Connecticut Yankees at Antietam/Gettysburg talk

After the Battle of Antietam, Maria Hall rushed to the battlefield from Washington to help care for hundreds of wounded and broken men. Hall, who served as a nurse at Smoketown Hospital near the battlefield until May 1863, soon gained a reputation for her kindness and generosity. “Her self-sacrifice is worthy of something more than newspaper notice,” wrote Sgt. Thomas Grenan of the 78th New York, who was at Smoketown for four months with a gunshot wound to his lower jaw. “With untiring perseverance she dealt out to the poor, wounded soldier the delicacies that he could relish, and which, by Government regulations, he could not get. ... Such noble women as she strips the battle-field of half its terrors.”  Hall, who after the war lived in Connecticut, later cared for soldiers who were wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg at a hospital in Annapolis, Md. I'll talk about her and others from Connecticut who witnessed the horrors of Antietam and Gettysburg during a Civil War lecture at the Avon (Conn.) Free Public Library on Saturday at 1 p.m. Check out the "trailer" for the talk above. I'll have copies of my book, "Connecticut Yankees at Antietam," available for purchase. According to highly placed sources, it's a great Christmas gift.