Issue #12 Catoctin - Frederick Community...

CatoctinCatoctinH I S T O R Y

The Magazine of the Catoctin Center for Regional Studies n Issue #12 n 2014

H I S T O R Y

The Postmaster and the General

The OSS in Catoctin Mountain Park

Special Orders 191

We Say Our Good-bye

Plus

2014 • Catoctin History 1

CatoctinH I S T O R Y

2A World War II Secret:

The OSS in Catoctin Mountain Park

John Whiteclay Chambers II

10Invitation to Battle: Special Orders 191

Tracy Evans

18The Postmaster and the

General: Benjamin Franklin and Edward Braddock

in FrederickStephen Powell

Cover Image: Benjamin Franklin. (COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

Edward Braddock. (COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

Top of Page Image: Officers playing cards in Petersburg, Virginia. (COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

Traditions 22The Battle Against Boredom: Game Playing by Civil War SoldiersCalvin Fisher

Food 26Margaret Artz’s Day BookMary K. Mannix

Catoctin History Tour #12 32Freedmen’s Bureau SchoolsDean Herrin and Edie Wallace

Documents 37The Children of the BattlefieldAndrew Borsa

Catoctin History Index 42

2014 • Issue #12The Magazine of the Catoctin Center for Regional Studies

Table of Contents

Farewell from Catoctin HistoryDear Readers,

With this 12th issue, Catoctin History reaches its final hour. In June, the Catoctin Center for Regional Studies will close its doors permanently, and Catoctin History will cease publication.

Publishing these twelve issues has taken us on an exciting and enlightening journey through our region’s history. From 2002 to 2014, we have worked with professional scholars, budding historians, a hard-working team of interns, and an incredible designer. Our reward was that we were always learning, and our special thrill was to share it with our readers. To all of you, then, we say a special thank you for your interest in history, for your support of the magazine, and, at times, for your patience over the years.

We wish to thank our authors, all of whom allowed us to publish their work free of charge; the individuals and institutions who gave us permission to use photographs and images; our many talented student interns who worked on all aspects of the magazine; and Perk Hull, our amazing designer. Special thanks go to the organizations, institutions, and individuals that provided financial support for the publication of Catoctin History. We are particularly grateful to our two sponsoring organizations, Frederick Community College and the National Park Service.

While the end of Catoctin History is indeed the end of a chapter, it is not the end of the story, for much of the history of the Catoctin region remains to be discovered. As we turn the final page on Catoctin History, we do it in the hope you will continue to pursue those stories still waiting to be told.

Catoctin History will live on in a fashion, thanks to Frederick Community College, as digital copies of all twelve issues will be available at http://catoctinhistory.frederick.edu

Our award-wining new website about the Civil War era, “Crossroads of War: Maryland and the Border in the Civil War,” will also continue to be available at www.crossroadsofwar.org.

CATOCTIN HISTORYCatoctin Center for Regional Studies

Frederick Community College

EDITORDean Herrin

ASSISTANT EDITORBarbara Powell

DESIGNERPerk Hull

COPY EDITORSLauren PooleJenna Gianni

SUBSCRIPTION DATABASEJenna Gianni

PRINTINGGraphcom, Inc.Gettysburg, PA

Catoctin History is the magazine of the Catoc-tin Center for Regional Studies, a program of Frederick Community College and the Nation-al Park Service. Catoctin History is a non-prof-it educational magazine that serves as a forum for information about the history and culture of mid-Maryland and the surrounding region.

© 2014 Catoctin Center for Regional Studies. All rights reserved. ISSN 1555-0826.

Special thanks to our designer, Perk Hull!

www.Facebook.com/PerkHullDesignwww.PerkHull.com

It began with a cryptic notice in a local news-paper in April 1942: “The Catoctin Area Is Ordered Closed to the Public.” Five months after the United States had entered World War II, the only other information the local newspaper in nearby Thurmont, Maryland, could report was that the government was

taking over Catoctin Mountain Park “for use in the war effort.”1

The park, administered by the National Park Service since 1937, was sealed away for the du-ration of the war. It would not reopen for public use until 1947.2

What happened on top of Catoctin Mountain during World War II? What activities were hid-den behind the military guards who barred the gates and patrolled the perimeters?

Rumors swirled in neighboring towns. One was that Catoctin Mountain Park had become a training camp for army officers. Another was that it was being used for a rehabilitation facility for combat veterans.3 Some knew of a presiden-tial retreat in the park, and of a wartime meeting

A WORLD WAR II SECRET:The OSS in

Catoctin Mountain Park John Whiteclay Chambers II

there between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill. The full story of the role Ca-toctin Mountain played in the war effort would remain unknown to local residents, and to the general public, for half a century.4

From 1942 through 1944, Catoctin Mountain Park was a training camp for the spies and sab-oteurs of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), headed by William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan. Pres-ident Roosevelt created the OSS as a temporary wartime agency for intelligence gathering and analysis, as well as for covert operations, guer-rilla warfare, and sabotage. The OSS consisted primarily of civilians; even most of its uniformed personnel operated largely outside the regular armed forces. Because of its secrecy, the exact size of the OSS is still undetermined. Perhaps as many as 18,000 men and 4,000 women served in the organization between 1942 and 1945.5

The OSS of WWII was the direct predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency as well as one of the forerunners of the Army Special Forces and the Navy SEALS. After the war, the CIA took over most of the OSS records, which began to be declassified in the 1980s. Most OSS person-nel, sworn to secrecy, did not reveal their roles for decades.6

With its authority to recruit from the civilian sector as well as the military, and with Dono-van’s innovative approaches to strategic intel-ligence and unconventional warfare, even the uniformed OSS branches were a most unmilitary military. Emphasis was placed on recruiting intel-ligent, highly motivated, imaginative individuals, and abandoning military regimen and protocol in favor of self-motivation and risk-taking. The OSS provided these carefully selected individuals with demanding training exercises to increase self-confidence so they would be prepared to

use a variety of means to achieve extraordinary goals. Among the trainees were William Colby and William Casey, two lawyers turned covert operators who later became directors of the CIA. Others included people from a wide variety of backgrounds; among them were James Jesus An-gleton, a Harvard law graduate who would later work for the CIA; movie star Sterling Hayden, who dodged German bullets in the Adriatic and in Yugoslavia; Russian prince and New York socialite Serge Obolensky, who obtained the sur-render of the 270,000 Italian troops garrisoning Sardinia; and Morris (“Moe”) Berg, a Columbia graduate (and a catcher for the Boston Red Sox) sent to Europe to determine the state of Nazi research on an atomic bomb and to assassinate the leading German nuclear physicist if necessary (it was not).

To establish training camps for these secret agents, the OSS sought comparatively isolated rural areas, removed from public view but still within a two or three hour drive of Washington, D.C.7 The Special Operations branch chose two facilities of the National Park Service: Catoctin Mountain Park north of Frederick, Maryland, and Prince William Forest Park, near Quantico, Virginia.

Catoctin Mountain Park, the more moun-tainous of the two, then included ten thousand acres of rugged terrain which rose nearly two thousand feet above the Monocacy River valley. The park’s summer group camping facilities, constructed by workers from several New Deal agencies in the late 1930s, were used by various charitable and youth organizations.8 Cabin Camp #1 (Misty Mount) was used by groups as diverse as the Girl Scouts and the Salvation Army. Cabin Camp #2 (Greentop) was specially fitted for use by the Maryland League for Crippled Children, which brought mostly polio-afflicted boys and girls to the park each summer. Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts from Washington, D.C. used Cabin Camp #3 (Hi-Catoctin).9 During World War II, however, there would be no civilian camping in Catoctin Mountain Park.

In the spring of 1942, the War Department took over the park, leasing it from the Depart-ment of the Interior. The park superintendents remained on duty to continue the National Park Service’s primary mission: to preserve the natural resources for future generations of Americans. Under the terms of the lease, the War Depart-ment agreed to uphold the Park’s prohibitions on the destruction of trees, shrubs, and wildlife, and to restore the Park’s facilities at the end of the war.10

Catoctin Mountain, designated Training Area B, included the training school at the cabin camp, formerly called Greentop (Area B-2), and the administrative center in a former CCC work camp, now the site of “Camp Round Meadow” (Area B-5). Training Area B became the site of the basic paramilitary course run by the Special Operations Branch of the OSS.11 This course was taken not just by future saboteurs and guerrilla leaders but also by spies of the Secret Intelligence Branch, and by counterspies, propagandists, and wireless radio operators of other branches. Ultimately Area B expanded to accommodate up to nearly 250 trainees, plus the staff.12

The first commander at Area B was Major Ainsworth Blogg, a reserve Army officer in the Military Police recruited by OSS in the spring of 1942.13 Special Operations trainees arrived at Catoctin in late April 1942. This group, known as Detachment 101, consisted of officers and enlist-ed men destined for India and the mountainous jungles of northern Burma. Their purpose was to organize guerrilla units of native Kachin tribes-men to harass Japanese lines of communication and supply. By the end of the war, Detachment 101 was one of the most successful of Donovan’s guerrilla organizations. It was credited with mobilizing 11,000 Kachins and providing stra-tegic support for regular combat operations that helped defeat the Japanese in Burma.14

To prepare these men, the OSS built obstacle courses and physical training areas, target ranges for various types of small arms—American, Brit-ish, German and Japanese pistols, carbines, rifles, submachine guns—as well as grenade, mor-

William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Head

of the OSS.

A current map of Catoctin Mountain Park, showing the location of OSS Area B sites during World War II.

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The OSS of WWII was the direct

predecessor of the Central Intelligence

Agency

OSS TRAINING AREA B

AREA B-5 AREA B-2

tar, and demolitions areas for instruction in explosives. The OSS also turned the cabins, dining halls, and wash-rooms of Area B into year-round facilities by adding heating stoves, insulation, and hot water.15 The tempera-tures on the mountain in winter still presented challenges: “Cold as the devil this morning,

nearly froze while shaving,” the assistant compa-ny clerk wrote in his diary in late October. “The first time I went in to take a shower there was ice on the floor.”16

One of the new structures in Area B designed for physical training exercises was named the “trainazium” by OSS recruits. The “trainazium” was made of six trimmed logs as tall as tele-phone poles secured vertically and connected eighteen feet above the ground by a series of parallel poles. Trainees were ordered to climb the logs and dart around the poles nearly two stories high. As one instructor recalled, the “trainazium” was designed “to build the men’s self-confidence, to build up their physical strength and dexteri-ty…and [teach them] to be agile on narrow high places.”17

Nearby, a small darkened building known as the “House of Horrors,” devised by instructor William E. Fairbairn, was specially constructed without windows and filled with wobbly walk-ways, moving objects, sound effects, flashing lights, and other surprises. Instructors took individual students there at night, gave them a loaded pistol, and sent them inside. It provided a stressful, quasi-realistic combat environment that tested their reactions, increased their focus and self-control, and boosted their self-confidence. Years later Edgar A. Prichard, who in 1942 was a twenty-two-year-old OSS recruit at Area B, recalled the experience:

Each of us over a period of a couple of days would be awakened in the middle of the night and hauled off to carry out a spe-cial mission. When it came my time, I was told that there was a Nazi soldier holed up in a building and that it was my job to go in and kill him. I was given a .45 and two clips [of ammunition]. The house I was sent into was a log house with long corridors and stairways. I wasn’t sure whether there really

was a Nazi soldier there or not. I kicked a door open with my gun at the ready. Paper targets with photographs of uniformed Ger-man soldiers jumped out at me from every corner and every window and doorway. We had been taught to always fire two shots at the target. There must have been six targets because I got two bullets in each one. The last one was a dummy sitting in a chair with a lighted cigarette in his hand. If you didn’t shoot him you failed the test.18

Instructors taught students the arts of spy-ing, raiding, and sabotage. Espionage training included knowledge of enemy armies, policies, and procedures, plus instruction in how to create disguises, recruit indigenous agents, use miniature cameras, and conceal microfilm. For self-defense, students practiced Ju-Jitsu and also “instinctive fire,” getting off two quick shots at a time with a pistol from a crouched position. For attack missions, they learned hit-and-run raiding techniques as well as how to use various explo-sives and timed fuses for sabotage.19 Students tested different explosives and fuses on pieces of iron, steel, and wood as practice for blowing up bridges, dams, railroad radio towers or power plants. One innovation of the OSS Research and Development Branch was a concoction nick-named “Aunt Jemima,” which looked like flour packed in sacks. With a fuse attached, however, “Aunt Jemima” became an explosive that could sever steel pillars in a bridge.20

As the month-long training at Area B pro-gressed, the intensity increased. “By the end of November [1943], our training at Area B … had become a grueling marathon,” Lieutenant John K. (“Jack”) Singlaub later wrote.

We fired American, British and German weapons almost every day. We crawled through rain-soaked oak forests at night to plant live demolition charges on floodlit sheds. We were introduced to clandestine radio procedure and practiced typing out code and encrypting messages in our few spare moments. Many mornings began with a run, followed by a passage on an increas-ingly sophisticated and dangerous obstacle course. The explosive charges under rope bridges and wire catwalks no longer explod-ed to one side as exciting stage effects. Now they blasted directly below, a moment or two after we had passed.21

Paramilitary training could be dangerous. In 1942, a Secret Intelligence trainee triggered a trip

wire on a demolition trail at Area B. The wire set off a block of TNT that sent a thick chunk of tree branch hurtling through the air, hitting him in the face and breaking his jaw. The trainee was thirty-year-old William J. Casey, who subse-quently went on to run OSS espionage networks in Nazi Germany in 1945 and who, nearly forty years later, would be named Director of the Central Intelligence Agency by President Ronald Reagan.22

In 1943 and 1944, Catoctin Mountain Park became the site of an advanced training facility for OSS’s new Operational Groups (OGs). These were guerrilla-style commando units composed mainly of ethnic Americans already familiar with the language and customs of the country into which they would parachute. OSS had French, Italian, Greek, Yugoslavian, Norwegian, and German Operational Groups, mostly drawn from

men who had already had basic training in the wartime U.S. Army. Each country-specific OG consisted usually of one hundred to two hun-dred men, although the French and Italian OGs numbered several hundred. Teams of fifteen to thirty-four, composed of commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers, one or two radio operators, and medics, would be dropped deep behind enemy lines. There, operating from woods, mountains, or jungles, they would orga-nize, supply, and lead indigenous guerrilla bands in hit and run missions to harass or sever com-munication and supply lines and divert substan-tial numbers of enemy troops.23

While these Operational Groups trained as units, the Special Operations or Secret Intelli-gence forces learned to work as individual agents or in two- or three-man teams. Special Opera-tions and Secret Intelligence trainees concluded their training with a practice undercover oper-

ation. Students from Catoctin often infiltrat-ed defense plants in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, or Philadelphia. Some of the initial projects involved closer facto-ries. In 1942, Lieuten-ants William R. Peers and Nicol Smith were assigned to penetrate the Fairchild Aircraft factory in Hagerstown. They returned with de-tailed plans of the facility and how to sabotage it. Peers soon left for Burma with Detachment 101. Smith led a group of Thai students who trained at Area B back to their homeland to spy on the Japanese.24

Service in the OSS was voluntary and highly selective, and recruits for the operational branch-es were warned that their missions could be extremely hazardous (Hitler ordered commandos to be treated like spies and summarily executed). Most graduates of the paramilitary training at Area B went on to serve in hazardous duty, some of which was kept secret for decades. Captain Jerry Sage, an instructor at Area B, was captured by the Germans in North Africa in February 1943 and spent the next two years in POW camps. He was involved in plans for a tunneling break-out later made famous by the movie The Great Escape. He escaped half a dozen times, but each time was recaptured, until he finally fled suc-cessfully from a camp near the Eastern Front in January 1945.25 Captain Howard W. Chappell, who trained at Area B with the German Oper-ational Group, led a Special Operations team against German forces in the Italian Alps in 1945 that earned him a Silver Star Medal for heroism.26 Sgt. Robert R. Kehoe went through Area B before being sent to Britain, where he became the radio operator for one of the British-French-Ameri-can teams that parachuted into northern France before (and after) the D-Day invasion to lead the French Resistance and block or hinder German reinforcements. He received a Distinguished Service Cross.27

Such operations were dangerous, and a num-ber of OSS agents were captured, tortured, and killed by the Nazis in France, Italy, Greece, Yu-goslavia, and Slovakia. In March 1944, all fifteen members of a sabotage team of Italian Americans from the OSS Italian Operational Group that had trained at Area B were caught and executed by the Nazis in an open field in northern Italy.28


A still from the film “OSS Training Group,” produced by the Office of Strategic Services in 1942 and directed by John Ford, showing the OSS headquarters cabin in Area B-2. The entire film can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy1ZAMTENTI.

OSS trainees at a pistol range in Area B. Since the OSS was a covert operations organization, the trainees wore masks in the film.

The former OSS headquarters cabin, as it looks today as part of Camp Greentop.

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Nearby, a small darkened building known as the “House of Horrors”

was specially constructed

without windows and filled with

wobbly walkways, moving objects, sound effects, flashing lights,

and other surprises.

