some sorrowful days there, still … I find many bright spots in my life there.” These genuine reminiscences were documented in letters long before ghost tours existed.

The ghost-tour narrative, by contrast, packs only the most lurid allegations into a tale of eternal suffering. Visitors walking through the basement today hear guides speak of phantom sobbing children, feel unexplained cold spots, and even claim to feel a tug on their clothing by unseen hands. One frequent story is of a little girl in a tattered dress who “floats” in and out of sight. But these elements – rattling chains, weeping sounds, spectral figures – are part of a much later tradition of haunted house lore. They emerged long after Carmichael died (her death date is unknown) and rely on the orphanage’s tragic reputation.

Over time, the legend became central to Gettysburg’s ghost tours. Guidebooks and tour operators now use the Carmichael story to draw crowds on after-dark tours. The orphanage is often billed as one of Gettysburg’s top haunted attractions, alongside haunted inns and battlefields. Ironically, the headlines and dramatized retellings of the 1970s–90s (and later TV shows) have overshadowed the actual archive. The real Homestead story – a modest Civil War charity undone by 19th-century scandal – is rarely told on the evening ghost walks. Instead, Carmichael’s name is synonymous with cruelty in the public imagination, a figure drawn larger-than-life by oral tradition.

In sum, the National Homestead’s history is a mixture of documented fact and folk legend. Contemporary records confirm that Gettysburg did indeed care for hundreds of soldier-orphans beginning in 1866, and that matron Rosa Carmichael was accused and convicted of mistreating children. But the worst horrors attributed to her – the iron shackles, missing children, ghosts of little girls – come from later storytellers, not 19th-century sources, though there are at least some roots in contemporary news reports and accusations. Researchers combing archives can trace the truth of the Homestead through newspapers, letters, and court records, but those trails grow cold around 1878. Meanwhile, the sensational myth endures on ghost tours and in pop culture, a haunting reminder of how history can be reshaped by memory and imagination.