Is this 'New Market Angel,' a Union soldier rocked by tragedy?

A post-war image of John Adams, who served as a corporal in the 34th Massachusetts.
 (Photo courtesy Susan Harnwell, 15th Massachusetts web site)

Like this blog on Facebook | Follow me on Twitter
By late spring 1864, the brutal reality of the Civil War had tragically struck home in West Brookfield, Mass., for Benjamin and Frances Adams, parents of three sons in the Union army.

On Sept. 17, 1862, Private William Levi Adams was severely wounded in the left lung at Antietam during horrendous fighting in the West Woods. Only 22, he died weeks later of his wounds at Smoketown Hospital near the battlefield. **  Earlier in the war, William had been captured at the Battle of Ball's Bluff, a disastrous Union defeat along the Potomac River, near Leesburg, Va., and was briefly confined in Richmond before he was paroled.

Top: Private William L. Adams of the
15th Massachusetts and brother George,
a private in the 34th Massachusetts.
Both died during the Civil  War.
(Photos courtesy Mark Lawyer)

On May 15, 1864, a rainy Sunday, John W. Adams and his brother, George, went into action with comrades in the 34th Massachusetts near New Market, Va. -- a battle made famous by the participation of more than 250 young Confederate cadets from the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. When the fighting began for the regiment about 1 p.m., the 34th Massachusetts was in a ravine near the Jacob Bushong farmhouse, Adams recalled. Much to the chagrin of 34th Massachusetts soldiers, he remembered, many in the 18th Connecticut skedaddled as the fighting opened.

“There was for a number of years after the War a very biter [sic] feeling in our regt the 34 Mass against the 18 Conn. for their running away from us at New Market,” Adams wrote decades after the battle.

A 20-year-old private in Company I, George E. Adams was "struck by a musket or rifle ball in the head and died instantly," according to his captain, Alexis Soley. Sometime early in the fighting, John was knocked unconscious by a shell fragment, then crawled toward the Valley Pike, where he was shot in the right thigh when he stood near a tree stump.

"The bullet was what they called there a plug bullet about an inch long and smooth with a hollow in the rear end," Adams recalled years later. "I have it still after going through my thigh or thigh bone. I lied on the ground across a root of that stump until dark the night of the 16th when I was picked up by two men, and carried into the Bushong Barn where I staid [sic] 2 days, I think, until a Comrade and myself was taken in a dead Ox Wagon up to the town hall at Harrisonburgh and then to a building just outside of the town and the next day was put into a brick house belonging to Col. Asa Gray."

Captured, Adams was sent to Andersonville. Remarkably, the 25-year-old corporal in Company I survived five months in captivity before he was paroled and finally discharged on April 19, 1865. But before the eldest son of Benjamin and Frances Adams was taken to the notorious POW camp in southwestern Georgia, he may have "forgot his own pain" to perform a remarkable act of kindness for a Southern family. After the rag-tag Confederate army defeated the Federals at New Market, Adams was among the wounded left behind in the town of about 800 people.

In 1889, a Lynchburg, Va., woman named Orra Langhorne wrote in the Boston Transcript newspaper about a Union soldier whose selfless act after the Battle of New Market apparently led to the discovery by a Southern family of the grave of their loved one. Langhorne, an early leader in the suffragette movement, was a correspondent for the Richmond Times as well as the Transcript and other publications. Despite living in heart of the Confederacy in New Market, her physician father was an ardent Union man. Langhorne was in her early 20s in 1864. Published under the headline "Made His Foe's Tombstone," her account of events in New Market during the Civil War appeared in several U.S. newspapers in  the winter of 1889:

“A number of Massachusetts soldiers, wounded in the battle of New Market, were left in my native village in the Shenandoah valley. A few days before, the Confederate authorities, moving their stores to prevent capture by the approaching Federals, had requested the citizens to take into private houses a few Confederate soldiers too ill for removal from the town. Lieut. [Alfred] Woodly, a West Virginian, was carried to my father’s house, and, though every effort was made to save him, he died in a few days. At my father’s request Dr. [Charles] Allen, the surgeon of the Thirty-fourth Massachusetts regiment, left in charge of the wounded Federals, visited Mr. Woodly at our house and paid him every possible attention.

Surgeon Charles Allen treated seriously
wounded Confederate officer
Alfred Day Woodley at New Market.