The following year, several Eastern-European Americans who trained at Area B were sent to support an anti-Nazi uprising in Czechoslovakia. They were caught, tortured, and executed at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria after

the German Army had brutally crushed the Slovakian uprising.29

OSS teams from Area B carried out missions in the Pacific theater as well. Ma-jor Frank Gleason, an Army engineer and former demolitions instructor at Area B, ar-rived in China in 1943 and, along with fellow Area B instructors Ar-den Dow and Charles Parkin, began training Chinese commandos. When the Japanese Army marched toward Allied headquarters in Chungking (now Chongqing) in the winter of 1944-1945, Gleason led an expedi-tion of a dozen Ameri-

cans toward the enemy, blowing up 150 bridges, 30 ferries, a railroad tunnel, and several ware-houses full of arms and munitions. Those actions helped halt the Japanese advance.30 Lieutenant Paul Cyr trained at Areas B and F, and won a Distinguished Service Cross for heroism as a member of a three-man team operating behind German lines in France for three months after the Normandy invasion. Cyr, promoted to major, was transferred to China, where he led a Chinese team in destroying a heavily guarded Japanese railroad bridge across the Yellow River. Cyr’s team destroyed the mile-long bridge at night just as a Japanese troop train was crossing it, and the locomotive and twenty cars with some two thousand enemy soldiers aboard plunged into the waters below.31 With the sudden end of the war in the Far East, small, daring OSS teams from Area B led rescue missions, parachuting into Jap-anese-run POW camps to prevent atrocities from being committed on the Allied prisoners.32

The level of secrecy attached to the OSS training camp on Catoctin Mountain required that instructors, staffers, and trainees maintain that secrecy while on leave. “When we would go downtown, people would ask us where we were

stationed. We would tell them Camp Ritchie [at Cascade, Maryland] or Fort Detrick [at Freder-ick],” recalled Al Guay, assistant company clerk.33 Wives of OSS instructors knew their husbands were officers, and believed they worked at an army camp every day, but knew nothing about the OSS.34

Despite the long and arduous work for staff and trainees, some leisure time was available for the men at the OSS training camps. While off duty, men played baseball, volleyball, and cards, or received day passes to visit local towns. Some staffers from Area B visited Thurmont, only a couple of miles away. Thurmont residents remember seeing occasional soldiers in town.35 OSS Security Branch reported that local residents knew there was military activity nearby, “but there appears to be little concrete evidence of any special curiosity or interest regarding the na-ture of that activity.”36 In the interests of secrecy, personnel were soon prohibited from going to towns in proximity of Catoctin. Instead, their evening passes directed them to visit Hager-stown or Frederick. Canvas-covered army trucks would bring the men in army uniforms down from the mountain on Saturday afternoons and pick them up late that night. The men could go to the movies, bars, bowling alleys, or to dances arranged for military personnel by the United Service Organization (USO). “We had a hell of a time” at the dance halls, recalled Seaman Spiro Cappony, 19, an OSS radio operator.37 When staff members from Area B got a pass for an entire weekend, they often headed for Washing-ton, D.C. Arriving in Frederick in a covered army truck, the enlisted men would take a commercial bus or hitchhike to Washington and back.38

Following the D-Day invasion in France, with Operational Groups already trained and de-ployed in Europe, the OSS shifted its main effort to the Far East and established new training camps on the West Coast. In June 1944 Dono-van’s organization terminated its use of Area B in Catoctin Mountain Park.39 The military training areas were turned over to the Army’s Military Intelligence School at nearby Camp Ritchie, which had periodically held field exercises there since 1942.40 The former OSS training camp at Area B-2 was used by the Marine Corps for the rehabilitation of returning veterans from January 1946 until March 1947.41 When the Marines de-parted in the spring of 1947, the park returned to civilian control for the first time in five years.

During World War II, OSS operations overseas had impressed a number of American officials. These included General Dwight D. Eisenhower,

who wrote in May 1945 that the value of the OSS “has been so great that there should be no thought of its elimination.”42 Despite Eisen-hower’s recommendation, however, the OSS was disbanded in September 1945 by President Truman.43

The process of returning Catoctin Mountain Park to civilian use took months. In November 1945, the War Department declared that the park was no longer needed for defense purposes. The park needed to be restored to its prewar condi-tion, however.44

Under Superintendent Mike Williams’ super-vision, the Army Engineers from Camp Ritchie eliminated the military OSS facilities: the muni-tions storage, the firing ranges, the demolition and obstacle courses, the “trainazium,” and the “House of Horrors.” They also located and re-moved unexploded mortar shells, grenades, and booby-traps remaining from field exercises, al-though occasionally a fragment would resurface long after the war in the undeveloped northwest area of the park.45

The military’s heavy trucks had caused considerable damage to the mountain roads. Construction on a new road from Thurmont to Hagerstown, eventually designated Route 77, began in the spring of 1944.46 The main entrance to the park, which had been the entrance to the OSS camp, was transferred from Deerfield, near the old railroad station at Lantz on the north side, to the current entrance on Route 77 on the south slope of the mountain.47

Catoctin Mountain Park reopened to the public eighteen months after the end of World War II.48 The decision to retain Catoctin Moun-tain Park in the federal system was made by President Truman because of the wishes of the late President Roosevelt and because of “the historical events of national and international interest” associated with it.49 In 1954, in response to Maryland officials and local hunters, fisher-men, and other sports enthusiasts, the National Park Service turned over the southern half of the park, approximately 4,450 acres south of Route 77, to the State of Maryland. This area became Cunningham Falls State Park.50

Although the purely military structures built by the OSS in Catoctin Mountain Park are gone, most of the original structures built at Greentop by the New Deal agencies in the 1930s, which were part of the OSS’s Training Area B-2, contin-ue today in civilian use. Greentop is used by the League for the Disabled, formerly the Maryland League for Crippled Children, as well as by some local schools and scout groups. Misty Mount,

site of the Marine garrison for most of the war, hosted local Girl Scouts and public school pro-grams for years; more recently it has been used by camping groups. Round Meadow, the former CCC work camp which became OSS Area B-5, now includes one of the park’s maintenance facilities. Round Mead-ow became the first Job Corps Camp in the na-tion in 1965 and served as a residential camp for the Youth Conser-vation Corps during most of the 1970s. A secured area of the park contains Camp David.51

The Allied victory was expedited and many Allied lives were saved by the extraordi-nary efforts of the men and women of the OSS, a comparatively small but highly effective organization. Its legacy includes the CIA, es-tablished in 1947, the Army Special Forces, and the Navy SEALs. These agencies incorporated the OSS training methods taught at Catoctin Mountain Park di-rectly into their own training programs.52

It has only been in recent years that people have begun to learn the full story of the OSS and the secret training camp at Catoctin Mountain Park. It is a story of spies, saboteurs, and guerrilla leaders who began their training in the peaceful campgrounds of Catoctin Mountain Park and who went forth, often deep behind enemy lines, to a covert war to defeat the Axis Powers, a war from which some of them would never return. It is a story worth remembering and commemo-rating.

John Whiteclay Chambers II is Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and author most recently of OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2008), readable at http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/oss/index.htm.


William E. Fairbairn, one of the instructors at Area B. Fairbairn was OSS’s chief instructor in close-combat techniques and “knew at least 100 ways to kill people without shooting them.”

Hollywood actor Sterling Hayden joined the OSS and trained at Area B.

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1 The Catoctin Enterprise, April 10, 1942.2 The park was then known as Catoctin Recre-

ational Demonstration Area. On its origin, see Conrad L. Wirth, Parks, Politics and the People (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 186-189; Edmund F. Werhle, Catoctin Mountain Park: A Historical Resource Study (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2000), 138-193; Barbara M. Kirkconnell, Catoctin Mountain Park: An Administrative History (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1988), 22-71; and www.nps.gov/cato. During the war, the military took over the half of the park north of what is now State Route 77; there was some limited, seasonal public use of the area south of Route 77, particularly trout fishing on Big Hunting Creek which was outside of the military area of the park.

3 William A. Willhide, Thurmont, Maryland, tele-phone interview with the author, June 13, 2006. Local residents had recognized the presidential motorcade arriving on some summer weekends, and they soon learned that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had established a secure retreat in one area of the park. James H. Mackley, Thurmont, Maryland, telephone interview with the author, June 13, 2006.Not until after the war could the press publish details on what Roos-evelt called “Shangri-la” (and Eisenhower later renamed “Camp David”). The name came from a fictional mountain refuge in Tibet featured in James Hilton’s 1933 novel, Lost Horizon.” W. Dale Nelson, The President Is at Camp David (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1950), 2. See also “Shangri-La Revealed,” Baltimore Sun, September 16, 1945; “Mountain Top White House: F.D.R. and Winnie [Churchill] Met at Maryland Hideout,” Washington, D.C. Times-Herald, September 18, 1945, 12; clip-pings in Newton B. Drury Papers, National Park Service Records (Record Group 79), Entry 19, Box 4, National Archives II, College Park, MD (hereinafter National Archives II).

4 Telephone interviews by the author with longtime residents of nearby Thurmont, Maryland: John Kinnaird, Frank Long, June 7, 2006; James H. Mackley, June 13, 2009. This and much of the following account is based primarily on the author’s report to the National Park Service, John Whiteclay Chambers II, OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2008), readable at http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/oss/index.htm.

5 Chambers, OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II, 2, 34, 576-577, and William H. Cunliffe, archivist in charge of OSS Records at the National Archives, interviewed by the author, January 13, 2009, on numbers and problems of determining precise numbers of personnel in the secret organization. Other recent accounts of the OSS include Thomas F. Troy, Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1981); Elizabeth P. McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1998); and Patrick K. O’Donnell, Operatives, Spies and Saboteurs: The Unknown Men and Women of World War II’s OSS (New York: Free

Press/Simon & Schuster, 2004); and Eugene Liptak, Office of Strategic Services, 1942-45: The World War II Origins of the CIA (New York: Osprey Pub. Ltd., 2009).

6 George C. Chalou, ed., The Secrets War: The Office of Strategic Services in World War II (Washington, D.C., National Archives and Records Administration, 1992), explored the OSS Records which the CIA began to declassify in the 1980s. The latest group of OSS docu-ments to be declassified were the majority of personnel files released in August 2008. “Newly Released Files Detail Early U.S. Spy Network,” Washington Post, August 14, 2008, 1.

7 Major Garland H. Williams, “Training,” memo-randum, n.d. [January-February 1942], 6, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 161, Folder 1754, National Archives II.

8 The park’s first superintendent was Garland B. (“Mike”) Williams, and it was during his term that park facilities were constructed by workers from the following New Deal agencies: the Civil-ian Conservation Corps, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and the Works Progress Administration.

9 Chambers, OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II, 92-96.

10 John J. Dempsey, Acting Secretary of the Interior, to Secretary of War, May 16, 1942, and “Special Use Permit Authorizing Use of Land in Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area, Maryland, by the War Department for National Defense Purposes,” National Park Service Records (RG 79), Central Classified File, 1933-1949, Box 73, Folder 201, National Archives II.

11 Prince William Forest Park was Area A, site of the Advanced paramilitary course, as well as the site of Area C, the communications school.

12 Staff and trainee accommodation figures are on layout maps of buildings in Areas B-2 and B-5 prepared by the OSS Visual Presentation Branch in October 1943, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 85, Box 13, Folder 249, National Archives II.

13 Ainsworth Blogg, Personnel File, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 224, Box 62, National Archives II.

14 One of them, Lt. William R. (“Ray”) Peers, a newly commissioned officer from UCLA, later became head of OSS’s Detachment 101, the most famous and successful of Donovan’s guerrilla organizations. William R. Peers and Dean Brelis, Behind the Burma Road: The Story of America’s Most Successful Guerrilla Force (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963), 27, 30-32.

15 “List of Improvements to Property by War Department…Restoration Survey, Catoctin Training Center, Thurmont, Maryland,” October 31, 1945, 1, 3, included with G.B. (“Mike”) Wil-liams, memorandum for Regional Director, NPS Region One, March 7, 1946, World War II Files, General Information Folder, Catoctin Moun-tain Park Archives, Catoctin Mountain Park, Thurmont, Md.; and Chambers, OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II, 110-120.

16 Albert R. Guay, diary entry, October 27, 1942. At the author’s request, Mr. Guay generously al-lowed photocopies of the diary pages during his tour of duty at Area B, October 21 to December 19, 1942, to be deposited in the World War II Files at Catoctin Mountain Park

17 Frank A. Gleason, former instructor at Area B, telephone interviews with the author, January 31, 2005, May 1, 2006, and February 9, 2007.

18 Edgar A. Prichard, “Address to Historic Prince William, Inc.,” January 16, 1991, 3, typescript of speech in the World War II files of Prince William Forest Park, Triangle, Virginia. Prichard trained at Areas B and A before being sent to North Africa. Prichard’s Personnel File, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 224, Box 620, National Archives II. The “House of Horrors” was the idea of the OSS’s chief instructor in close-combat techniques, Scottish-born William (“Dan”) Fairbairn. He was 57 when the British lent him to the OSS in 1942. Because of his age, quiet demeanor, gray hair, and spectacles, young trainees often misjudged him at first. In his unarmed combat classes, he would begin instruction by ordering the biggest student to slug him. If the young man balked at hitting the older man, Fairbairn would suddenly kick the young man in the groin. When the student dou-bled over, Fairbairn flipped him onto the ground, face down with his arm twisted behind his back. Fairbairn “knew at least 100 ways to kill people without shooting them.” Edgar A. Prichard, “Address,” 3. For other quotations from trainees, Spiro Cappony, who later served with an OSS sabotage mission with Greek guerrillas, telephone interview with the author, September 16, 2006; and Marvin S. Flisser, who was part of the OSS team documenting Nazi war crimes, telephone interview with the author, January 27, 2005. Fairbairn’s resume attached to Lt. Col. W.E. Fairbairn to Director of OSS, March 23, 1945, OSS Records (RG 226), Director’s Office Files, Microfilm 1642, Roll 46, Frames 19-20, National Archives II.

19 “Area ‘B’ Training Course,” May 16 to June 13, 1942, typed schedule of instruction, attached to J.R. Brown to J.R. Hayden [of the Secret Intelligence Branch], June 14, 1942, forwarded by Hayden to Dr. [Kenneth H.] Baker, head of SI’s training, July 7, 1942, in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 161, Folder 1754, National Archives II.

20 John W. Brunner, OSS Weapons, 2nd ed. (Williamstown, NJ: Phillips Publications, 2005), xv-xvi, 171-173. Among the newest explosives were moldable, gelatin-like “plastic” com-pounds, like “Composition C,” that had more stability but also more explosive power than TNT.

21 Major General John K. Singlaub with Malcolm McConnell, Hazardous Duty: An American Soldier in the Twentieth Century (New York: Summit/ Simon & Schuster, 1991), 32-33; and similar in a telephone interview with the author, December 11, 2004.

22 Telephone interviews with the author by two former demolitions instructors at Area B who were operating the demolition trail at the time, Frank A. Gleason, January 31, 2005, and Jo-seph Lazarsky, March 14, 2005. William Casey did not mention the incident in his memoir of his OSS service, The Secret War against Hitler (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1988), 4-12.

23 There is no general history of the OSS Opera-tional Groups, but see the website established by veterans of the OGs, “Operational Groups of the O.S.S.,” http://www.ossog.org, accessed

September 21, 2009, and Troy J. Sacquety, “The OSS (Office of Strategic Services),” Veritas: Journal of Army Special Operations History, Vol. 3, No. 4 (2007): 34-51, especially 40-41. Beginning in 1943, most of them came to Cato-ctin after substantive training at OSS Area F, the former Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland.

24 Some of the Thais were killed but others succeeded, and some of them later became important figures in postwar Thailand. “OSS in Thailand,” Major S___ [Nicol Smith], April 24, 1945, Schools and Training Branch, “Interviews with Returned Men,” OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 159, Folder 1729, National Archives II; Frank Gleason telephone interview with the author, May 9, 2005; and E. Bruce Reynolds, Thailand’s Secret War: The Free Thai, OSS, and SOE during World War II (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), 14-46, 427-429.

25 Jerry Sage, Sage (Wayne, Pa.: Miles Standish Press, 1985), 83-88, 277-304, 396.

26 Patrick K. O’Donnell, The Brenner Assignment: The Untold Story of the Most Daring Spy Mission of World War II (New York: Da Capo/Perseus, 2008).

27 Robert R. Kehoe, “194: An Allied Team with the French Resistance: Jed Team Frederick,” Studies in Intelligence: Journal of the American Intelligence Professional (June 2002): 101-136.

28 “History of the OSS OGs in Italy,” n.d. [1945], typescript, 17, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 143, Box 11, Folder 1, National Archives II; and Joseph Squatrito, Code Name: Ginny (Staten Island, N.Y.: Forever Free Pub., 2001).

29 “Dawes Military Mission to the Czechoslovak Forces of the Interior (C.F.I.), Banská-Bystrica, Slovakia: September-October 1944,” in OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 143, Box 12, Folder 19, National Archives II; OSS, War Report of the OSS: Overseas Targets (New York: Walker, 1976), 133-134; Jim Downs, World War II: OSS Tragedy in Slovakia (Oceanside, Calif.: Liefrinck, 2002).

