Tag: Gettysburg nurse
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Charles Hoffman Found Out: Don’t Mess with David Middlecoff
When Charles W. Hoffman wound up in legal and debt disputes with the Fahnestocks and David Middlecoff, he was battling some of the most powerful men in the region. David Middlecoff, in particular, was a nationally recognized politician, businessman, army and militia leader, and lender. Once the relationship turned sour, Charles Hoffman wasn’t going to…
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Aunt Polly Culp: Gettysburg’s Beloved Figure of the Civil War Era
Elizabeth Culp, known to the locals as Aunt Polly Culp (no, we don’t know why), was intertwined in most of the major families of Gettysburg and familiar to almost everyone. Born to Heinrich Reiff and Barbara Eyster in 1780, she was the oldest of at least eight children. She grew up in Rockland Township, Berks…
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Uncovering Julia M. Culp: The Untold Story of a Gettysburg Nurse
Julia M. Culp is forever linked to her brother John Wesley Culp. Wes’s July 1 nighttime visit to his sisters Anna Eliza and Julia is the source of stories and legends handed down through the ages and the place in history where Julia shows up most often. But who was Julia? Julia M. Culp, born…
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Remembering Sarah Plank: A Civil War Nurse
When Sarah Plank finally passed away in 1926, she was eighty-five and had outlived her husband, John Edward Plank, and three of her twelve children. With that in mind, take some time to consider her obituary. Consider what takes up the most real estate on the page and what is absent. At the time of…
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Henrietta “Hettie” Weikert Saw It All
Henrietta Weikert seems to have left home as soon as she could. At age 18, she married George Washington Shriver who, like her, came from a farming family in Adams County. In the case of Hettie (as she was called), she was the sixth of thirteen children living on a farm east of Little Round…
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Caroline and Louisa, The Fahnestock Sisters
The Fahnestock sisters, Louisa and Caroline, made up two of the five children born to Samuel and Susan Fahnestock that lived to adulthood. The daughters came first, sandwiched around a brother who passed away in infancy. What we know of their lives is limited to what can be traced in public records, and those are…