"In my daily visits to the Federal hospital, which was near us, many kindly inquiries were always made for the wounded ‘stranger within our gates.’ One morning I told the Federal soldiers that our guest was dead, and many regrets and much sympathy for his family were expressed.

"A soldier, named Adams I believe, who sat on the floor nursing his wounded foot, said to me gently: 'I am a marble cutter by trade, and if you will give me a slab of hard wood I will carve Lieut. Woodly’s name on it so that his family can find his grave after the war is over.’ One of the walnut boards used to mark the soldiers’ graves was sent to the hospital and the wounded Federal forgot his own pain in carving in clear typo the dead Confederate’s name and regiment, with the words, ‘He giveth His beloved sleep.'  

"In the spring of '65, after Gen. Grant had received Gen. Lee’s surrender and ordered that the ‘boys should keep the horses they would need to make a crop,’ a young widow, with her two lovely boys, the eldest about 6 years old, visited the soldiers' cemetery in our village and, parting the tangled grass, found the name of her husband carved by the foe who had been actuated by love, not hate, though he, too, had suffered. There was no pension for the widow or her babes; a cruel struggle with poverty lay before them, but as she knelt and kissed the sod above her lover-husband, she blessed the man whose care had enabled her to find the grave.

"In conclusion Mrs. Langhorne says: 'Cannot the noble women of Boston, who did so much to aid our beloved country in her hour of need, find some pity in their hearts for those who have suffered so severely for the cause which they were taught to believe was right? Massachusetts men forgave their enemies when the fighting ceased.' "

Documentation indicates it was possible Adams was indeed the soldier described by Langhorne in the account published nearly 24 years after the Civil War ended. Of the soldiers with the surname Adams in the 34th Massachusetts -- the only regiment from the state to fight at New Market -- only John W. Adams was wounded. The soldier Langhorne described was wounded in the leg, where Adams suffered his wound. But there's also reason to believe he may not be Langhorne's soldier.

John Adams' grave in Pine Grove Cemetery
in West Brookfield, Mass.
(Find A Grave)

A bootmaker before the war, John Adams was described as a "mechanic" when he enlisted in the Union army on July 9, 1862, opening the possibility his craft could have included "marble cutter." The only soldier in the 34th Massachusetts whose occupation was listed as a marble worker was Private John A. Pratt, who also was wounded at New Market. The location of his wound, however, is not known. Did the initial "A" for Pratt's middle name stand for "Adams," perhaps explaining Langhorne's reference to a soldier named Adams? Further research or aid from a reader could confirm whether Adams, Pratt or another soldier from Massachusetts was the "New Market Angel."

What's not in dispute is the tragedy suffered by the Adams family during the Civil War. Nearly five years after George's death, his mother filed for a government pension, an effort to supplement the family income limited by her husband's inability to work consistently since the summer of 1859. According to physicians' affidavits in the George Adams pension file, Benjamin Adams suffered an accidental blow to the head in August 1859, which produced "faintness and giddiness" and led to complaints of liver and stomach ailments. Eventually, a pension of $8 a month was approved for Mrs. Adams, whose family income had been supplemented during the war by George.

Married three times, John Adams was active in veterans' organizations after the war, including an association of New Englanders who survived Confederate prisons. He helped raise $60 for a Civil War monument on the town green in West Brookfield. He died at 74 of heart disease on Feb.13, 1913, and was buried in the town's Pine Grove Cemetery near his brother, George. William Adams' remains rest in Antietam National Cemetery in Sharpsburg, Md., a short distance from where he died in the fall of 1862.

The remains of Alfred Day Woodley, the officer in the 62nd Virginia whose name was carved into a headboard by a Massachusetts soldier in the spring of 1864, lie in a cemetery in Harrisonburg, Va.

---

Do you have more information on this story? E-mail me here.

A zinc memorial for brothers George and William Adams in Pine Grove Cemetery
in West Brookfield, Mass.

NOTES AND SOURCES

** Sources give two dates -- Oct. 10 and Nov. 7, 1862 -- for William Adams' death at Smoketown Hospital near the Antietam battlefield.