30 The heroic effort was reported by war corre-spondent Theodore White for Time magazine and part of a book which was later made into a Hollywood movie. “Army & Navy Operations: The Destroyers,” Time, January 8, 1945, 57-58; Theodore H. White, The Mountain Road (New York: William Sloane, 1958); and “The Mountain Road” (Columbia Pictures, 1960). Gleason says White’s original article provided a more accurate account. Frank A. Gleason, telephone interview with the author, January 31, 2005. Major Gleason’s own ten page report on his activities in China, March 16, 1943 to March 20, 1945, is attached to Gleason to Director of OSS (through Chief of SO Branch), June 7, 1945, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 146, Box 256, Folder 3550, National Archives II.

31 “Jedburgh” was the code name assigned to three-man, multinational teams drawn from British, French, and American officers and radio operators, that were given special training in England and sent behind German lines to help the Allied invasion in the summer of 1944. On the team and on Cyr’s Jed Team George, see Will Irwin, Jedburghs: The Secret History of the Allied Special Forces, France 1944 (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2005), xvii-xxiv, 72-79,

104-111, 122-131, 227-228. On Team Jackal in China, see Paul Cyr, “We Blew the Yellow River Bridge,” Saturday Evening Post, March 23, 1946, 18-19; Francis B. Mills with John W. Brunner, OSS Special Operations in China (Wil-liamstown, N.J.: Phillips Pub., 2002), 49-66, 187-197, 193-202.

32 OSS, War Report of the OSS: Overseas Targets, 458; Singlaub, Hazardous Duty, 71-101.

33 The response was often: “But nobody from Camp Ritchie was ever around Hagerstown or Thurmont, and they would laugh and say, `Oh, you mean up at the old CCC camp.’” Albert R. Guay, telephone interview with the author, October 24, 2005.

34 Dorothea (“Dodie”) Dean Dow (Mrs. Arden W. Dow), telephone interviews with the author, May 15, June 9, and June 15, 2005.

35 Frank Long, Thurmont, Md., June 5, 2006; William A. Willhide, Thurmont, Md., January 13, 2006; and James H. Mackley, Thurmont, Md., interviewed by the author, June 13, 2006.

36 A. van Beuren to Weston Howland, Septem-ber 24, 1943, subject: Areas B and B-2, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 146, Box 223, Folder 3106, National Archives II.

37 Spiro Cappony, telephone interview with the author, September 16, 2006.

38 Private First Class Al Guay noted some interesting experiences in his diary: “Thursday, November 5th, 1942….Hitchhiked home; 4 women picked me up. There was a 16 yr. old blonde sitting next to me that was plenty O.K. They wanted me to visit ‘em in D.C. tomorrow, but I’m not going to, I guess.” Diary entry for November 5, 1942.

39 Capt. Montague Mead, commanding offi-cer, Area B, to Brig. Gen. Charles Y. Banfill, commandant, Camp Ritchie, June 7, 1944, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 136, Box 163, Folder 1772, National Archives II.

40 Chambers, OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II, 134-138.

41 Ibid., 138, 526-529.42 Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to War Department,

May 26, 1945, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (RG 218), Admiral Leahy’s Files, Box 9, Folder 54, National Archives II.

43 Chambers, OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II, 481-490; Troy, Donovan and the CIA, 255-302.

44 Although Superintendent Mike Williams had regularly inspected the park to ensure that the OSS and the Marines abided by their leases, he had on occasion reprimanded the OSS or the Marines for cutting down trees, using old stone walls for gravel, or for occasionally shooting game. G.B. Williams to Major W.J. Dickin-son, USMC, October 2, 1946, in World War II Records, Correspondence Folder, Catoctin Mountain Park Archives, Catoctin Mountain Park, Thurmont, Md.; Frank A. Gleason, telephone interview with the author, January 31, 2005; Charles M. Parkin, interview during a tour of Catoctin Mountain Park, arranged by the author with OSS veterans Parkin, Gleason, and Reginald Spear, May 18, 2005.

45 G.B. Williams to Director, NPS Region One, memoranda, October 19 and 31, 1945, March 7 and 9, 1946, World War II Records, Correspon-

dence and General Information Folders, Catoctin Mountain Park Archives, Catoctin Mountain Park, Thurmont, Md.; and Mel Poole, current superintendent, Catoctin Mountain Park, to the author, February 2008.

46 The Catoctin Enterprise, January 28, 1944 and June 2, 1944.

47 Confirmation of the old entrance to park, and the OSS training camp, being at Deerfield near Lantz, came from Mel Poole, current superin-tendent of the park, and OSS veterans Frank Gleason, Charles Parkin, and Reginald Spear during a tour of the park arranged by the author, May 18, 2005. The Deerfield location is sup-ported as the nearest village to the OSS training camp in L.B. Shallcross [CIA] to John O’Gara, Information on OSS Schools and Training Sites, OSS Records (RG 226), Entry 161, Box 7, Folder 76, National Archives II. See also John C. Paige, The Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Park Service, 1933-42, Administrative History, Appendix C, Table C-1.

48 In the summer of 1947, the Salvation Army re-turned to Misty Mount and the Maryland League for Crippled Children went back to Greentop. President Truman personally visited the young polio victims at Greentop in August 1947. Chambers, OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II, 529-531; The Catoctin Enterprise, August 8, 1947; James H. Mackley, Thurmont, Md., telephone interview with the author, June 13, 2006.

49 President Harry S. Truman to Herbert R. O’Conor, Governor of Maryland, December 4, 1945, Harry S. Truman Papers, Official File 6-P, Box 70, Truman Presidential Library, Indepen-dence, Mo.

50 Kirkconnell, Administrative History of Catoctin Mountain Park, 95-104. See also www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/CunninghamFalls.html. Accessed September 28, 2009.

51 Kirkconnell, Administrative History of Catoctin Mountain Park, 119-137; Nelson, The President Is at Camp David; Chambers, OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II, 533-534.

52 Michael Warner, The Office of Strategic Services: America’s First Intelligence Agency (Washington. D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 2000), i, 43; Joseph Lazarsky, 0SS/CIA, tele-phone interview with the author, February 11, 2007; Aaron Bank, From OSS to Green Berets: The Birth of the Special Forces (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1986), 172-174, 205-206; Caesar J. Civitella, OSS/Army Special Forces/CIA, telephone interview with the author, April 25, 2008; www.sealchallenge.Navy/seal/intro-duction.aspx, accessed September 24, 2007.


On the morning of September 13, 1862, Union soldiers on a skirmish line near Frederick, Maryland, found what appeared to be an of-ficial Confederate document and

immediately took it to their commander, who sent it up the Union chain of command. This document, known to history as Special Orders 191, gave the Union commander General George B. McClellan crucial information about the loca-tion and future movement of Confederate com-mander General Robert E. Lee’s army. Armed with the information in Orders 191, McClellan set his own army in motion and precipitated the Battles of South Mountain and Antietam.

LEE MOVES INTO MARYLANDTaking advantage of the Confederate victory

at Second Manassas in Virginia in late August 1862, General Robert E. Lee led his army across the Potomac River into Maryland, intent on drawing the Union army away from Washing-ton and into a battle he believed he could win. By taking the war into the North and winning a battle there, Lee hoped to damage Union morale and encourage antiwar sentiment in the North. With a victory on Union soil, he also hoped to encourage the European powers, particularly Great Britain, to recognize the Confederacy as a separate nation and intervene in the conflict. Thus, in early September Lee’s army entered Maryland east of the Blue Ridge Mountains to threaten Washington and Baltimore and force the evacuation of the stranded garrisons at Martins-burg and Harpers Ferry. This would allow Lee to

Invitation to Battle:SPECIAL ORDERS

191 Tracy Evans

shift his communications to routes through the Shenandoah Valley. Lee also planned to destroy area railroads to cut Washington off from the rest of the country. The Confederate army began crossing the Potomac on September 4, 1862.1

By September 7, the Confederate Army was camped on the Best Farm, approximately three miles south of Frederick City, and now part of Monocacy National Battlefield. It was obvi-ous the Confederate army had been in a hard campaign. General John Robert Jones, a division commander in Jackson’s command, said, “Never has the army been so dirty, ragged, and ill-pro-vided for as on this march.” Regardless, they were victorious at Second Manassas and came into Maryland with high spirits, many believing Marylanders would rally to their flag. In this they

would be disappointed for they met with a cool reception; only 130 men from Frederick and 40 from Middletown joined the Confederate army. This can be attributed to the part of Maryland they entered, which was largely Unionist. Had they been in counties further east and south, they would have enjoyed a warmer reception.2

While camped at the Best Farm, Lee learned that Harpers Ferry and Martinsburg had not evacuated as he had hoped, so he formulated a plan which would force them to surrender. His plan was to divide his army to take the garri-sons, then reconsolidate and march north into Pennsylvania, where he could bring McClellan to battle on a field of his choosing. Brigadier General John G. Walker wrote after the war about a conversation with Lee concerning his

plan to split the army, during which Lee replied, “Are you acquainted with General McClellan? He is an able general but a very cautious one.... His army is in a very demoralized and chaotic condition, and will not be prepared for offensive operation – or he will not think it so – for three or four weeks. Before that time I hope to be on the Susquehanna.”3

SPECIAL ORDERS 191 AND HARPERS FERRY

On September 9, after meeting with Major General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Lee or-dered Robert Hall Chilton, his assistant adjutant general, to write and distribute his orders regard-ing the army’s movements over the next several days. That document is Special Orders 191.


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Confederate cavalry cross the Georgetown Pike Bridge over the Monocacy River in September 1862. (Francis H. Schell, artist)


Another member of Lee’s staff, Walter Taylor, wrote in his memoirs that he was not present to “supervise the promulgation” of the orders, suggesting that he was normally responsible for the administrative duties attendant upon the issuance of orders, i.e., making copies, oversee-ing delivery, and verifying receipt of orders. This may explain some of the confusion surrounding the delivery and absence of a paper trail that would normally follow the issuance of orders.4

The orders specified the planned movements of Lee’s army for the following three days (Sep-tember 10-12), splitting Lee’s army, and explain-ing each assignment.

• Major General Jackson, with three divi-sions, was to lead the advance through Middletown, Maryland, on to Sharps-burg, Maryland, and across the Potomac. There he was to take control of the B&O Railroad, capture the Federal garrison at Martinsburg, Virginia, then move toward Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

• Major General Lafayette McLaws, with two divisions, was to take Maryland Heights, a promontory which domi-nates Harpers Ferry from the north, and attempt to capture the garrison.

• Brigadier General John G. Walker, with another division, was to take possession of Loudoun Heights, south of Harpers Ferry, then assist McLaws and Jackson in capturing the garrison.

• Major General James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart, Lee’s cavalry commander, was to detach a squadron of cavalry to accompa-ny Longstreet, Jackson, and McLaws. The main body of the cavalry was to cover the rear of the army, bring up stragglers, and watch for the advancing enemy.

• Major General Daniel Harvey Hill, with his division, was to be the rear guard of the army.

• Major General James Longstreet, with the remainder of the army and the supply and baggage trains, was to march west to Boonsboro, Maryland, across South Mountain. Lee would move with Long-street.

• Jackson, McLaws, and Walker, after ob-taining the surrenders of the two Federal garrisons, were to rejoin the main body of the army, which would be in either Boonsboro or Hagerstown, Maryland.5

Chilton initially made seven copies of the orders for Jackson, Longstreet, Walker, Stuart, McLaws, Taylor, and a file copy for Confeder-ate President Jefferson Davis. When the copies of Orders 191 were initially written, D.H. Hill fell under the command of Jackson. As such, he received a copy directly from Jackson. Special Orders 191, however, defined Hill’s new role as an independent commander and Chilton took it upon himself to pencil Hill a copy as well. The confusion surrounding the loss of the orders began when Chilton sent the additional copy. Hill was sent orders from Jackson, which he kept, and from Chilton, which he said he never received. That copy is the “Lost Orders.”6

UNION ARMY ON THE MOVEThe Union military in the East was in disarray

after the Battle of Second Manassas. After an overwhelming defeat, General McClellan had the task of combining two armies, the Army of the Potomac, which he commanded and had just returned from an unsuccessful siege of Rich-mond, and that of General John Pope, who had been defeated at Second Manassas. Then, he had to move the reorganized army out of Washing-ton and find Lee. In addition, General Henry Halleck, the Union General-in-Chief, feared Lee might draw McClellan and the army away from Washington, then turn and attack the city. Thus, McClellan had to move somewhat carefully, making sure to cover Washington.7

On September 12, the day before Special Orders 191 was found, McClellan was still unsure of the Confederate movements after their occupation of Frederick. Union General Ambrose Burnside, on the right wing of the Union army, entered Frederick from the National Road and skirmished with the Confederate rear guard on the outskirts of Frederick while Union General Jacob Cox’s Kanawha Division fought with the rear guard of the Confederates in downtown Frederick. On September 13, as the remainder of the Union army entered Frederick, McClellan’s luck changed when soldiers of the 27th Indiana Volunteer Infantry found the lost orders.8

SPECIAL ORDERS 191 IS FOUNDSoldiers on a skirmish line from Company F,

27th Indiana Volunteer Infantry, found Special Orders 191 as they were resting from their early morning march. Tracking the movements of the 27th is the most likely way to locate where they found the orders. Ezra Carman’s manuscript and his annotated maps of “The Maryland Campaign of 1862,” Edmond Brown’s, The Twenty-Seventh

Confederate General Robert E. Lee

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Indiana Volunteer Infantry In The War of the Re-bellion 1861-1865, and soldiers’ interviews and letters are the most valuable sources to use in reconstructing where the orders were found.

Ezra Carman was a Colonel in the 13th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry, attached to the XII Corps during the 1862 Maryland Campaign. In the 1890s, as part of the Antietam Battlefield Board, he was tasked with creating a map to show terrain and troop positions during the battle, and create a report on the Battle of An-tietam. Carman had been collecting research on the Antietam Campaign since the battle, even returning to the battlefield in November 1862 to interview soldiers and civilians. Edmond Brown was a corporal in Company C, 27th Indiana Vol-unteer Infantry, and a participant in the Antietam campaign. Brown’s work has been the most quoted source of documentation and interpre-tation related to the finding of the lost orders. However, while it gives a detailed description of the regiment’s movements prior to crossing the Monocacy River, Orders 191 was found after they crossed the river, which is where Brown’s story becomes vague and Carman’s annotated maps become invaluable. Brown’s history says:

On the 13th September we moved by the direct road to Frederick, this took us imme-diately past Mr. Clay’s house, in whose or-chard we had camped the previous Decem-ber. Looking northward, we could plainly see our deserted cabins of the previous winter.… The bulk of Lee’s army had been at Frederick up to a very recent period. We were likely at the time to encounter rebel scouts or outposts. The 27th led the column, expecting at any moment to sight an ene-my. There being no bridge over the Mono-cacy on this road, we forded that stream. The water was only knee deep and warm, so it was no hardship. When we emerged from the timber east of the Monocacy, we saw smoke rising from several pieces of ar-tillery engaged in the open country west of Frederick.9

The 27th Indiana’s movements can be followed using the above description on the Carman maps, from their camp at Ijamsville Crossroads on the night of September 12 through their march on the 13th on the Ijams-ville Road. South of that road, not far from Ijamsville, was the Clay Farm where they had camped the previous December, and north of the road was the Hoffman Farm where they had wintered. There was no bridge at Crum’s Ford

at the time, and given the detailed description that Brown gave about their movements prior to crossing the river, he would have likely men-tioned that the bridge had been destroyed had they crossed at Monocacy Junction. Confederate General D. H. Hill destroyed both the B&O Rail-road Bridge and the covered wooden bridge over the Monocacy on September 8-9.

