What army borrowed from Private Barney Houser at Antietam

From Sharpsburg, Md., Barney Houser was a  private in the 1st Maryland Potomac Home  Brigade.

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When Barney Houser marched off from Sharpsburg, Md., to fight the Rebs, he probably didn't expect anyone to one day come calling to borrow an iron kettle, a skillet, four window blinds, four ladles .... and his house. But war has a way of turning lives upside down.

A private in the 1st Maryland Potomac Home Brigade from August 1861-August 1864, Houser lived in a house next to the German Reformed Church, a small, brick structure on Main Street. Md. After the Battle of Antietam, the building was one of three churches in town used as a hospital. Wounded were carried into the church on planks, laid across the pews, and operated on by surgeons, who tossed amputated limbs out the windows. At least seven soldiers from Connecticut died within the walls of the 40 x 80-foot building, including 16th Connecticut privates James Brooks of Stafford and Horace Lay of Hartford and 8th Connecticut private John Doolittle of Middletown.

Bob Eschbach, holding a copy of a photo of Private Barney Houser,
 lives next to Christ Reformed Church, which was used as a hospital 
after the Battle of Antietam. 

Hard-pressed to deal with the influx of patients at the German Reformed Church, Union medical personnel used Houser's home, just 15 feet across an alley from the church, to accommodate more wounded men. And they also borrowed a litany of items from the soldier's house.

Bob Eschbach, current owner of the residence, received the evidence several years when he gave a tour of the house to Houser's descendants, who traveled from Kansas to Sharpsburg to learn more about their ancestor. The family gave Eschbach copies of a wartime image of Houser and a receipt he received from the army for items borrowed from his home for use in the hospital next door. In all, 14 different items are listed, including two bed ticks ($3), four chairs ($2), two bedsteads ($6), one waiter (75 cents) and one Dutch oven ($1). (See copy below.)

Whether Houser received financial compensation from government for his war "contribution" is unknown.

Worship services are still held on Sunday at the German Reformed Church, now called Christ Reformed Church. The building was extensively renovated after the Civil War, thanks, in part, to donations from Connecticut veterans, who paid for a beautiful stained-glassed window that faces Main Street. As for Eschbach, he has no qualms about living next to the scene of horror and pain so long ago.

"People have to live somewhere," he said. A frequent visitor to the battlefield, Eschbach has lived in the house since 1993.

Private Barney Houser lived in this house in Sharpsburg during the Civil War. According to
 the current owner,  part of the house dates to the Revolutionary War.

A copy of the receipt Barney Houser received for items borrowed from his house
for use in the church hospital next door.

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Antietam panoramas: Sharpsburg's Main Street church

Connecticut Civil War veterans chipped in
 $400 in 1891 to purchase this stained-glass
 window for the  German Reformed Church.

I got up early last Wednesday morning to shoot this panorama of Main Street in Sharpsburg, Md., a town Norman  Rockwell should have put on his bucket list. Of particular interest to me is the Christ Reformed Church, the red-brick building toward the left of the image. Called the German Reform Church during the Civil War, it was one of three churches in town used as a Union hospital after Antietam.

During the past three months, I have been digging into the stories of some of the Connecticut soldiers who were patients in that church. One of those men was James Brooks, a 19-year-old private in the 16th Connecticut, who lay in no-man's land in farmer John Otto's cornfield for 40 hours before he was found by a Union burial crew. He initially was treated in Otto's barn, a makeshift field hospital, before he was transferred to the German Reformed Church, where he died on  Oct. 11, 1862. Brooks' body was returned to Connecticut and buried in a small cemetery in rural Willington under a gravestone that notes he died of  "six heavy wounds."

If you visit Sharpsburg, put a stop at the church on your to-do list, and arrange to go inside to check out the beautiful stained-glass window that faces Main Street. In 1891, Connecticut Antietam veterans donated that window in honor of their comrades who died at the battle. Below is a panorama of the inside of the church, shot with my iPhone 4.

The church suffered significant damage during the war and was remodeled in the 1890s. The blood-stained Civil War-era floorboards  were reportedly ripped out in the 1940s, although I have heard that some of the original floorboards remain. I'll try to confirm that on my next trip to Sharpsburg.  An aside:  Recent blog subject Barney Houser, a private in the 1st Maryland Potomac Home Brigade, lived in the house to the left of the church during the Civil War. Items borrowed from his house for use in the German Reformed Church hospital included an iron kettle, a skillet, four window blinds, four ladles and a Dutch oven.