-- 1860 U.S. Federal census
-- Alanson Hamilton Grand Army of the Republic Personal Sketches, Adams' brothers biographies, accessed online Nov. 27, 2016.
--American Civil War Research Database, accessed online Nov. 27, 2016.
-- Brookfield (Mass.) Times, Feb. 14, 1913.
-- George Adams' pension file via fold3.com, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
-- John Adams’ letters to B.A. Colonna, Dec. 3, 1910 and Feb. 23, 1911, Virginia Military Institute Archives
-- Nelson, John H, As Grain Falls Before The Reaper, The Federal Hospital Sites And Identified Federal Casualties at Antietam, Privately published CD, Hagerstown, Md., 2004. (Nelson's excellent work is source for William Adams' wound at Antietam. He cites Maryland Hospital Record 352, Record Group 94 Entry 544, National Archives, Washington D.C., as source for that information.)

Grand Review of Union Army 'positively beggars description'

(Mathew Brady | Library of Congress)

A cropped version of a lithograph showing presidential viewing stand in front of White House.
(Library of Congress collection)

                     Like this blog on Facebook | Follow me on Twitter | Contact me

Although photograph explorers have dissected the above image of the presidential reviewing stand at the Grand Review of the United States Army many times, it remains tantalizing.

On May 23, 1865, an estimated 80,000 soldiers in General George Meade's Army of the Potomac marched through the streets of Washington before thousands of spectators. The next day, nearly 65,000 soldiers in General William Sherman's Army of Georgia and Army of the Tennessee repeated the feat — a fitting exclamation point after four years of a brutal civil war. 

Each day, the armies marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and past the White House, where dignitaries and others watched the historic event from reviewing stands. Not surprisingly, the presidential reviewing stand in front of the mansion became a popular photographic subject.

Of the images of the presidential stand on the excellent Library of Congress web site, the photograph attributed to Mathew Brady at the top of this post includes the greatest detail. In the uncropped original, the blurred forms of soldiers and horses appear at right on the dirt road while a huge U.S. flag hangs limp above a packed reviewing stand. Behind the blurred figures, a detachment of soldiers stands guard in front of a massive U.S. banner.

We often discover fascinating details when reviewing digitized versions of Civil War photographs on the LOC site. In these photo enlargements, check out the reclining man reading a paper, snoozing Yankees and soldiers' names etched onto wooden markers in graveyards in South Carolina, Florida and Virginia. In this poignant photo of the burial of U.S. soldiers in war-torn Fredericksburg, Va., I discovered a name scrawled into a wooden headboard. Detective work led to soldier's identity: 6th Michigan Cavalry Sgt. Harvey Tucker, who suffered a mortal wound at the Battle of the Wilderness.

Enlargements of the Grand Review image from May 23, 1865, reveal the leadership of the U.S. government and military and much more:

Easily recognized in the front row of the presidential reviewing stand are Union generals Ulysses Grant and George Meade and President Andrew Johnson, elevated to the highest office in the land 39 days earlier by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, only blocks from the White House.

Less obvious is Edwin Stanton, the blurred figure with the long beard sitting next to Grant. A review of other images taken that day confirms this man is Johnnson's Secretary of War. 

Seated near President Johnson, Major General Wesley Merritt — a cavalry commander — appears to be conversing with Meade. The ghostly figure at the far right is Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, a Connecticut native and a major Lincoln supporter.

---

NEW YORK TIMES (May 24, 1865): "The President arrives in his carriage. Directly after, however, almost at the same moment, Gen. Grant and Staff walk briskly from their headquarters and assume their designated positions. Gen. Meade and Staff having passed, they now return dismounted, and soon the sharply-defined head of the Commander of the Army of the Potomac adds another to the group of distinguished persons, on whom the eyes, the opera-glasses, and even the photographers' lenses are resting."

Ely Parker, who's seated next to a large, potted plant, appears only steps away from his boss. A Native American who served as Grant's adjutant during the war, Parker helped draft the surrender documents signed 45 days earlier by Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, Va.

---

PITTSBURGH DAILY POST (May 24, 1865): "Pennsylvania Avenue presents a scene which probably has never been paralleled in the country. Certainly not south of New York. Its whole vast extent and breadth is compactly lined with people from pavement to housetops. Innumerable flags and banners are displayed all along the Avenue, and the whole scene is one of the most brilliant and imposing ever witnessed, making the heart fill with emotion and the eyes fill with tears of joy. The whole affair positively beggars description."