Once the 27th crossed the river, however, Brown’s description fades. An assumption has been made that the regiment, along with the rest of the XII Corps, continued on this road and into Frederick; this would indeed have put the finding of the orders on the east side of Frederick. However, according to the movements of the XII Corps on Carman’s maps, on September 13 the corps had moved to the Georgetown Pike, just south of the city, which aligns with the soldier’s descriptions of converging lines on the outskirts of the city. During the Civil War a secondary road stretched from Crum’s Ford across farm fields to the Georgetown Pike; it is conceivable that the soldiers used this secondary road to cut south toward the Georgetown Pike.10

In the post-war years soldiers of the 27th Indi-ana were called upon to provide affidavits about the circumstances surrounding the finding of the orders. The differences in their accounts are understandable considering many were conduct-ed around turn of the century, forty years after the event. A few letters about the march that day still exist as well. According to interviews and letters, on the morning of September 13, 1862, the 27th Indiana was up for reveille around 3:00 a.m. and began their march at approximate-ly 6:00 a.m. In a war-time letter home, Major Charles J. Mill wrote, “… came on to where I am now writing, a field about half a mile from Fred-erick, which the rebs have evacuated.” He said they heard firing all morning; General Burnside was believed to be driving back the enemy. Ser-geant John M. Bloss said they were expecting an engagement with the enemy and his Company F was on the skirmish line in front of the brigade. They never encountered the Confederates, and once they were closer to Frederick, converg-ing lines of other divisions and corps along the Georgetown Pike caused them to halt. Private William H. Hostetter, also of Company F, 27th Indiana, was on the skirmish line and said the company “Moved forward out to discover no en-emy and halted near the city limits in a meadow; it was a warm morning and when we halted we threw ourselves on the ground to rest.” George W. Welch, Company F, remembered camping in an old meadow that had been occupied the day

before by D.H. Hill. A few other soldiers noted that they were in Hill’s former camp; however, an assumption could have been made that since Hill’s name was on the orders, it must have been his camp. Bloss, who was wounded at Antietam, wrote a letter from a field hospital thirteen days after Orders 191 was found. Bloss’ letter and description is the primary source written clos-est to the time of the event, making it the most reliable information yet. In this unpublished letter, Bloss gives a few details about the finding of the orders. He said that the orders were found in a wheat field, under a locust tree, with two cigars.11

Once discovered, Orders 191 was sent up the 27th Indiana’s chain of command to Captain Pe-ter Kop, Colonel Silas Colgrove, then to General Alpheus Starkey Williams, commander of the XII Corps. In an interesting twist of fate, Wil-liams’ acting adjutant general, Samuel E. Pittman, authenticated the orders by identifying Chilton’s signature. Prior to the war Pittman had been a teller at Michigan State Bank in Detroit at the same time Chilton was paymaster for the army. As paymaster, Chilton kept an account at the bank and Pittman was familiar with his signature from checks and account records.12


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A map showing the various movements of the Confederate and Union forces before the Battle of Antietam in September 1862.


On September 13, as the remainder

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1 Ezra Carman, The Maryland Campaign of September 1862, Vol. 1: South Mountain, ed. Thomas G. Clemens, (New York, 2010), 111; John G. Walker, “Jackson’s Capture of Harpers Ferry,” Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (Thomas Yoseloff, reprint, 1956), vol. 2:605.

2 Carman, 93; Joseph L. Harsh, Taken At The Flood, Robert E. Lee & Confederate Strategy in the Maryland Campaign of 1862 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1999), 125.

3 Walker, “Jackson’s Capture of Harpers Ferry,” 606.4 Walter H. Taylor, “That Lost Dispatch,” Confederate Veteran (Harrisburg, 1922), 30:345.5 Special Orders 191 (September 9, 1862), George McClellan Papers, Manuscript Division,

Library of Congress; U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 Volumes (Washington D.C.: 1880-1901), vol. 19, pt. 2, 144-145 (hereinafter abbreviated as “OR”).

6 Wilber Jones, Jr., “Who Lost the Lost Orders? Stonewall Jackson, His Courier, and Special Orders No. 191,” Civil War Regiments: A Journal of the American Civil War, Vol. 5, No. 3, (1997), 3.

7 Carman, The Maryland Campaign of September 1862, 181, 190.8 OR 19, pt. 2, 42, 270; Stephen W. Sears, Landscape Turned Red, the Battle of Antietam (New

York: Ticknor and Fields, 1983), 110-111.9 Carman, The Maryland Campaign of September 1862, ix,x; E.R. Brown, The Twenty-Seventh

Indiana Volunteer Infantry in the War of the Rebellion 1861-1865, First Division 12th and 20th Corps (Gaithersburg, MD, 1899), 228, 580.

10 H.W. Mattern, (Assistant Engineer, Gettysburg National Park, commissioned by Ezra Ayers Carman), Theatre of Operations, Maryland Campaign, 8 maps (1898), Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, September 12 and 13, 1862; Brett Spaulding, “The Lost Order,” (interpretive files at Monocacy National Battlefield, 2004); Jacob Engelbrecht, Diary of Jacob Engelbrecht, 1858-1878, vol. 3 (Frederick, MD, 2001).

11 John McKnight Bloss, Letter written from the barn hospital at Antietam, September 25, 1862, Bloss Family Papers, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

12 Wilber Jones, Jr. The 27th Indiana Infantry, Giants in the Cornfield (Shippensburg, PA, 1997), 231; General Silas Colgrove, “The Finding of Lee’s Lost Order,” Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (Thomas Yoseloff, reprint, 1956), vol. 2:603.

13 OR 19, pt. 2, 45, 48; Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 118.14 OR 19, pt. 2, 281.15 Stephen W. Sears, Controversy and Commanders: Dispatches from the Army of the Potomac

(New York, Houghton Mifflin 2000), 125.

McCLELLAN MOVES BASED ON ORDERS 191

McClellan received the orders by mid-day on September 13. At 3:00 p.m. he sent the orders to his cavalry chief, General Alfred Pleasanton, and told him to find out if the Confederate move-ments in the orders had been followed. In a 6:20 p.m. message to VI Corps commander General William Buel Franklin, McClellan informed him about the orders and what he was able to dis-cern about how closely they had been followed. McClellan also let Franklin know that Pleasanton had skirmished in Middletown and occupied the town. Also, Burnside’s command, including Hook-er’s corps, was marching that evening and early in the morning toward Boonsboro, followed by Sumner, Banks, and Sykes’ division. He wanted Franklin to move at daybreak by way of Jefferson and Burkittsville toward Rohrersville. His inten-tion was to cut the Confederate Army in two.13

McClellan undoubtedly was pleased to inform Lincoln, “I have the whole rebel force in front of me, but am confident, and no time shall be lost.… I think Lee has made a gross mistake and that he will be severely punished for it.… I hope for a great success if the plans of the Rebels remain unchanged.… I have all the plans of the Rebels and will catch them in their own trap if my men are equal to the emergency.…”14

Lee was surprised that the Union army was moving quicker than anticipated, and by McClel-lan’s sudden change in tactics after the Union army arrived in Frederick. When Lee learned sometime after the Maryland Campaign about the lost orders he understood what happened, saying it allowed McClellan “to discover my whereabouts … and caused him to act as to force a battle on me before I was ready for it…. I would have had all my troops reconcentrated,… stragglers up, men rested and intended then to attack.” The importance of finding Orders 191 was increased by the delay in the fall of Harpers Ferry. Jackson’s operation in Harpers Ferry was three days behind schedule. If Jackson had been on schedule, the finding of the orders would have been “old news” and of limited value to McClellan. The fact that Jackson was behind schedule and the operation still active made the orders invaluable information. McClellan moved his army quicker than the Confederates antici-pated, forcing Lee into battles at South Mountain and Antietam instead of allowing him the oppor-tunity to choose his own location and time.15

The lost orders captured the attention of vet-erans after the Civil War and the circumstances

surrounding the finding of the orders continue to be of interest to Civil War historians and enthu-siasts today. Historians have been left with the task of deciphering fact from fiction in what has been written about the orders, particularly with primary sources that in many cases were written twenty to forty years after the actual event. How well McClellan used this important information continues to be debated among historians; how-ever, it is clear that McClellan sent orders to his commanders and moved his army quicker and with much more confidence about the Confeder-ate army’s location than he had up to that point in the campaign, surprising Lee with the swiftness of his movements, and thus halting Lee’s plan. One can only imagine the excitement the soldiers of the 27th Indiana felt when they realized what they had found in that field. Their discovery, com-bined with the delay at Harpers Ferry, changed the direction of the campaign and the war.

Tracy Evans came to Monocacy National Battlefield during her undergraduate studies as an intern, and returned as a seasonal park ranger. She is currently part of the permanent staff, serving as an interpreter and curator.


A page from Special Orders 191.

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In the third week of April in 1755 the paths of two men with careers seemingly on the ascendency crossed in the relatively new colonial settlement of Frederick Town in Maryland. It was wagons and horses, or

more accurately, the lack of them that brought General Edward Braddock and Benjamin Franklin together in Frederick. Braddock had been sent by British King George II to restore British authority west of the Appalachian Mountains, authority that had been lost the year before when the French and Indians soundly crushed George Washington at Fort Necessity. Braddock’s objec-tive was to capture Fort Duquesne, the staging ground for many French attacks on the British colonial frontier. Franklin’s role was to procure the necessary wagons, horses, and supplies. Only one of these men would be successful.

General Braddock arrived in Alexandria, Virginia in early February 1755. He met with Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia and Gov-ernor Horatio Sharpe of Maryland, who together promised that 250 wagons and 2,500 horses for the expedition would be waiting for Braddock in Winchester, Virginia. Braddock began his march west in April, reaching Frederick, Maryland around April 20. As he prepared to march south-west towards Winchester, Braddock learned that he was to be presented with twenty wagons and two hundred horses, a fraction of what he had been promised. Outraged over the unwillingness of the colonists to support his expedition, Brad-dock halted in Frederick for several days to fume about colonial ingratitude and obstinacy – at one point he raged that he had “met with very few instances of ability or honesty in the [colonial] persons” he had to deal with – and to address his transportation problems.1

The Postmaster and the General: Benjamin Franklin and

Edward Braddock in FrederickStephen Powell

Although Braddock blamed colonial “lies and villainy”2 for his troubles, Governor Sharpe offered another reason for the refusal of at least the Maryland colonists to provide the wagons and horses. Braddock expected the colonists to provide not only supplies but also men to support his British soldiers during the Duquesne expedition.3 What he found, however, was that very few freedmen were interested. So Braddock turned to another source of labor: indentured servants. Governor Sharpe tried to dissuade him from pursuing this option, but was unsuccessful: “The General, still finding the Regiments incom-plete, gave orders for recruiting Servants. This I

in vain endeavoured to persuade him off from, representing the Mischief and Detriment that the Inhabitants must suffer from such a measure.”4 Braddock’s order offered indentured servants a chance to escape their indenture by joining the British army, and some took advantage of this.5 Enlisting indentured servants backfired, however. Having lost their servants, very few of these now angry planters were willing to offer their wagons and horses to support Braddock’s expedition.

This seems to have been lost on Braddock. The general arrived in the colonies with a keen sense of disdain for the rustic colonials, and their failure to provide him with the necessary wag-ons and horses for his expedition only height-ened his contempt. He had a particularly low regard for the colony of Pennsylvania, referring to the Pennsylvania Assembly as “pusillanimous” and accusing that body of “improper behavior” (was he implying treason?) for continuing to trade with the French despite the state of war that existed between Great Britain and France.6 Worse still, Pennsylvania had not contributed anything to his expedition. By April 1755, then, General Braddock was irritable and running out of patience. Before he met Benjamin Franklin, he doubted both the character and the capability of the colonials.

Franklin was already targeted for a mission involving Braddock. Pennsylvania’s Governor Morris charged him with delivering on one of Braddock’s requests – the establishment of a postal service that could carry dispatches to the army as it traveled west. Morris knew, however, that Franklin could do more than that. Possessed with both political tools and great charm, Frank-lin would also be capable of “removing some violent prejudices [the General] had entertained against Pennsylvania,” and reassuring Braddock that he had the full support of the colony. 7

A cache of letters written by Franklin, newly discovered by historian Alan Houston in the ar-chives of the British Museum in London, offers a glimpse of Franklin’s encounters with Braddock. Franklin and his son William went to Winchester to set up the post. Then, having fulfilled his first order of business, Franklin stopped in Frederick on April 21 and set to work appeasing a very annoyed General Braddock. Over the next three days, Franklin and Braddock met frequently, dining together at the stone inn where Braddock had established his Frederick headquarters. 8

During one of these meetings, Franklin point-ed out how unfortunate it was that Braddock

General Edward Braddock Benjamin Franklin

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The general arrived in the colonies with a keen sense of disdain

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1 Edward Braddock to Robert Morris, Fort Cumberland, May 10 and May 24, 1755. Online at http://freepages. genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~treasures/pa/ indiana/caldwells/ch18/generalbraddocksandgovernor-morrisletters1755.pdf

2 Braddock to Morris, May 24, 1755, Ibid.3 Edward Braddock to Robert Morris, Williamsburg, VA,

March 10, 1755, Ibid.4 Horatio Sharpe to John Sharpe, May 24, 1755, in

Correspondence of Governor Horatio Sharpe, 1753-1771 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1888), 211.

5 William Shirley to Benjamin Franklin, May 14, 1755, in Alan Houston, “Benjamin Franklin and the ‘Wagon Affair’ of 1755,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 66. (April 2009), 271.

6 Edward Braddock to Robert Morris, Williamsburg, VA, February 28, 1755. Online at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~treasures/pa/indiana/caldwells/ch18/generalbraddocksandgovernormorrisletters1755.pdf

7 Franklin to Deborah Franklin, April 26, 1755, in Houston, 259.

8 Today a plaque marks the site, which is east of South Market Street off South Court Street near Mullinix Park.

9 Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leo LeMay (New York: Norton & Co, 1986), 114.

10 Franklin, in Houston, 236.11 Franklin, Autobiography, 114.12 Israel Pemberton to Dr. Rothergill, May 19,1755,

Franklin Papers, American Philosophical Society. Online at http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/yale?vol=6&page=019a.

13 Franklin, “Wagon Advertisement,” Lancaster, Pennsylvania, April 26, 1755, in Houston, 255.

14 Franklin, Autobiography, 117; Franklin to Braddock, May 18, 1775, in Houston, 268.

15 William Franklin to Benjamin Franklin, Mouth of the Conegocheeg, May 15, 1755, in Houston, 271-272.

16 Horatio Sharpe to Sir John St. Clair, March 27, 1758, quoted in Curtis Older, The Braddock Expedition and Fox’s Gap in Maryland (Westminster: Willow Bend Books, 2000), 232.

17 Franklin, Autobiography, 119. 18 Braddock, quoted in Houston, 282; Franklin,

Autobiography, 119.19 Older, 46, 113; George Washington to William Fairfax,

Winchester, May 5, 1755, in Older, 71.20 Although Braddock’s story ended, what became known

as the “Wagon Affair” was not yet over. Franklin had pledged his own money as a guarantee of the return of the wagons and horses, all of which were destroyed or killed. Franklin could have faced bankruptcy, but was rescued by the governor of Massachusetts, William Shirley, who was appointed to succeed General Braddock. Shirley ordered that the debt for the wagons be paid back with funds from the Army, and thus bailed him out of financial ruin. Franklin, Autobiography, 121-122.

21 Edward Braddock to Robert Morris, March 10, 1755. Online at ancestry.com. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~treasures/pa/indiana/caldwells/ch18/generalbraddocksandgovernormorrisletters1755.pdf.

had landed in Virginia rather than in Pennsylva-nia, “as in that country almost every Farmer had his Waggon.”9 In Pennsylvania, Franklin claimed, Braddock’s required number of wagons and hors-es could most certainly have been obtained.10 Braddock took this as an offer to help, and replied, “Then you, sir,… can probably procure them for us; and I beg you will undertake it.”11 The general had finally found a colonist who might be able to get something done.

Franklin left Braddock on April 24 or 25, “in a much better disposition then he found him,” and headed north towards Pennsylvania to un-dertake the task of fulfilling Braddock’s order for wagons and horses.12 In Lancaster he published an advertisement calling on “the Inhabitants of the Counties of Lancaster, York, and Cumber-land,” who he assumed to be “good and loyal Subjects to His Majesty,” to rent their wagons and horses to Braddock for his expedition.

Franklin took liberties with this advertisement, claiming that “Service will be light and easy, for the army will scarce march above 12 Miles per Day.” And, with a thinly veiled threat referring to the feared Sir John St. Clair, who had earlier promised to take wagons “by force, and chastise the Resistors with Fire and Sword,” Franklin also struck fear into any Pennsylvanians who might consider hanging onto their wagons: “If

this Method of obtaining the Waggons [sic] and Horses is not like to succeed … I suppose Sir John St. Clair the Hussar…will immediately en-ter the Province.”13 The impact of this advertise-ment was what Franklin had hoped: the Penn-sylvania farmers responded with “150 Waggons and 259 carrying Horses” within two weeks.14

William Franklin reported to his father that Braddock still believed some harsh methods would be required to procure the equipment and supplies his army needed. Braddock applied these harsh methods in Frederick County, with an impressment order that he refused to rescind even in light of Franklin’s promises of supplies and wagons. William Franklin commented on the impact this had:

’Tis scarcely to be believed what havock [sic] and oppression has been committed by the army in their march. Hardly a farmer in Frederic [sic] County has either Horse, Wag-gon [sic] or Servant to do the business of his plantation. Many are intirely [sic] ruined.…The abuse they gave the people, at whose houses they stopped is scarce to be paral-leled.… Several of the Farmers, who made opposition to some of these outrageous doings…kept along time confined and oth-erwise mal-treated.15

In these interactions with the farmers of Fred-erick County, the imperial army left in its wake great resentment among the people. Horatio Sharpe would note this three years later when another British expedition in need of forage moved through the area: he advised Sir John St. Clair that “it will be impossible to get any thing in those Parts without ready money there being more than £2000 still due to the People of Fred-erick County on Account of General Braddock’s Expedition.”16

Braddock need not have alienated the Fred-erick farmers, for Franklin delivered the wagons and horses, and Braddock set out to defeat the French and Indians. Franklin had warned him that the Indian way of fighting might pose problems:

The only danger I apprehend of obstruc-tion to your march, is from ambuscades of Indians, who by constant practice are dex-terous in laying and executing them. And the slender line near four miles long, which your army must make, may expose it to be attacked by surprise in its flanks, to be cut

like a thread into several pieces, from which their distance cannot come up in time to support each other.17

Braddock was supremely confident, however, that the French and Indians were no match for the King’s soldiers. “These savages may indeed be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia; but, upon the King’s regular and disci-plined troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any impression.”18 This would prove to be a catastrophically incorrect assessment.

