Tag: Gettysburg field hospitals
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Dr. Charles Horner: Gettysburg’s Quiet Surgeon and the Question of John Burns
Wander around Gettysburg and ask folks about Dr. Charles Horner. Very few, if any, will have heard of him. If you spend enough time in Gettysburg, you start to notice a pattern. The soldiers have monuments. The generals have statues. Even civilians like John Burns get mythologized into something almost larger than life.
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Blocher’s Knoll and Barlow’s Knoll
If you drive the northern edge of the Gettysburg battlefield today, you might pass Barlow’s Knoll without thinking much about it. It is not Little Round Top. It does not tower over the fields. It is simply a gentle rise in farmland near Rock Creek. Yet on July 1, 1863, this quiet swell of ground…
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Lydia Leister and Her Farm in War and Memory
Lydia Leister (born Lydia Study) was born some time between 1808 and 1811 (depending on what source you read) in Carroll County, Maryland. She hailed from a large family: her father, Dr. John Martin Study, was a local physician, and one of her sisters, Catherine, later married Gettysburg farmer John Slyder. In 1830 Lydia wed…
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Preserving Black History at The Jack Hopkins House
The Adams County Historical Society and the managers of Lincoln Cemetery announced in October 2025 that they would restore the Jack Hopkins House and turn it into a black history museum. Why did prominent historians in town choose the Jack Hopkins house? As various articles explain, the house itself is possibly the last edifice in…
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Truth and Legend on the John Forney Farm
The Legend of John Forney, his wanderings, his farm, and the role of his property in the Battle of Gettysburg was forged during his own lifetime. Forney’s property today is home to the Eternal Light Peace Memorial, and tales of the disaster of Iverson’s Brigade on his land are told on most tours. Further, ghost…
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The Dobbin House, the Underground Railroad, and a History of Hauntings
I was once having dinner with a work colleague at the Dobbin House. It was a quiet late winter day, and we had been doing work on a phone app. The fine dining was slower than usual, and several tables sat empty around us. A table just across from us had two married couples—clearly tourists,…
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Tillie Pierce: Her Battlefield Account, Family, and Haunted House
Today, the story of Tillie Pierce and her family has been subsumed by the story of the battle, Tillie’s recollections of it, and the landmark house that is now a bed and breakfast. Like the Jennie Wade House, the Hotel Gettysburg, the Farnsworth House Inn, and the Rupp House and Tannery, the site has also…
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The Daniel Lady Farm: Bloody Floors, Carvings, and Ghosts
The Daniel Lady Farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is known both for its pivotal Civil War history and for ghostly legends. John Forney, owner of the land of Iverson’s pits, could relate well to the Ladys. But more than just the dead in the fields, the house and barn have permanent reminders of the war (similar…
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Sarah Kime, the Jacob Kime Farm, and William McLeod
In the story of William McLeod, we saw the importance of black man Moses, who was critical in bringing McLeod home. Another key figure in the story has not been mentioned yet. In 1863, Sarah Kime was 11 years old, the oldest daughter and second oldest child of Jacob and Sarah Bucher Kime. She had…
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Lt. Col. William McLeod and the 7-Year Wake
If you squint hard enough at the story of William McLeod and his brother-in-law John Prescott, you can almost see the Tarleton twins from Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. Proud Georgia boys cut down in the prime of life in defense of their homeland. Or something like that. At least, that’s how the tales…