General Sherman, wearing a white glove, visits with William Dennison, the U.S. Postmaster General. Is the young woman in the background listening in to the conversation? Perhaps they all had just witnessed flamboyant General George Custer's feat, described in one of the local newspapers later that day:

---

WASHINGTON EVENING STAR (May 23, 1865): "Suddenly a thrill ran through the vast assemblage as a magnificent stallion dashed madly past the President and his associates, the rider, General Custar [sic], with a large wreath hanging upon his arm, his scabbard empty, and his long hair waving in the wind, vainly striving to check him. On swept the horse, the throng rising from their seats in breathless suspense that changed to murmur or applause at the horsemanship of the rider, and finally giving place to a long loud cheer as the General checked his frightened steed, and gracefully rode back to the head of his column, the third cavalry division."

Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, among the most able men in the Union army, also sits in the front row, apparently staring straight ahead. "{W]ithout the services of this eminent soldier," Secretary of State William Seward reportedly said of Meigs' Civil War service, "the national cause must have been lost or deeply imperiled." 

Seward, whose face was severely disfigured in a knife attack by John Wilkes Booth co-conspirator Lewis Powell the night Lincoln was assassinated, watched Day 2 of the Grand Review from the nearby Blair House. Do you recognize anyone else in the image?

---

SYRACUSE DAILY COURIER AND UNION (MAY 24, 1865): "In front of the President's house an immense stand has been erected on the south side of the street, for the President and Cabinet, and for the gallant soldiers, Grant and Sherman, who are to review the troops. Another stand on the north side is for the accommodation of Congress, the foreign ministers, and others. A stand is also erected on the square for wounded soldiers. The houses in the vicinity of the President's house are tastefully adorned with flags and evergreens. The route of the march is packed with people, all eager to give the gallant heroes of the war a hearty welcome on their march home."

Sewn into the massive patriotic banner above the reviewing stand are the names of the Union Army's greatest triumphs, including Petersburg, Richmond and ....

... and, of course, Gettysburg.

---

PITTSBURGH DAILY POST (May 24, 1865) "Never has Washington witnessed a more august occasion or presented a more beautiful or animated spectacle. The whole population of the city is in the streets, swollen by many thousands of strangers which have been pouring in here for days past from all points of the compass, and by every imaginable mode of conveyance. Those from abroad are estimated at fully fifty or sixty thousand, a large proportion of whom are ladies. Where they all found shelter and accommodations is a mystery."

We can't help but wonder if this guard detachment of the Veteran Reserve Corps, apparently led by the aged officer at left, was extra-vigilant given the recent, tragic event in the capital. President Johnson, members of his cabinet and some of the most important generals in the Union Army are just behind these soldiers. The day, one of the grandest in Washington's history, went off without a major incident. Most of the soldiers who marched during the historic, two-day event were soon mustered out of the army.

---

NEW YORK TIMES (May 24, 1865): "Though the city is so crowded, it is yet gay and jovial with the good feeling that prevails, for the occasion is one of such grand import and true rejoicing, that small vexations sink out of sight. With many it is the greatest epoch of their lives; with the soldier it is the last act in the drama; with the nation it is the triumphant exhibition of the resources and valor which have saved it from disruption and placed it first upon earth.

"So the scene of to-day (and that of to-morrow) will never be forgotten, and he who is privileged to be a witness will mark it as a white day in the calendar, from which to gather hope and courage for the future."

---

Have something to add (or correct) in this post? E-mail me here.

Gettysburg Then & Now: Where New York colonel hid his sword

 Like this blog on Facebook | Follow me on Twitter
When Union lines collapsed on Seminary Ridge at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, Federals sought refuge in the Sheads House (above), a girls school on Chambersburg Pike. With the enemy in hot pursuit, Charles Wheelock, a 50-year-old colonel in the 97th New York, was among them.

When a Confederate officer caught up with Wheelock in the house, he demanded the Yankee officer's sword, threatening to shoot him if he refused to surrender it. Rather than relinquish his weapon, Wheelock attempted to break it in two. "This sword was given me by my friends for meritorious conduct," he reportedly said, "and I promised to guard it sacredly and never surrender or disgrace it; and I never will while I live."