On May 2, 1755, Braddock and George Wash-ington, who “overtook the General at Frederick Town,” left Frederick in a horse-drawn coach and forded the Potomac at Swearingen’s Ferry, heading southwest toward Winchester.19 From there, they proceeded west. The general would have been wise to have heeded Franklin’s advice. On July 9, ten miles east of Fort Duquesne, the British soldiers were soundly defeated at the Battle of the Monongahela. Braddock himself was mortally wounded, and died several days later as what was left of the army retreated. All of Franklin’s wagons were burned.20

General Braddock had deplored the “want of a proper union among the colonies,” which, he believed, had allowed “the French … to make so great encroachments upon the King’s territories in America….”21 Ironically, the “proper union” found lacking in 1755 would develop over the next twenty years, fueled by increasing colonial resentment toward the British. In 1775, other British generals would be sent to America, this time not to put down the French but instead to suppress an American independence movement. Benjamin Franklin would again be called upon to work for reconciliation and a peaceful resolution of the tensions, just as he had been sent to Fred-erick to resolve the problem plaguing General Braddock. When reconciliation with Britain was no longer viable, Franklin lent his considerable talents to the effort against British authority and to the creation of a new nation, one that neither he nor Braddock could have envisioned when, in April of 1755, they discussed wagons and horses in Frederick.

Stephen Powell teaches history at Saint James School in Hagerstown, Maryland. He worked as an intern for the Catoctin Center for Regional Studies while completing his degree in history at Davidson College.

In this woodcut printed by Benjamin Franklin in 1747, the type of wagon most likely obtained for General Braddock is shown on lower left.

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Franklin took liberties

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“The Wounding of General Braddock,” by Robert Griffing

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Traditions Traditions

American Civil War soldiers were beset by a variety of woes, which ran the gamut from obvious perils, such as an incoming volley of minié balls, to the more insidious menace

of disease. A less dangerous but persistent problem was boredom, which reigned between battles, in winter encampments, in military hospitals, and in military prisons. Soldiers attempting to conquer boredom wrote letters home, whittled, played music, gambled, read whatever they could find, played pranks on each other, and engaged in baseball tournaments and snowball fights. They also played games – checkers, chess, backgammon, dominoes, and cards. These activities filled the time and

provided entertainment, and thus served to help alleviate the boredom intrinsic to the life of both Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.

When encamped for long periods of time, the tension of imminent combat was replaced by boredom, which had a negative influence on morale. One soldier described the challenge boredom posed this way: “None can imagine... the languor of mind – tediousness of time, as we resume – day after day the monotonous duties devolved upon.”1 For soldiers not actively campaigning, the tedium of daily chores and drilling was numbing. They also were presented with the task of filling enormous quantities of free time.

Sometimes the solution the soldiers devised to relieve the monotony of camp life involved playing pranks on each other, which occasionally created dangers far surpassing the threat posed by boredom. One such hazardous prank involved veteran soldiers equipping a new recruit for picket duty with a deliberately unloaded weapon. Later on, the soldiers would “assail” the unfortunate victim’s picket, and a great deal of

The Battle Against Boredom:

Game Playing by Civil War Soldiers

Calvin Fisher


Officers playing cards in Petersburg, Virginia

Soldiers playing dominoes in camp in Yorktown, Virginia

Bullet poker chips

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mirth would be derived from the poor fellow’s reaction to his unresponsive rifle.2 Needless to say, pranks such as these involved potential for harm for both the participants and the security of the military force. Playing games was a much safer form of amusement for the soldiers.

The military provided many soldiers with their first exposure to a variety of games. Isaac Lyman Taylor’s diary of his service with the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry recorded his first games of both chess and whist, along with poker, checkers, euchre, and “seven up.”3 Richard H. Mockett of the 43rd Wisconsin Volunteers learned chess during the course of the war through vigorous study of the “Beadles Chess Instructor,” and would later regularly publish a chess column in the Nebraska State Journal.4

As soldiers waited in camp for action and tried to fill the long hours, card playing became a favorite activity. Even soldiers on picket duty were known to play cards to pass the time.5 Soldiers played whist, twenty-one, keno, euchre, and faro, but poker was by far the favorite. Some soldiers used card games to relate to the civilian populations with which they interacted. Confederate Lieutenant John Elliot recalled playing whist with friendly hosts in South Carolina after they had shared their dinner with him.6 Card games even resulted in fraternization with the enemy: Union and Confederate soldiers on picket lines were known to play cards together during quiet times.

Sporting events also arose out of the desire to alleviate boredom and expend energy in a positive way. The U.S. Sanitary Commission advised that sports be implemented by the officers to keep the troops entertained. Dr. Julian Chisolm, the author of a surgery manual used in the Confederate Army, recommended a daily exercise routine which included “manly play of ball.”7 Baseball games proved to be popular with the troops, as Private Alpheris B. Parker of the 10th Massachusetts confirmed when he wrote on April 21, 1863: “The parade ground has been a busy place for a week or so past, ball-playing having become a mania in camp. Officer and men forget, for a time, the differences in rank and indulge in the invigorating sport with a schoolboy’s ardor.”8

When a game of baseball was not possible, soldiers were creative in adapting athletic games to their surroundings. They staged footraces with tracks formed by a living wall of men, boxing and wrestling tournaments, and had pitched battles with snowballs.9 Irish troops improvised with cannon balls to introduce a version of Irish

road bowling, while Confederate cavalrymen participated in a game called “gander-pulling” in which the equestrian attempted to “catch the head of a live gander that hung by its feet.”10

Officers concerned with soldier health and morale realized the importance of athletic recreation to unoccupied soldiers, and sometimes arranged athletic events for the troops. Large sports festivals were a popular form of diversion; these were often held during winter

encampments. Some involved thousands of soldiers, such as the St. Patrick’s Day celebration of 1863 in Falmouth, Virginia, organized by Thomas Francis Meagher for his Irish Brigade. There was a steeplechase for the officers, while the rank and file actively participated in “foot racing, sack racing, picking up stones, [and] climbing the greased pole, which had a thirty-day furlough and thirty dollars in money attached to it. The man that climbed the pole received it.”11 One soldier who participated in this celebration, remembered: “There were many other sports too numerous to mention, which the enlisted men and officers enjoyed very much.”12

For soldiers who were imprisoned, boredom became an even more intrinsic part of their lives than it had been while they were with

Traditions Traditions

1 Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943), 151.

2 Ibid., 163-4. 3 Hazel C. Wolf, ed. “Campaigning with the First

Minnesota: A Civil War Diary,” Minnesota History 25, no. 1 (March 1944): 24-5. Ibid., no. 2 (June 1944), 124, 130. Ibid., no. 3 (September 1944), 243-7. Ibid., no. 4 (December 1944), 348.

4 James L Sellers, “The Richard H. Mockett Diary,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 26, no. 2 (September 1939): 233, 240.

5 Annette Woolard, “Camp Life of Delaware Troops in the Union Army,” Delaware History 21 (Spring 1984): 8.

6 John Barnwell, “Civil War Letters of Lieutenant John Elliot,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 65, no. 3 (Fall, 1981): 222.

7 George B. Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 31-2.

8 Alpheris B. Parker, quoted in Michael Aubrecht, “Battlefield Baseball: The Birth of a National Pastime,” Civil War History, September/October 2007, 13. Online at http://www.pinstripepress.net/CWHBaseball.pdf.

9 Lawrence W. Fielding, William T. Weinberg, Brenda G. Pitts, and Richard A. Fee, “The Demise of Officer Involvement in Soldiers’ Sport During the American Civil War,” Canadian Journal of History of Sport 16, no. 2 (December 1985): 73.

10 Wiley, 159-161.11 Private John Ryan in Campaigning with the Irish

Brigade, ed. Sandy Barnard (AST Press: 2001). Online at http://www.thewildgeese.com/pages/ryanview.html. Accessed June 4, 2013.

12 Ibid.13 James I. Robertson Jr., “Houses of Horror: Danville’s

Civil War Prisons,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 69, no. 3 (July 1961): 340-44.

14 Kathryn Shively Meier, “No Place for the Sick”: Nature’s War on Civil War Soldier Health in 1862 Virginia, (Dissertation: University of Virginia, 2010), 9, 184.

15 Wollard,10.16 Ibid., 39.17 Wiley, 38-39.18 John Casler, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade

(Coumbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1893, rev. 1906), 282.

19 Kent T. Dollar, “Strangers in a Strange Land”: Christian Soldiers in the Early Months of the Civil War,” in The View From the Ground: Experience of Civil War Soldiers, ed. Aaron Charles Sheehan-Dean (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 162.

20 Robert E. Bonner, The Soldier’s Pen: Firsthand Impressions of the Civil War (New York: Hill & Wang, 2006), 60-61.

21 Wiley, 189.22 Ibid., 175.23 Woolard, 10.24 Wiley, 37.

There was an ant bed in the lower end of the yard, and every day there would be from five to ten prisoners around that bed, picking off lice and having them and the ants fighting. They would have a regular pitched battle, and [the men] would get up bets on them. Sometimes the ants would drag the louse off, but often times a big louse would stand them off. It was great sport for the prisoners.18

Many of those soldiers who had been conscientiously opposed to gambling prior to their enlistment found themselves laying wagers. As one concerned soldier recorded in his diary, men who had eschewed checkerboards before the war now “play[ed] cards for profit.”19 Another confessed to his sister that, while he had remained a teetotaler, he did “take a little game of draw poker just to pass the time.” A devout Christian soldier bemoaned that even on the Sabbath he was confronted by “cursing and swairing and card playing Sonday [sic] and every day.”20 Even the clergymen accompanying the troops were not immune to gambling’s allure, as some ministers “betrayed alarming proficiency in handling cards at a social game of poker.”21

Uprooted by war from their homes, some soldiers abandoned temporarily the moral code that had previously made them regard gambling as a sin. As one put it, while they may “have been good boys when they left, and

they would be good boys after they returned... in the meantime they wanted to have a fling at gambling, drinking, and swearing.”22

On the march to battle, however, confronted once again with the evanescent nature of human life, some soldiers reconsidered their gambling habit. Discarded cards and dice littered along the army’s path to the battlefield suggested a reassessment of morality. These soldiers threw away their cards to ensure that their relatives would not discover their wrongdoings if they were to perish in the approaching battle.23 Yet after the fighting had ceased, accounts of men scouring the battlefield for cards indicated two circumstances: that many of these repentant gamblers were ready to once again embrace their gambling ways, and that the increasing scarcity of cards during the later years of the war (especially among Confederate troops) may have made the cards particularly valuable.24

In camps, in cornfields, in prisons, and in hospitals, Union and Confederate soldiers played games. While they waited for action and looked for anything that would fill their time, game playing quickly became part of the culture of Civil War soldiers, amusing them and relieving the ever-present specters of boredom and anxiety.

Calvin Fisher is a graduate of the University of Maryland with a degree in history. He is currently attending the University of Maryland School of Law.


Dice, used by Civil War soldiers, found on Monocacy Battlefield

Union prisoners of war play baseball in Salisbury,

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their regiments. Lacking the minimal activity that drills and chores posed during periods of encampment, prisoners of war were faced with perpetual inaction. Games filled some time and allowed for a temporary escape from the harsh realities of prison life. The nature of prison discouraged games requiring physical exertion, so card playing was much more commonplace than organized team sports. Diaries of prisoners

incarcerated at the military prison in Danville, Virginia, reveal that Union prisoners played poker so often that the cards became worn down into “ovals.”13

Soldiers confined to military hospitals were also more susceptible to the mind-numbing dullness of inaction than their active

duty brethren. This fact was recognized by the U.S. Sanitary Commission, which was “deeply concerned with soldier mental health,” and recommended game play for hospitalized servicemen. This sentiment gained strength among some Union surgeons, one of whom noticed that recovering soldiers who had access to games like whist, checkers, chess, or dominoes were “laughing and merry.”14

Possibly the most common recreational activity in the army was gambling, despite the best efforts of officers concerned with its negative effects. Pious officers anxious about the souls of their men, as well as those concerned about order in their regiments, worked to suppress gambling but they were mostly unsuccessful. Orders banning gambling among the ranks typically had no effect, and gambling prospered among Civil War soldiers.15 Even pious officers such as Stonewall Jackson were unable to do more than drive the “betting under cover.”16

The variety of contests on which soldiers were willing to wager was truly expansive: from card games and raffles to bowling and baseball. Even lice, that constant scourge of soldiers, provided opportunities for gamblers. Lice were used in both “louse racing” and “louse fighting,” and gamblers would lay their bets on either the first louse to jump off a plate or to defeat the other louse in combat, respectively.17 Some prisoners at Ft. McHenry expanded the louse fights to include ants:


Food

What do a recipe for mountain cake and the C. Burr Artz Library have in common? Both are the legacies of a Frederick County woman born in the early nineteenth cen-

tury. More than a century after her death in 1887, very few people are aware that this woman ever lived. But every day at the library, she impacts the lives of over a thousand individuals in Freder-ick. And she liked cake.

The C. Burr Artz Library, the central branch of Frederick County Public Libraries, was founded by this woman with a sweet tooth, Margaret Catherine Thomas Artz (1815-1887). Margaret married Christian Burr Artz (1801-1878), origi-nally of Maryland’s Washington County, in June 1845.1 The couple spent a short time in Chicago before returning to Frederick County in 1850. Then, in the late 1860s, Margaret, C. Burr, and their daughter, Victorine Thomas Artz (1846-1931), relocated permanently to Chicago, living there the remainder of their lives. All are buried in that city’s Oak Woods Cemetery.

After Margaret’s death, her will revealed that in the event that Victorine had no children, her estate would return to Frederick.2 Victorine, in fact, never married and never had any children. Following Victorine’s death, Margaret’s money was, according to her intentions, used to estab-lish a public library in honor of her husband. The C. Burr Artz Library opened in 1938. Besides the $125,000 used for the library, Margaret left us little else.3 But, fittingly for a woman who, from a distance of almost seven hundred miles, was concerned that her home town establish a public library, the most important artifact we have of Margaret’s is a book she compiled .4 And in that book is a recipe for mountain cake.

Margaret’s book is a small, rectangular ledger. It is thirteen inches tall, four inches wide, and one inch deep. The covers are heavily worn and plain. The ledger was obviously “repurposed,” not an unusual practice for the time, even among the well-to-do. Many pages, for example, bear the marks of having had their previous contents erased. The volume is not dated or signed, but on the reverse of the front cover, in the bottom left

corner, a handwritten note states: “1867, 25 July left Frederick for Chicago – May 1868.”

Three years after their arrival in Illinois, the Artz’s new home was reportedly lost in a fire. An article appeared in the December 23, 1871 issue of the Catoctin Clarion, stating that the Chicago home of the Artz Family was destroyed by fire and “that everything in it was burnt.”5 Not every-thing was destroyed, however. Margaret’s book survived, and somehow it made its way back to Frederick. The ledger now belongs to the C. Burr Artz Library. It resides in the Maryland Room, the local history and genealogy center of Freder-ick County Public Libraries.

For years the ledger has been lovingly re-ferred to as Margaret Artz’s Daybook. But the term “daybook” is actually a misnomer. A daybook is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary: “A book in which the occurrences or transactions for the day are entered; a diary, journal.”6 In her ledger, Margaret documented nothing about her life, her activities, or her thoughts. What she did record were recipes. In fact, Margaret Artz’s Daybook is actually an example of a manuscript cookbook.7

The Artz family household had a number of potential cooks. In the 1850 census, Margaret (age thirty-five), Burr, and Victorine lived with her mother, Margaret Thomas (age seventy- three). Thomas is identified as the head of the household. There were no servants living in the house. Margaret Thomas did, however, own two slaves, a girl of seventeen and a boy of twelve.8 In 1860, two servants lived in the Artz house, an eleven-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl, and C. Burr Artz owned a sixteen-year-old female slave.9 By 1870, the Artz family was in Chicago and the only servant they had living with them was a male day laborer.10 The 1880 census shows that a fifteen-year-old female servant from England lived with Margaret and Victorine.11

In these various household arrangements, who did the cooking? There were always other people living with Margaret who could have been responsible for the labor that produced the family’s meals. Margaret left no diary; we do not

Margaret Artz’s DaybookMary K. Mannix

Margaret and C. Burr Artz

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What we eat and how we cook

indicates a wide variety of social and

cultural factors.


Food Food

1 Maryland, Journal of the Proceedings of the House of Delegates of the State of Maryland (Annapolis: Published by authority, 1833), accessed November 22, 2013, Google Books, http://tinyurl.com/lxppl6z. In 1834, Christian Artz successfully petitioned to have the middle name Burr legally added to his name. It is not yet known why “Burr” was significant to him.

2 For a more detailed account of the funding of the C. Burr Artz Library see Mary Mannix, “A History of the C. Burr Artz Library,” The Journal of the Historical Society of Frederick County, Maryland (Fall 2012): 34-45.