Charles Wheelock

While the Rebel was temporarily distracted, the exhausted officer gave the prized possession to Carrie Sheads, who hid the sword in the folds of her dress. Not surprisingly, the Confederate officer returned to Wheelock and again demanded the sword, but the colonel said he had given it to another Rebel.

Days later, Wheelock escaped from Rebel confinement and eventually recovered his sword. "It was a sad sight to see them take that grey-headed veteran," Carrie Sheads recalled, "but it was a joyful sight to see him return to reclaim his sword ... "

Initial reports in a New York newspaper indicated Wheelock had "met a heroes death on the battlefield" at Gettysburg. But "we are happy to state that this is a mistake," the newspaper later reported. "Capt. [Gustavus] Palmer, of the same Regiment, in a letter to Daniel Cady, Esq., says that Col. Wheelock was wounded and taken prisoner. As the rebels cannot just now take care of themselves, we presume the gallant Colonel is sheltered in some house near the battle-field, and we hope soon to hear that is likely to recover."

Noted a 1912 history of Oneida (N.Y.) County: "Colonel Wheelock was in command of the regiment continuously and was in the front rank wherever danger called; was taken prisoner at Gettysburg, but escaped from Lee's army at night in the mountains of Pennsylvania during Lee's retreat, and, after being without food for two or three days, he gained the Union lines, where he was welcomed with great enthusiasm by the regiment."

A married father of five children, Wheelock died of typhoid fever in Washington on Jan. 21, 1865, only months before the end of the war.

"Charles Wheelock was somewhat advanced in life," a document in his widow's pension file claim noted, "and his constitution was much impaired by arduous duty in the service of his country and consequently was not in a condition to resist the materies morbi which enervated his body, particularly as he was deformed in a great measure of a diet that would have enabled him to resist the depressing effects of his disease ..."

Wheelock's remains were returned to Boonville, N.Y., where he was buried on Jan. 26 with military honors during a heavy snowstorm.

                                                                  Google Maps.

---

Click here for larger version of "Then & Now"  at the top of this post.

Gettysburg Then & Now: Confederate dead in Slaughter Pen

The location where Alexander Gardner shot the image of these two fallen Confederates in early July 1863 is just yards from where battlefield visitors park their cars today near Devil's Den. The boulder-strewn Little Round Top appears in the background of the "Now" image.

---

Click here to see a larger version of this "Then & Now." 

Hidden Gettysburg: Q&A with Coster Avenue mural co-creator

                     INTERACTIVE PANORAMA: At 3/4 of an acre, the Coster Avenue site 
                               is the smallest slice of the Gettysburg National Military Park.

Like this blog on Facebook | Follow me on Twitter
My favorite Gettysburg sites are mostly off-the-beaten path and visited largely by us battlefield diehards:

1. The field behind the old George Rose farm, scene of bitter fighting on July 2, 1863, is almost a spiritual place. Days after the battle, Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan took horrifying photographs of Confederate dead there, a fraction of the soldiers killed on Rose's farm.

2. You really need to know what to look for to find the site of the temporary grave of 140th Pennsylvania Captain David Acheson. Killed during fighting in The Wheatfield, his body was recovered by comrades and buried by a large boulder on John Weikert's farm. Acheson's initials ("D.A.") and regiment ("140 P.V.")  may still be found on the boulder on which another soldier carved them to mark the burial spot.

Mark H. Dunkelman, co-creator
 of the Coster Avenue mural.

3. Walk into the woods beyond the old Union breastworks on Culp's Hill, close your eyes and try to imagine what happened there more than 153 years ago. You don't have to imagine the massive boulders in those woods -- the Confederates used them as natural defenses from the fire of the Yankees on the crest.

Add to my exclusive list the former site of John Kuhn's Brickyard, scene of the futile stand by the brigade of Union Colonel Charles Coster on the first day of the battle. Modern Gettysburg long ago encroached on the small slice of hallowed ground, now located in a neighborhood three blocks off busy Carlisle Street.

When Mark H. Dunkelman came upon the scene in the spring of 1970, he discovered a large wall under construction behind the 154th New York monument, one of three Union regiments honored with monuments on the grounds for their sacrifices on July 1, 1863. An artist with an avid interest in the 154th New York, Dunkelman asked the owners of the business building the wall if he could create a mural on it to depict the 1863 fighting there. The rest, as they say, is history.

Dunkelman, the author of six books on the 154th New York and creator of an excellent site on the regiment, recently took time out to answer my questions about his mural, one of Gettysburg's hidden gems:

Why so passionate about this project?

Dunkelman: The mural combines two of three lifelong passions: making artwork and Civil War history (the third is playing music). My Civil War study centers on the 154th New York Volunteer Infantry, so I’ve visited Coster Avenue, site of the regiment’s Gettysburg monument, many times since my childhood. During a visit in April 1970, I saw a concrete block wall under construction 10 feet behind the monument.

At first it saddened me that the monument would have such an ugly backdrop. But then an idea came to me. By using my training as an artist (BFA, Rhode Island School of Design, 1969) to create a mural, I could make the wall disappear and bring back the scene that occurred in John Kuhn’s brickyard on that very site on the afternoon of July 1, 1863. I figured the mural would be a valuable device to interpret what happened on a section of the battlefield that has been drastically altered in the decades since the Civil War.

Close-up shows detail on the massive Coster Avenue mural.

The mural is quite an achievement. Do you ever go to Coster Avenue, look at it and wonder, "What the heck was I thinking"?

Dunkelman: My first of six books on the 154th New York, The Hardtack Regiment, was published in 1981, when the mural project was still in its research and development stages. My author’s bio on the dust jacket included this line: “Mr. Dunkelman is planning a mural in Gettysburg adjacent to Coster Avenue, site of the 154th New York’s monument, depicting the fighting that occurred there.” I’ve occasionally referred to that sentence in cautioning people with grandiose plans to keep them under their hat -- otherwise they will feel obligated to follow through with them!

How many hours would you estimate you and your artistic partner, Johan Bjurman, put into creating the massive mural?

Dunkelman: I put in uncounted hours over a period of years developing a one inch to one foot scale pencil sketch and a larger oil sketch that satisfied me and the experts who kindly critiqued my work: my late partner Mike Winey of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, Kathy Georg Harrison at the Gettysburg National Military Park, photographic historian extraordinaire Bill Frassanito, and the late Col. J. Met Sheads, who lived on North Stratton Street and knew the neighborhood as well as the battle.

Johan and I painted the original 80-feet-long mural in five weeks in 1988, which still amazes me considering most of it was painted with one-inch brushes because of all the detail. We did the 2001 restoration, which included scraping off the old varnish and repainting every square inch, in two weeks. Production of the current glass version took quite a while. Johan put in about 100 hours, if I remember correctly, painting over an enlarged print of the mural to create the image that was photographed to create the files that were used to print the glass panels.

Incidentally, Johan and I have been together in Gettysburg three times to work on the mural, in 1988 to install the original, in 2001 to restore it, and in 2015 to take it down for replacement by the glass version. During the first visit, I tripped and banged up my knee and wound up in Gettysburg Hospital. During our last visit, Johan tripped in almost the exact same spot and wound up in Gettysburg Hospital with three broken ribs. So we’ve both been Gettysburg casualties on Coster Avenue. (For much more on the restoration of the mural, see Dunkelman's post on the Emerging Civil War blog here.)

A  photo of the Coster Avenue site in  1970,  the year Dunkelman conceived of the idea to put 
a mural here. The 154th New York monument is at left.  (Photo: Mark H. Dunkelman)

Your mural is smack-dab in the middle of a neighborhood. When you first saw the area, what was your reaction?

Dunkelman: I’ve always seen Coster Avenue — which at three-quarters of an acre is the smallest portion of the Gettysburg National Military Park — as an isolated little grassy island tucked away and hidden in the town, distant from the rest of the battlefield, most of which is contiguous. In all the visits I made to Coster Avenue before the mural was installed, I never saw another person there. Since the mural went up, every time I’ve returned to Gettysburg I’ve encountered visitors at Coster Avenue. Civil War historian Ed Bearss told me that he never took tours to Coster Avenue until the mural went up; since then he makes it a regular stop. It’s been extremely gratifying, since my goal was to draw attention to what had been an overlooked part of the battle.

When I visit Fredericksburg, I often am tempted to visit with those who live in the neighborhood of the Sunken Road to ask them what it's like to live where so much carnage took place. Ever tempted to do the same near the site of your mural?