3 The Maryland Room of Frederick County Public Libraries has ten books identified on a small slip of paper as “Books from the personal library of Christian Burr Artz.” McGuffey’s Newly Revised Eclectic Third Reader contains Victorine’s signature. Archdeacon Paley’s View of the Evidences of Christianity is signed “Presented to M.C. Thomas by her particular friend, June 20th 1844.” The frontispiece of another contains signatures for both by C. Burr Artz and Margaret C. Artz. These are the only other Artz possessions held by the library.

4 The 1850 Social Statistics census schedule identifies five libraries in the city of Frederick — a law library, a private library, two college libraries, and a seminary. Mary Fitzhugh Hitselberger and John Philip Dern, Bridge in Time: The Complete 1850 Census of Frederick County, Maryland (Redwood City, Calif: Monocacy Book Co, 1978), 600.

5 Catoctin Clarion, December 23, 1871.6 J. A. Simpson, and E. S. C. Weiner, The Oxford English

Dictionary, vol. IV, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 276.

7 1860 United States Federal Census, Frederick, Maryland; Roll: M653_475, Page 795, image 244; Family History Library Film 803475. Ancestry.com.

8 Hitselberg and Dern, 506-7.9 1860 U.S. Federal Census - Slave Schedules [database

on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010.

10 Year: 1870; Census Place: Rockvale, Ogle, Illinois; Roll: M593_265; Page: 462B; Image: 658; Family History Library Film: 545764. Ancestry.com. 1870 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images repro-duced by FamilySearch.

11 Year: 1880; Census Place: Chicago, Cook, Illinois; Roll: 185; Family History Film: 1254185; Page: 524D; Enumeration District: 019; Image: 0445. Ancestry.com and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1880 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010.

12 Jan Longone, “Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project,” Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project, Last modified March 23, 2013, http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/intro_essay.html, (accessed on 22 November 2014).

featured. There are five recipes for cookies, and fourteen for custards and puddings. Carbohy-drates continue to be well represented with buns and popovers.

There are recipes to preserve and pickle, but the recipe for “catsup tomato” stands out as a healthy alternative. Apparently it “improves much with age.” Most of the recipes would be of little use to many of today’s cooks. They are simply a list of ingredients; there are few step-by-step instructions for what to do with them. The sources of thirty-eight recipes are given. Re-searching these women could provide informa-tion about Margaret Artz’s social world. A “cake cup” recipe is attributed to Margaret E. Scholl, later Margaret Hood. Hood was Margaret’s niece and the benefactor of Hood College. Margaret Hood, in her own will, would provide funds for the purchase of land for the C. Burr Artz Library.

It was also during the nineteenth century that cookbooks began to include more than recipes in their contents. Household tips and health advice were introduced. Martha Stewart’s world of “Good Things” traces its origins back to the de-veloping science of home economics. Margaret’s Daybook mirrors the growing diversification of nineteenth-century cookbooks. There are direc-tions to dye in several colors, to bleach, and to restore velvet and silk. A cure for St. Vitus Dance (a movement disorder) is included, as are several tonics for diarrhea. In a very practical vein, there are directions “To make Butter sweet that is ran-cid” and “How to kill Potato-Bugs.”

Margaret Artz’s Daybook was generously digitized in 2011 for the Maryland Room by the Crowley Company of Frederick to celebrate Preservation Week. It can be downloaded by anyone with a Maryland Library card at http://maryland.lib.overdrive.com, the gateway of the Maryland Digital eLibrary Consortium. Try out the mountain cake recipe, or perhaps whip up some ambrosia. The cream of tartar in the ginger beer should create great foam.

When Margaret Artz wrote her will and specified that her funds would be used “...to erect thereon a building suitable to be occupied and used as a public library for the inhabitants of Frederick, and to supply the same with books of science, history and general literature, newspa-pers, periodicals, charts, maps, and other works suitable for a public library at that place ...,” it never would have occurred to her that the rec-ipes she copied would one day be accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world, with a Maryland library card. Sweet.

works in the development of cookery.12 Margaret came of age during this period; it is likely that, as a literate woman, she was familiar with some of these works as she learned to run a home. She obviously cared about books; perhaps she even owned several cookbooks. And, then as now, people also tracked their own favorite recipes.

What we eat and how we cook indicates a wide variety of social and cultural factors. For ex-ample, not only does it show what products are

know if Margaret herself cooked, whether she liked to cook, or whether she was a good cook, but there is no reason to believe that she did not manage her household. So, while we may not know if Margaret cooked the recipes in her ledger, we can assume it was food she wanted to eat.

Food historians identify the first true Amer-ican cookbook to be American Cookery, or the art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, and vegetables, and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts,

puddings, custards, and preserves, and all kinds of cakes, from the imperial plum to plain cake: Adapted to this country, and all grades of life by Amelia Simmons. American Cook-ery was published in Connecticut in 1796. Its recipes utilized food stuffs available in America. Printed in America, it was writ-ten for American tastes. As the next century progressed, more and more cookbooks were published, many of which are still considered significant

available, and when, but also what technology is being utilized in food preparation. The recipes that one chooses to set aside (whether shared on a Facebook page, clipped and placed in a recipe card box, or copied into a manuscript cookbook) also tell us something about the individual. There are 108 recipes in the 45 written pages of Margaret Artz’s Daybook. The lack of variety does not indicate a well-rounded diet. Forty-one are for some type of cake, the familiar – fruit cake, pound cake, sponge cake, and tea cake, along with the more mysterious mountain cake. Co-conut, almond, ginger, caraway seeds, shellbark (a member of the walnut family), and jelly are all

Mary K. Mannix is the manager of the Maryland Room of the C. Burr Artz Library, Frederick County Public Libraries. She also oversees FCPL’s Thurmont Center for Agricultural History of the Thurmont Re-gional Library and the History Room of the Brunswick Branch. She has been active in the Maryland local history community since 1985.

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Margaret Artz’ Daybook

Margaret Artz’ recipe for “Mountain Cake”


There are five recipes for

cookies, and fourteen for custards and

pudding. Carbohydrates

continue to be well-

represented with buns and

popovers.

Food Food

While locating unpublished manuscript cookbooks in Maryland repositories may be difficult, finding cook-books published by Marylanders is a piece of cake. Besides bringing the world crab cakes, beaten biscuits, and terrapin soup, Maryland also contributed a number of noteworthy cookery publications. The first of these was A Quaker Woman’s Cookbook: The Domestic Cookery of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea (1793-1858). First published in 1845, by the third edition in 1851 it had increased from 180 to 310 pages.1 An Ellicott City native, Eliza-beth Ellicott Lea, who was slightly older than Margaret

Artz, lived a significant portion of her adult life in Sandy Spring, a Quaker community in Montgomery County.

Elizabeth published her work in order to supply new brides with the knowledge needed to set up house-keeping. While her intention was not to document the culinary heritage of the Mid-Atlantic, A Quaker Woman’s Cookbook is a primary source of folk culture, useful to a variety of scholars in the same way that a manuscript cookbook would be.2 By 1897 the book was in its nine-teenth printing, successfully spreading Maryland region-al cuisine.3

Maryland’s cookbook fame continued with the work of Beatrice Toms, Frederick County’s most well-known twentieth century cook. Bea Toms arrived in Frederick County at a very young age to work on a Middletown Valley farm with duties that included cooking. In 1966 Toms added catering to her significant farm wife respon-sibilities. In 2002 she published Recipes from A County Cook to answer the demands of a community who ate her food at local events, then clamored for her recipes. Four years later, More Recipes from A County Cook came

forth. Her works include recipes dating “back to the 1930s and before.”4

Another published cookbook that tells the story of the Catoctin region and its agricultural heritage

is the 1999 publication This Old Cookbook: Recipes from the Kitchen of 99-Year Old Letha Grossnickel Wiles.

Wiles (1899-2001) became a farm wife while still in her teens. In her long life as part of the agricultural

community, “she would cook for as many as 14 men or more, besides her family.”5 This Old Cookbook also

demonstrates the role that cookery can play in genealo-gy, as Wiles mentions numerous people in her book that can help flesh out the family tree.6

Finally, cookbooks can also document communi-ty groups through the genre of charity or fundraising cookbooks.7 These works have their origins in the Civil War as women raised money for the war effort, and continue to be frequent fundraising tools. They serve as rich sources of information about the organizations that produce them, but can also be victims of their own success. Community cookbooks are produced cheaply to ensure a profit, and, more significantly, they get used. Often food-splattered, these documents are typically not in good enough shape to be welcomed into the rare book repositories and archival collections that would guarantee their availability to future scholars. Very few libraries have them catalogued.8 The Maryland Room of the Frederick County Public Libraries has been involved in a long-range plan to increase access to Frederick’s community cookbooks, which now number nearly two hundred, continuing the interest of the library’s founder in cooking.

A recent addition to the Maryland Room community cookbook collection is Angel Food, which was produced to raise money for Frederick Memorial Hospital’s Special Care Nursery. The recipes found in this 2002 work, such as “Mom’s Famous Jell-O Cake,” “Porcupine Meatballs,” and “Mexican Layered Dip” may not have strong cultural ties to the historic cuisine of the Catoctin region, but the book definitely documents an aspect of the community. Besides the names of the locals who provided recipes, information is included about the facility, its staff, and

1 Elizabeth E. Lea and William Woys Weaver, A Quaker Woman’s Cookbook: The Domestic Cookery of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), xxiv-xxv.

2 This point is argued at great length by Weaver in his foreword to the 1982 edition.

3 Lea and Weaver. xiii. 4 Beatrice Toms, Recipes from a Country Cook (Frederick, MD:

Diversions Publishers, 2002), 5; Toms, More Recipes from a County Cook (Frederick, MD: Diversions Publishers, 2006). Bea Toms and Catoctin regional cuisine achieved national fame in 2005 when her cookbook sold out in three minutes on the cable television shopping network QVC.

5 Yvonne Fay Wiles Georg. ed., This Old Cookbook: Recipes from the Kitchen of 99-Year Old Letha Grossnickel Wiles (Silver Spring, MD: DYG Inc, 1999), 3.

6 Georg, preface.7 For a discussion of community cookbooks, especially in the FCPL

Maryland Room, see Mary K. Mannix, “Maryland Room Memories: The Maryland Room cooks up some good reading,” The Gazette – Frederick City, May 6, 2010, B-1 and B-3. http://ww2.gazette.net/stories/05062010/entefre142817_32550.php , (accessed on April 29, 2014).

8 Virtual Exhibit Introduction, http://www.library.illinois.edu/learn/exhibit/page1.htm, (accessed on 21 April 2014).

9 The publication directly ties in to AARCH’s mission “to identify, collect, preserve, exhibit and disseminate the history and culture of African Americans in Frederick County.”

10 Helen Avalynne Tawes, My Favorite Maryland Recipes (New York: Random House, 1964), xi-xii.

Community Cookbooks in the Catoctin Region founding in 1998. As of 2002, over one thousand babies had been treated at the Special Care Nursery; this also makes it a potential genealogical source as ancestors of these babies may one day come looking for information about the facility.

Unique among Frederick County’s community cookbooks is The Living Treasures’ Cookbook, a product of African American Resources, Cultural Heritage Society of Frederick County. This publication was more than a fundraising effort; it was also the means to document the lives of twenty-eight elders of Frederick’s African American community.9 Their biographies, with photos, also supply regional cuisine such as country puddin’, red velvet cake, and mixed greens.

In 1964, Avalynne Tawes, wife of Maryland governor J. Millard Tawes and compiler of My Favorite Maryland Recipes, wrote: “The glory of Maryland food is that it contains an extraordinary number of flavors that are exquisite and individual – oysters, crabs, terrapin, clams, poultry, hot breads, game and fish.”10 This glory can be experienced, at least intellectually, in libraries through-out the Catoctin region through commercially published cookbooks and community cookbooks.

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A collection of cookbooks in the Maryland Room of the Frederick County Public Libraries


Catoctin History Tour #12

The Freedmen’s Bureau, officially called the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned

Lands, was created by Congress in 1865 to provide assistance to newly-freed African Americans in the former Confederate states. The Bureau helped with such necessities as housing, clothing, and food, but also with providing African Americans educational opportunities. Working with numerous religious and philanthropic aid societies, the Bureau helped build schools across the south in the years immediately following the Civil War. Finding the need nearly as great in the border states – those slave-holding states that remained loyal to the Union in the Civil War – the Freedmen’s Bureau expanded its operations into these states, including Maryland. A prominent historian of this era has written that the Freedmen’s Bureau considered education “the foundation upon which all efforts to assist the freedmen rested.”1 By 1869, the Bureau had helped to start almost 3,000 schools for over 150,000 students.2

Several Freedmen’s Bureau schools opened in this border region, on both sides of the Potomac. The Bureau worked with local African American communities to build support for a school, and then either provided the materials to build a school, or worked with churches to host a school. Former government buildings were also sometimes used for schools. Members of the local community built the school, and once the Bureau supplied a teacher, they also paid the teacher’s salary, and room and board.

This Freedmen’s Bureau School Tour will highlight three of these schools, one each in Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. For more information on area Freedmen’s Bureau schools, go to the Catoctin Center’s new website, “Crossroads of War: Maryland and the Border in the Civil War,” (www.crossroadsofwar.org) and select the Freedmen’s Bureau Schools tab under “Research.”

Begin the tour in Waterford, VA, on the northwest corner of the intersection of Second and Janney Streets.

Second Street School, Waterford, Virginia

Although the location is not known, a school for African Americans in Water-ford was established as early as Septem-ber 1865, only five months after the end of the Civil War.3 By June 1866, a young local Quaker, Sarah Ann Steer, was teaching local African Americans appar-ently in her family’s home on Second Street. Steer had recently been educated in Philadelphia, and her teachers there kept in touch with Steer and maintained an interest in her school. The school was sponsored by the Philadelphia Friends’ Association for the Aid and Elevation of the Freedmen.4 By August, Steer report-ed that she had forty-two students.5 Whatever building was being used for the school was evidently too small, as Steer reported the following March that “My room is so small I had to send ten of my little ones home yesterday.” But she was proud of the progress of her students:

I am quite proud of my class-es in grammar and philosophy,

and think they understand these branches right well, as far as they have gone. I have one afternoon in the week devoted to sewing, and notice considerable improvement from time to time in this useful branch of learning.6

Not all of Steer’s pupils were children:

Some of them are grown men, and I am surprised at the ease and rapidity with which they get along, particularly with Arithmetic. The Multiplication Table, which is a great bugbear to most, has been perfectly learned in a few weeks by some who did not know one figure from another.7

In April 1867, a visiting committee from the Friends’ Association reported that they were very pleased with Steer’s school, and also reported that a “new building is in process of erection by the colored people, which will be used for religious and educational purposes.”8

The new building served as both a church and a school. It was located on Second Street in Waterford, on property sold by Quaker Reuben Schooley to the “colored people of Waterford and vicinity.” 9 With financial help from Quakers and under the auspices of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the new school opened on October 9, 1867, with over sixty students in attendance. Twenty-eight of the students were older than sixteen.10

By the early 1870s the school became part of Loudoun County’s new public school system. Schools for white chil-dren in Waterford remained private for another decade. The local African Amer-ican population built a separate church in 1891, and the school continued in op-eration until 1957 when a new regional school for African Americans opened in Leesburg.11 Recognizing the historical significance of the Second Street school, the Waterford Foundation acquired the building in 1977. Since 1984, the Water-ford Foundation has sponsored a living history program at the Second Street School for third and fourth graders. [See the Waterford Foundation’s website http://www.waterfordfoundation.org/explore/waterford-schools]

Drive to Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in Harpers Ferry, WV. From Shenandoah Street turn left at High Street. High Street will continue as Washington Street. Turn left at Columbia Street, and another left at Fillmore Street. Lockwood House is the last building on the right on this street.

“Curtis School,” Lockwood House, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

A school for African Americans in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, started even before the Civil War was over. From April to July 1864, Willard W. Wheeler and his wife Ellen P. T. Wheeler operated a school sponsored by the American Missionary Association and aided by agents of the U.S. Christian Commission already stationed in Harpers Ferry.12

After the war, the Freewill Baptist Home Missionary Society, in conjunction with the American Missionary Association and the Freedmen’s Bureau, established the Shenandoah Mission in 1865 with the purpose of opening schools for African American children in Harpers Ferry, Charles Town, Shepherdstown, and Martinsburg, West Virginia. Rev. Nathan

Cook Brackett, from Maine, became the superintendent of all of the Society’s schools for African Americans in the region. During the Civil War, Brackett had been stationed in Winchester, Virginia, and in Harpers Ferry, with the U.S. Christian Commission, so he was familiar with the people and the territory. Brackett established the Mission’s first residence and school in the Lockwood House on Fillmore Street. The Lockwood House had been the former office and home of the paymaster of the U.S. Armory that had existed in Harpers Ferry until the Armory’s buildings were destroyed during the war.13

In addition to his monthly reports to the Freedmen’s Bureau in Washington,

CATOCTIN HISTORY TOUR #12

Freedmen’s Bureau SchoolsDean Herrin and Edie Wallace

The Second Street School in Waterford, Virginia.

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[Top] Lockwood House in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

[Above] The interior of a Freedmen’s Bureau school in South Carolina, 1866.

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Catoctin History Tour #12 Catoctin History Tour #12

D.C., Brackett submitted annual reports to the Freewill Baptist Mission Society. His first annual Superintendent’s Report to the Society underscored the great need the mission school was fulfilling in a decidedly hostile environment:

I found a colored population poor and helpless, surrounded by white people desperately hostile to their improvement. The task of securing school rooms and board-ing places for the teachers was by no means a light one. The very few who would have been willing to furnish us were frequently prevent-ed by the fear of their neighbors. Through the kindness of Capt. Young, we were allowed to occupy an old government house, which answered for school room and a place to live in, at Harper’s Ferry.14

On November 27, 1865, teachers Annie S. Dudley, Sabrina L. Gibbs, Anna A. Wright, and Sarah Jane Foster arrived in Harpers Ferry.

Despite the hostilities they encoun-

tered, the Freewill Baptist missionaries and their black students persevered in their Lockwood House school, in 1865 called the “Curtis School,” according to teacher Anne S. Dudley. Miss Dudley wrote of the building: “The large rooms are convenient for schools and meetings and we consider it an excellent location for our school.”15 Louise Brackett, wife of Nathan Brackett, recalled that the first school room was the southwest room on the first floor of the building. Within the first month of opening the Harpers Ferry mission school in November 1865, the day school numbered “about eighty, and is necessarily divided into two parts,” while the night school attracted nearly forty-five students.16 The Super-intendent’s reports for 1866 indicate the Harpers Ferry school ranged between 78 and 128 students, although daily attendance could be much lower.17 Anne Dudley later wrote of her students:

Some of these students have a thrilling history from the cradle of slavery to the throne of freedom.

One of them came into the school as tall as he is now, began with a primer, and accomplished the work of years in a single winter. With a perseverance that would stagger many young men, he has worked and studied, till he is now a most successful teacher and Christian worker, and is preparing for college with no thought but to press on.18

Inspired by Nathan Brackett’s ef-forts, Maine philanthropist John Storer offered the Freewill Baptists $10,000 for a school if it would admit students without regard to race, sex, or religion; if it would eventually become a de-gree-granting institution; and if it would match the grant within a year. After the money was raised, on October 2, 1867, Storer Normal School opened its doors. In December 1869 the U.S. government formally conveyed the Lockwood House and three other buildings on Camp Hill to the school.19 The school became Storer College and served thousands of African American students until it closed in 1955. In 1960 the Lockwood House, along with the rest of Storer College campus, was incorporated in the Harp-ers Ferry National Historical Monument (later Park). The house has been restored to its Civil War-era appearance, with two rooms furnished from the early period when the building was used as a school. [See Harpers Ferry National Historical Park’s website, http://www.nps.gov/hafe]

Drive to Sharpsburg, MD. From Main Street, turn onto S. Mechanic Street, and then left at E. High Street. Tolson’s Chapel is on the left.

The “American Union” School, Tolson’s Chapel, Sharpsburg, Maryland

In January and March of 1868, a local official of the Freedmen’s Bureau, Cap-tain J.C. Brubaker, visited Sharpsburg, Maryland, to hold meetings and gauge interest in the possibility of opening a school in the town for the African American community. The Boonsboro Odd Fellow reported in early April of 1868 that Brubaker had been in Boons-boro recently, investigating whether to

set up a school there, and had men-tioned that the Sharpsburg school would open in April in the African American church. In a letter dated March 28, 1868, from Brubaker to John Kimball, Superintendent of Education for the Freedmen’s Bureau in Washington, D.C. and Maryland, Brubaker reported that he had made arrangements for the teacher for the school in Sharpsburg. “The colored people,” he wrote, “are very anxious to have the school opened and from the spirit manifested I am assured that they will fulfill their part of the contract. I did not have time to arrange for his board but do not think there will be any difficulty.”20

Brubaker estimated that about thirty children would attend the day school and as many adults the night school. Three days later, Kimball arranged transportation from Washington, D.C. to Sharpsburg for teacher Ezra A. John-son. Johnson, who was white, had been teaching in Upper Marlboro, Mary-land, but had left because he had been informed by locals that “it was unsafe” for a white man to try and teach in a colored school there.21

The Sharpsburg Freedmen’s school opened on April 6, 1868, in Tolson’s Chapel. Johnson wrote Kimball that day that he had opened a day school, a night school, a Sabbath school, and that he was going to organize in the coming week “the Vanguard of Freedom,” a temperance organization. He christened the school, “American Union,” and in his first monthly report, stated that he had eighteen students enrolled, evenly divided between male and female. All but three were under the age of sixteen, and only six of the eighteen had been free before the war. On the chapel wall they painted a blackboard of “slating” or “liquid slate” (made with lamp black and shellac) on which to write their lessons. His Sabbath school had attracted twenty-five students. As for public sentiment towards the school, Johnson reported, “In a few cases favorable; but in the great majority, quite unfavorable.”22 Part of that unfavorable sentiment was directed at Johnson, as he informed Kimball soon after he arrived:

Arrived here safe and sound, but failed to get board with the white people, notwithstanding their having promised the coloured people to give it at a reasonable price.… I am now boarding with one coloured family and lodging with two, until better accommodations can be provided. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Kimble, the citizens would allow a coloured man to teach here, but if possible, they won’t allow a white teacher to come here and teach the coloured people; and they have made up their minds to freeze me out with cold shoulders. But I am too well accustomed to a cold shoulder to allow of that.23

The reactions of area residents to the Freedmen’s schools varied, and the teacher at another Washington County school, in Clear Spring, for example, reported that sentiment usually fol-lowed political party lines. The recep-

tion was different, of course, among the African American community, and John-son reported to Kimball that his school was entirely funded by the freedmen of Sharpsburg. Johnson’s compensation was $6.50 a month. In May, Johnson had twenty-one students in attendance, only three of whom had been free before the war, and his Sabbath school continued to be popular, with forty enrolled. Public sentiment was “gener-ally indifferent,” according to Johnson, which was a slight improvement from April’s “unfavorable.”24

Johnson may have been accustomed to a cold shoulder, but by August of 1869, another teacher had taken over the Sharpsburg school – John J. Carter. Carter was a Lincoln University grad-uate and was supplied by the Presby-terian Committee of Home Missions (PCHM). Carter reported in July 1869 that his summer session had fifteen students, and that, “Order is good, moral prospects is somewhat encourag-ing.” In August, Carter had twenty-five

The interior of Tolson’s Chapel in Sharpsburg, Maryland. Tolson’s Chapel, Sharpsburg, Maryland. (HABS, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)(EDIE WALLACE)


DocumentsCatoctin History Tour #12

The body of a Union soldier was found in a brick-

yard in the town of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. There was no identification on the soldier, but in his hands he clutched an image of three children, his final gaze likely fixed upon them. At the moment of death, his pose was one of devotion – to his country and to his family. This story cap-tured hearts throughout the war-weary North that summer. It also created an opportunity for profit.

Gettysburg’s unknown soldier would be identified as Ser-geant Amos Humiston, born in Owego, New York, in 1830. Humiston had led a mostly quiet life, but twice adventure and duty took him far beyond the ordinariness of life in rural New York.

In 1850, twenty-year old Amos Humiston had just finished an apprenticeship in harness-making and was ready to open his own shop. It was to the sea, however, not to the harness business, that Humiston was drawn. In November 1850, Hu-miston signed onto a whaling ship in New Bedford, Massa-chusetts, committing himself to four years of hunting on the high seas.1 Despite the adventure, those arduous, and not very

profitable, years on the whaling ship made har-ness making look attractive once

again. In 1854 he returned from the

sea, declined to sign on for another voyage,

and headed home to New York. The same year,

Humiston met and married Philinda Smith. The births of their children – Franklin (1855), Alice Eliza (1857), and Frederick (1859) – soon followed.

Humiston chose to move his growing family west to Port-ville, New York, a lumber town on the Allegheny River where he returned to the harness business. The Reverend Isaac Ogden later described Amos Humiston as “a man of noble, gener-ous impulses, a quiet citizen, a kind neighbor and devotedly attached to his family.”2 These were happy years in Humiston’s adult life, living with his beloved family and enjoying steady work in a growing community. The Civil War would rend this quiet life, as it did for so many families.

When President Lincoln called for troops to defend the Union in April 1861, Amos Humiston was reportedly “anx-ious to enlist,” but as the Reverend Ogden recalled, “his duty to his family seemed then to be paramount to his duty to his country.”3 Humiston still hesitated when a year later, on July 1,

1 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (NY: Harper & Row, 1988), 144.

2 Ibid.3 Bronwen C. Souders and John M. Souders, A

Rock in a Weary Land, A Shelter in a Time of Storm: African American Experience in Waterford, Virginia (Waterford, VA: Waterford Foundation, 2003), 44.

4 Friends’ Intelligencer, June 23, 1866:251, and May 25, 1867:186-87. Issues of the Friends’ Intelligencer, a Quaker journal published in Philadelphia, can be found on the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/index.php.

5 Friends’ Intelligencer, September 29, 1866:471.6 Friends’ Intelligencer, March 2, 1867:825.7 Friends’ Intelligencer, May 4, 1867:139.8 Friends’ Intelligencer, May 25, 1867:186-87.9 “Waterford’s Second Street School,” on the

website The History of Waterford, Virginia http://www.waterfordhistory.org/history/second-street-school.htm.

10 Souders, 45.11 Souders, 45-46, and “Waterford’s Second Street

School.”12 U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park

Service, Lockwood House : Harpers Ferry National Historical Park : Historic Structure Report, by GWWO, Inc./Architects, and Paula Reed & Associates (2006), 54-56.

13 Wayne E. Reilly, editor, Sarah Jane Foster, Teacher of the Freedmen (Rockport, Maine: Picton Press, 2001), 134, n. 1, and 138, n. 24..

14 Lockwood House, 66.15 Ibid., 70.16 Ibid., 73.17 Ibid.18 Ibid., 74.19 Ibid., 75-79.20 J.C. Brubaker, Monthly Report of Sub-Assistant

Commissioner, January and March 1868; Boonsboro Odd Fellow, April 12, 1868; Letter, Capt. J.C. Brubaker to Kimball, Supt. of Education, March 28, 1868, microfilm M1056, roll 5, National Archives.

21 Letter, John Kimball to [unknown], March 31, 1868, microfilm M1055, roll 4, National Archives.

22 Teacher’s Monthly School Report, April 1868, and Letter, E.A. Johnson to Rev. John Kimball, April 6, 1868, microfilm M1056, roll 7, National Archives.

23 Letter, E.A. Johnson to Rev. John Kimball, April 6, 1868, microfilm M1056, roll 7, National Archives.

24 Kathleen Thompson Brewer, “The Freedmen’s Bureau Schools of Washington and Frederick Counties, Maryland, 1866-1870: A Study from Primary Documents,” Senior Honors Paper, George Washington University (2001), 39; Teacher’s Monthly School Report, May 1868, microfilm M1056, roll 17, National Archives.

25 Teacher’s Monthly School Report, July and August 1869, microfilm M1056, roll 17, National Archives; Edie A. Wallace, Tour Notes, “In Search of Freedom: African Americans and the Civil War,” tour organized by the Catoctin Center for Regional Studies, March 2, 2013.

students, and predicted he would have thirty-five to forty in the fall and winter. “They learn very fast,” wrote Carter in his report. The PCHM paid the Tolson’s Chapel trustees ten dollars per month for the use of the church building as a school.25

The “American Union” school con-tinued until 1870, when Congress began dismantling the Freedmen’s Bureau. By 1871, the state of Maryland began oversight of African American educa-tion, and Tolson’s Chapel continued to serve double duty as a school until 1899, when Sharpsburg’s first African Amer-ican schoolhouse was built nearby at the end of High Street. The last member

of Tolson’s Chapel passed away in the 1990s, and the building and cemetery are now under the care of Friends of Tolson’s Chapel. [See the website of the Friends of Tolson’s Chapel, http://www.tolsonschapel.org/]

Dean Herrin is Chief Historian of the National Capital Region, National Park Service, in Washington, DC.

Edie Wallace is a historian with the cultural resource consulting firm of Paula S. Reed & Associates in Hagerstown, Mary-land. She received her Master of Arts in Historic Preservation from Goucher College in 2003.

A teacher’s monthly school report from April 1868 for the “American Union” Freedmen’s Bureau school at Tolson’s Chapel.

(NATIO

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The photograph of his children carried by Humiston. (NATIONAL PARK SERVICE)

THE

Children OF THE Battlefield

Andrew BorsaAndrew Borsa

Documents Documents

1862, Lincoln called for 300,000 more volunteers. Only when the Portville community raised over a thousand dollars for the support of the families of soldiers, and he was certain that his family would be taken care of while he was away, did Humis-ton allow himself to enlist.4

In July 1862, Humiston joined the 112th New York Vol-unteer Infantry. After two months of training, he was mustered in with the newly created 154th New York Regiment Company C.5 Adventure had once again found Amos Humiston, with the danger of the open sea now traded for that of the battlefield.

The duties of the 154th New York were initially quite dull. Amos wrote fre-quently to Philinda during this period, sending his love to the family along with his pay. Humiston longed for his wife and children, as is clear from his letter of December 2, 1862: “how I would like to be with you Christmas and New Years and … have the babies on my knee to hear them prattle as they used to….”6

In early May 1863, the 154th finally saw action at Chancellors-ville. That same month, Philinda sent Amos an ambrotype of the three children, a gift that thrilled him. Humiston, “tired and worn out with hard marching and hard fare,” wrote to Philinda that he “got the likeness of the children and it pleased me more than eney thing that you could have sent me how I want to see them and their mother is more than I can tell I hope that we may all live to see each other again if this war dose not last to long.”7 Humiston clearly treasured that ambrotype with the sweet faces of his three children. It would, very soon, become an image of particular significance.

On July 1, 1863, the 154th New York regiment arrived at the southern outskirts of Gettysburg. After a quick meal and a short rest, the men proceeded to the northeast side of the town. There they formed a line in a brickyard. Private McKay

of Company C later reported that “we were ordered to kneel and reserve our fire until the enemy were close enough to make our volley effective.”8 Soon after taking their positions, the Union men were assaulted by waves of Confederate lines. Humiston and the other men fought back valiantly under the protection of the brickyard fence, but were overwhelmed and

forced to beat a hasty retreat back to Cemetery Hill.9 Very few men in the regiment made it

back to Cemetery Hill. Sergeant Humis-ton was not among the survivors.

Humiston’s body was found near the intersection of Stratton

and York Streets, perhaps by the daughter of Ben Schriv-er, postmaster and tav-ern-keeper in Graeffenburg Springs.10 The body had no identification, but in the soldier’s hand was an ambrotype of three children. Somehow the image made it to Ben Schriver, who displayed

it in his tavern. Dr. John Francis Bourns, who was

traveling to Gettysburg from Philadelphia to aid in the

care of wounded soldiers and entered the tavern when his carriage broke down, spotted the image and was captivated by it. Dr. Bourns understood that the mystery of the soldier’s identity could be solved if the children could be identified, and

he persuaded Schriver to give it to him. When he returned to Philadelphia, Dr. Bourns initiated the process of discovering the identity of the soldier and his family.

Since newspapers could not yet reproduce photographs, Bourns decided to begin his search by having the newspapers print a description of the ambrotype. Next he had carte de viste copies of the ambrotype created to show – and sell – to inter-ested inquirers. His hope was that someone would recognize the children and identify their soldier father. He further hoped that the sale of the photographs could provide the widow and her children with income. This story might, Bourns thought, also prod the state of Pennsylvania to establish a home for the

orphans of deceased soldiers.11 These were noble purposes, and Bourns would succeed in some of them. His baser in-stincts, however, would foil the full realization of these goals.

On October 19, 1863, the story ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The article was titled “Whose Father Was He?” and highlighted the pathos of the soldier’s last moments:

He has finished his work on earth; his last battle has been fought; he has freely given his life to his country; and now, while his life’s blood is ebbing, he clasps in his hands the image of his children, and, commend-ing them to the God of the fatherless, rests his last lingering look upon them.12

The article went on to describe the children: “two boys and a girl, … apparently, nine, seven and five years of age…. The youngest boy is sitting in a high chair, and on each side of him are his brother and sister. The eldest boy’s jacket is made from the same mate-rial as his sister’s dress.” The Philadelphia paper implored other newspapers to aid in the identification of these children, so that they would know “that the last thoughts of their dying father was for them, and them only.”13

Other papers did pick up the story. Within a month, the story would become a national one, eventually making its way to tiny Portville, New York.

Philinda Humiston, who had not heard from her husband since the battle at Gettysburg, recognized the description of the ambrotype. Surely, she thought, it was the one she sent to her husband months ago. A letter was sent to Dr. Bourns requesting a carte-de-visite of the image. When it arrived, her

premonition was confirmed. She was a widow, and her three children – Franklin, now eight years old, Alice, now six, and Frederick, just four – were fatherless. Gettysburg’s Unknown Soldier had been identified. On November 19, 1863, as Pres-ident Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, another newspaper story


“The Children of the Battle Field” sheet music from 1864.