Dunkelman: I’ve met a number of people who live in the neighborhood surrounding the mural. Sometimes we discuss the battle, but most often the talk is about the mural and its effect in drawing visitors. I’ve been pleased to find that the neighbors like the mural and are protective of it; they keep an eye on it. And my relationship with Coldsmith Roofing, the firm that owns the building, has been great ever since they gave me permission back in the 1970s to attach the mural to their back wall. 

I became friends with a couple who lived around the corner on North Stratton Street, and for years they put me up during visits to Gettysburg (thanks, Paul and Carolyn!). And after they moved, their neighbor has let me stay in an apartment in her house (thanks, Sue!), which is great. Another neighbor has dug brickbats out of his garden — quite likely remnants of Kuhn’s brickyard — and he gave me a good-sized one, which is a nice souvenir. I consider the area around Coster Avenue my neighborhood in Gettysburg.

          The mural and site of fighting on July 1, 1863, is in a Gettysburg neighborhood.

The mural is off the beaten path for the typical Gettysburg visitor. For those who have never visited this part of the battlefield, what are three things they should know?

Dunkelman: First, that the clash between Coster’s Union brigade and Avery’s and Hays’s Confederate brigades was an important element of the First Day’s battle. The brickyard fight’s significance stems from the fact that it was among the last organized Union resistance on July 1, and Coster’s stand allowed the XI Corps divisions that had been driven from the plains north of the town to make their escape through the borough without major additional losses. 

Ewell’s failure to attack Cemetery Hill on the afternoon of July 1 is one of the major controversies of the battle. The brickyard fight has to be considered as a factor in that decision. Second, the brickyard fight was long overlooked by historians and students of the battle. For example, Edwin Coddington devoted only two sentences to it in his classic 1968 book, The Gettysburg Campaign. In contrast, the late Harry Pfanz included an entire chapter on the brickyard fight in his 2001 book, Gettysburg – The First Day. Third, but not least, about 770 New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians, North Carolinians, and Louisianans became casualties in the brickyard fight, and they deserve to be remembered.

An image of 154th New York Sergeant
Amos Humiston's children was
 found near his body at Gettysburg.

What's your favorite individual soldier story of the fighting that took place in the vicinity of Kuhn's brickyard?

Dunkelman: That would be the story I told in detail in my second book, Gettysburg’s Unknown Soldier: The Life, Death, and Celebrity of Amos Humiston (Praeger, 1999). I rate the tale of Sergeant Humiston and his famous “Children of the Battle Field” as one of the best known human-interest stories to emerge from the battle, right up there with those of John Burns and Jennie Wade. My connection with Humiston descendants, who provided me with a plethora of material, including Amos’s wartime letters, enabled me to write what has been described as the definitive account. That was gratifying — as was the invitation to deliver the main address at the 1993 dedication of the monument to Amos a few blocks south of Coster Avenue. (Read more on Humiston here.)

Finally, besides Coster Avenue, what are your three favorite sites at Gettysburg?

Dunkelman: The Amos Humiston monument on the grounds of the Gettysburg Volunteer Fire Department at 35 North Stratton Street; East Cemetery Hill, including the monuments to regiments of Coster’s brigade on the GNMP side of Baltimore Street and the two former Homestead orphanage buildings on the other side of the street at numbers 777 and 785 (the founding of the orphanage was inspired by the Humiston story); and the 10 graves of 154th New York soldiers in the National Cemetery.

        INTERACTIVE PANORAMA: Colonel Coster's brigade made a futile stand here.

Culp's Hill at Gettysburg: An outdoor art gallery

When the rich fall light is right, Culp's Hill becomes an outdoor art gallery. Here are images I shot in Gettysburg recently of the monument to the 1st Regiment Eastern Shore Maryland Volunteer Infantry, a Union unit.

Gettysburg Then & Now: 15 Confederate dead on Rose farm

It's difficult to view, but the "Then" photo shows the ugly reality of war. Photographed by Timothy O'Sullivan, the bodies of 15 Confederates lay in a field on George Rose's farm at Gettysburg days after the soldiers were killed. O'Sullivan and Alexander Gardner shot images of at least 34 Confederate dead in this field.

---

Click here to see a larger version of this "Then & Now" and more images taken in July 1863 on the Rose farm.