(JOH

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INS U

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Sergeant Amos Humiston(GETTYSBURG NATIONAL MILITARY PARK)

Documents Documents

1 Mark H. Dunkelman, Gettysburg’s Unknown Soldier: The Life, Death, and Celebrity of Amos Humiston (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1999), 9.

2 Rev. Isaac G. Ogden, “Sergeant Hummiston and His Family. Letter from Rev. Isaac G. Ogden,” in American Prestyterian, December 17, 1863, 201.

3 Rev. Ogden, “Sergeant Hummiston and His Family,” 201. 4 Olean Times, in Dunkelman, 56; Rev. Ogden, “Sergeant Hummiston and

His Family,” 201.5 Dunkelman, 57-58.6 Amos Humiston to Dear wife, December 2, 1862, in Dunkelman, 72.7 Amos Humiston to Dear wife, May 9, 1863, in Dunkelman, 104.8 Charles W. McKay, “Three Years or During the War,” in Dunkelman, 118.9 Dunkelman, 120.10 Ibid, 131-132.11 Ibid, 138-139.12 Philadelphia Inquirer, October 19, 1863. http://archive.

olivesoftware.com/Default/Skins/CivilWarNB/Client.asp?Skin=CivilWarNB&GZ=T&AppName=2&AW=1399226580055

13 Philadelphia Inquirer, October 19, 1863.14 “The Dead Soldier Identified,” American Presbyterian, November 19,

1863.15 “Identity Ascertained,” Philadelphia Daily Evening Bulletin, November

20,1863, 4; “The Children of the Deceaased Hero,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 21, 1863, 9. See Dunkleman, fn 11, 158.

16 “Reminiscence of Gettysburg: The Last Thought of Dying Father,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, January 2, 1864, 235, 236, accessed online at https://archive.org/stream/franklesliesilluv1718lesl. Image online at http://hdl.loc.gov/lov.pnp/cph.

17 Dunkelman, 162.18 Alice Humiston, quoted in Gettysburg Star and Sentinel, October 31,

1914, and Alice Humiston to Fred Humiston, October 28, 1914, in Dunkelman, 173.

19 Dunkleman, 133.20 Ibid, 215.21 Ibid, 209.22 Ibid, 182.23 Ibid, 190.24 Ibid, 192.25 Ibid, 201.26 Ibid, 207.27 Ibid, 208.28 Ibid, 213-222, passim.

appeared under the headline “Dead Soldier Identified:” “The dread certainty of widowhood and orphanage flashed upon the group with this discovery; yet the severity of the blow was tempered by the dying affection of the father…”14 Over the next days, Philadelphia newspapers printed the story, an-nouncing that the identity of the soldier had been confirmed and the family located.15

News of the identification ushered in a second wave of publicity, thrusting the Humiston family’s private grief into public celebrity. The carte-de-visites were in high demand as patriotic Americans sought to aid the Humistons. Back in Gettysburg, Humiston’s hasty grave was dug up, and the Sergeant was re-interred on Cemetery Hill. Amos Humiston had been taken care of, but would his family be as well?

The Humiston family’s celeb-rity continued to grow. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper ran the story in January 1864, complete with an imaginary illustration of Humiston lying with the picture in his hands.16 It was further immortalized by popular performer James G. Clark’s song “Children of the Battlefield,” released in April 1864 with the front cover design featuring the now famous image of the children.. The carte-de-visites were put on exhibition, and for sale, at the Metropolitan Fair in New York City in 1864.17

The image of the children triggered a successful fund-rais-ing campaign which, according to Dr. Bourns’ original inten-tion, was to have gone to the Humistons. Yet according to Alice Humiston, Philinda Humiston and her children received little of the revenue generated by the ambrotype. Years later, in 1914, claiming the family had been cheated by Dr. Bourns,

Alice Humiston spoke to a reporter for a Gettysburg newspa-per to set the record straight: “It is believed that my mother received a portion of the money raised by the sale of the pic-tures. This is not so…. The public may as well know this side of the story as the other.” Alice wrote to her brother, Fred: “I boil every time I think about it.”18

Described as a “complex man,” Bourns seemed to have impulses of both kindness and greed.19 Tempted by profits, Dr. Bourns lacked the integrity to fully deliver his promise of financial support to the Humistons. He did not follow through with payments from all the sales of the ambrotype to support

Philinda Humiston and the children. In 1884 Dr. Bourns even asked Frank for more pictures of the Humistons, to which Frank gave the doctor a “stern rebuff,” as he believed that the doctor was scheming to use the family again for his own financial gain.20 Although Bourns would offer “sporadic help” to the family, the Humistons remembered him as a swindler.21

One positive development emerged from this story. In March 1866, the Na-tional Orphans’ Homestead Association, formed in 1865 and backed by wealthy donors and a Sunday-school fundraising effort, purchased a building on Cemetery Hill in Gettysburg. By October about thirty children – all soldiers’ orphans – arrived. Philinda Humiston was offered a position as a house-keeper, which meant that she could reside at the Homestead and bring her children.22 She accepted the position and she and the children took up residence there.

The orphanage became an important part of the Gettys-burg community. Beginning in 1868, the Homestead children led the annual Memorial Day procession to the cemetery.

On that day, the Humiston children and the other orphans walked up the hill to what is now the Soldiers National Cemetery, and put bouquets of flowers on the graves of their fathers. This tradition was repeated each year.23

In the summer of 1869, an addition was added to the build-ing to increase boarding room, bringing the capacity of the house to over one hundred.24 Financially, the institution was solvent, thanks to continued support from sale of the Humis-ton carte-de-visites, individual donors, and many northern Sunday schools. Indeed, the Homestead was thriving until the appearance of Rosa Carmichael, the new matron recommend-ed by Dr. Bourns.

Signs of trouble in the orphanage became apparent begin-ning on Memorial Day 1876, when Rosa Carmichael refused to allow the children to participate in the procession as they had always done. This, and rumors of Carmichael’s mistreat-ment of the children, prompted veterans of the local Grand Army of the Republic post to launch an investigation into the Homestead. They found Carmichael guilty of “general misconduct and tyranny,” including assault, for which she was arrested.25 The Homestead Board of Directors investigated further the administration of the orphanage, and filed lawsuits against Carmichael and Bourns for “mismanagement, waste of property, violation of trust,” and other charges.26 The legal trouble for Dr. Bourns escalated when he was charged with embezzling from the Homestead. The greed he had demon-strated by capitalizing on the Humiston family was once again in evidence with regard to the orphanage. The damage to the institution was deemed to be irreversible. In January 1878, the Gettysburg sheriff seized the Homestead property, and in April the property was sold.27 The Homestead experiment had ended disastrously less than a decade after its beginning.

The Humiston family was not involved in the Homestead scandal, as the family had moved on by the time the troubles appeared. In October 1869 Philinda Humiston, anxious to leave Gettysburg, hastily married Asa Barnes, and relocated to Becket, Massachusetts. The children joined them in 1871.

Frank Humiston would go on to practice medicine and raise a family in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Frederick settled in West Sommerville, Massachusetts, where he worked as a traveling salesman. Alice held a variety of jobs, never marrying. Philin-da became a widow again in 1881 when Asa Barnes died; in 1913 she died at the age of eighty-two.28

The Humistons had not sought celebrity. In fact, in their adult years, the children rarely talked about their story. After many years in the public spotlight, they preferred their family


tragedy and legacy to be private. Yet the story of the dying soldier and his family was one that touched many, during the war and throughout the country for generations afterwards.

There was to be one more public event honoring Amos Humiston. In 1993, a monument to him – the only monument at Gettysburg to an enlisted man – was dedicated near the spot where Humiston’s body was found. This battlefield mon-ument memorializes not Amos Humiston’s military heroism, but rather his love for Frank, Fred, and Alice.

Andrew Borsa graduated from Boston College in 2012 with de-grees in history and English. A former intern with the Catoctin Center for Regional Studies, he currently works for Wolters Kluwer in New York City.

The Soldiers’ Orphans Home in Gettysburg in 1867 (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)


Issue #4 (Spring/Summer 2004)

Boys of the Blue Ridge: Baseball From Yesteryear – 1915Mark C. Zeigler

Crampton’s Gap: “Aperture to Antietam”Timothy J. Reese

Washington County’s Campaign for Modern SchoolsIsabelle Gournay

Ornamental Views and the Changing Landscape of Saint Joseph’s Academy, EmmitsburgGloria Seaman Allen

Traditions – “You’ve Got to Taste This One!”: The Carroll County 4-H Fair Cake AuctionCatherine Hiebert Kerst

Sense of Place – A Day With ButterfliesJohn George

Artifacts – Catoctin Rhyolite: Stories in StoneAndrew Stout

Local Color – Frogs

Voices – Frederick County Veterans History Project

Catoctin History Tour #4 – Crampton’s Gap BattlefieldTimothy J. Reese

Backcover – Play Ball!

Issue #8 (Fall/Winter 2006)

The Middle Ford Ferry Tavern at Monocacy National BattlefieldJoy Beasley

The Life and Legend of John BrownRusty Monhollon

About the Cover – John Steuart Curry and The Tragic PreludeJenna Gianni

Historic Places – A Church Becomes a Home: St. Paul’s Reformed Church, Union Bridge, MarylandWilliam H. Zinkham

Traditions – Christmas in Blue and Gray: Keeping the Yuletide in Civil War CampsKenneth Pitts

Catoctin Center Bulletin Board

Catoctin History Tour #8 – Chambersburg to Charles Town: The John Brown TrailAnna Pritt

Backcover – Collect the Entire Set!Kenneth Pitts

From the fall of 2002 to the spring of 2014, the Catoctin Center for Regional Studies published twelve issues of Catoctin History. Listed below are the articles and authors that appear in each issue. These issues of Catoctin History can be accessed electronically at http://catoctinhistory.frederick.edu.

Issue #1 (Fall 2002)

The Saratoga That Wasn’t: The Impact of Antietam Abroad James M. McPherson

The Hermitage on the MonocacyPaula Stoner Reed

Forging Freedom: The Fugitive Blacksmith James W.C. PenningtonDean Herrin

The John Brown Fort: Memory in Black and WhitePaul A. Shackel

Artifacts – The Eagle Quilt, 1857John Ford and Dean Herrin

Documents – Oh! Long May It WaveJohn Fieseler

Traditions – Slippery Pot PieSteve Warrick

Sense of Place – The Forest History of the Catoctin MountainsDoug Boucher

Diggings – Archeology on the Best FarmJoy Beasley

Artifacts – Remembering Antietam: John Philemon Smith’s ShadowboxJeannine A. Disviscour

In the Parks – Antietam on Canvas: The Battle Art of James HopeTed Alexander

(Un)Common Knowledge– Covered Bridges and Uncovered Hay Bales

The Historian’s Friend – How to Research the History of Your HouseJanet Davis

All the News

History Mystery

Mix-and-Match

Catoctin History Tour #1– Covered Bridges of Frederick CountyDean Herrin

Backcover – Wish You Were Here

Issue #2 (Spring 2003)

“All Roads Lead to Gettysburg”: Pickett’s Charge, History, and MemoryCarol Reardon

James A. Mitchell and the First Discovery of Dinosaur Tracks in MarylandWilliam G. Meredith

“Sacred to the Memory”: The Stonecarving of Sebastian HammondMary Ann Aschcraft

The Journey Ahead: Meriwether Lewis in Harpers Ferry and Frederick Teresa S. Moyer and Dean Herrin

Artifacts – John Bell Pottery: Art, Innovation, and UtilityJennifer L. Dintaman

Traditions – Never Never Land: The Peter Pan Inn and Corn FrittersBarbara Powell

Artifacts – Catoctin Furnace IronworkDonald L. Fennimore

Documents – The Great Fair!

(Un)Common Knowledge – Weighing and Entering

History Mystery

The Historian’s Friend – Resources, Notices, and Queries

Catoctin History Tour #2 – Rock of Ages: Sebastian Hammond’s HeadstonesMary Ann Ashcraft

Backcover – Wish You Were Here

Issue #3 (Fall 2003)

From Virginia’s Upper Potomac to Liberia, 1830-1860Marie Tyler-McGraw

Marking Time: Civil War Graffiti in the Catoctin RegionEdie Wallace

Shangri-La: A Mountain, a Vision, a Place in HistoryTom McFadden

Landmarks – Camp CozyValerie Nozzi

Traditions – From Field to Forge: The Artistic Journey of an American LegendSteve Warrick

Maps – A Place in Time: Antietam 1862Brian Baracz

Documents – “Rise Superior to the Passions of the Hour”Melinda Marsden

Sense of Place – Of Fences and ChangeBill Meredith

Local Color – Home, Sweet, Home!

Artifacts – A Visionary Theorist and His RifleJohn F. King

Catoctin Forum – Amusement Parks

The Catoctin Crossword Puzzle

Catoctin History Tour #3 – The Great WarTamar Osterman

Backcover – “Moore County Grit”


First Flight to Frederick: Uncle Sam’s Birdmen at Camp OrdwayTeresa S. Moyer

Fort Frederick: Gibraltar on the PotomacStephen R. Robertson

Down the Monocacy: River Navigation and Canal Surveys in Frederick County, MarylandDan Guzy

About the Cover – After the StormAngela R. Commito

Food – Canal Fare: Boatman’s Bean SoupBarbara Powell and Kenneth Pitts

Artifacts – The Web of HistoryCatherine Baty

Catoctin History Tour #5 – The French and Indian War in Mid – MarylandAngela R. Commito

Backcover – A Gift for General LeeAmanda Myers


Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation: The Creation of Antietam National CemeterySusan Trail

Henry Dielman’s Music from the MountAngela Commito

Seagoing Cowboys and the Heifer Project: The Maryland StoryPeggy Reiff Miller

Traditions – Home Brew: Root Beer in the Catoctin RegionHannah Grant and Barbara Powell

Documents – Robert E. Lee’s “Peace Letter”Dean Herrin

Artifacts – Carved in Wood: The Legacy of Frank FeatherAngela Commito

Catoctin Center News

Catoctin History Tour #6 – “Bivouac of the Dead”: Antietam National Cemetery Sharpsburg, Maryland

Backcover – This unusual yet elegant…


The Mill Boom in Western MarylandJohn McGrain

Reflections of a Senator: Charles McCurdy MathiasElizabeth Duthinh

Conococheague Manor: A View of Early Settlement and Vernacular Architecture in the BackcountryPaul D. McDermott

About the Cover – Elmer Stubbins: Carroll County’s Itinerant Folk ArtistBarbara Powell

Artifacts – Pain Knockers and Liver Syrup: Patent Medicines in the Catoctin RegionJanet Allen

Traditions – Old South Mountain InnJennifer Willard and Barbara Powell

Catoctin Center News – “The Promise of Liberty” and African American HistoryTeresa S. Moyer

Catoctin History Tour #7 – Milling Around Carroll CountyIvan Lufriu and Christopher Gillis

Backcover – “A Monumental Stone”

IndexCatoctin

H I S T O R YIndex

CatoctinH I S T O R Y


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“A Blot on Our National Character”: Roger Brooke Taney and the Defense of Jacob GruberMark S. Hudson

“Corbit’s Charge”: The Battle of WestminsterG. Thomas Legore

Crop of Gold: The Story of Goldfish Farming in Frederick CountyJames Rada, Jr.

Document – Traveling the Erie Canal in 1825: An Account by Margaret SchleyFrank G. Lesure

Yesterday’s Headlines – Balloon Ascends, Dog Descends!!!

Traditions – Crazy for ‘KrautKristopher Ruth and Dean Herrin

Catoctin Center News

Catoctin History Tour #9 – “Corbit’s Charge” TourG. Thomas Legore

Backcover – Antietam ReunionDavid Nathanson


A “Sixty-Pie” Barn: The Bank Barns of Mid-MarylandLisa Mroszczyk

“The Book Goes to the Man”: The First BookmobileJill Craig

A War of Manners: Jeb Stuart’s “Sabers and Roses” BallJames A. Davis

Mary Shellman’s Veterans: Finding the ForgottenMimi Ashcraft and Ned Landis

Historic Places – “Supplying the tools of civilization”: Archaelogical Research at a Rural Blacksmith ShopElizabeth S. Ries

Traditions – Peaches of the PiedmontJenna L. Gianni and Hannah M. Grant

Artifacts – “George Washington Really Did Sleep Here”Catherine Baty

Catoctin History Tour #10 – Bank Barns of Frederick CountyLisa Mroszczyk

Backcover – “Pitch In and Help!”Jenna L. Gianni and Hannah M. Grant

Issue #11 (2009)

Almost Wright: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Vision for Sugarloaf MountainMark Reinberger

Securing the Potomac: Colonel Charles P. Stone and the Rockville Expedition, June-July 1861Timothy R. Snyder

The Dignity of Free Men: The Story of Tolson’s Chapel in SharpsburgEdie Wallace

John Brown’s Raid, Edward Shriver, and the Frederick MilitiaDavid S. Lovelace

Artifacts – Lydia and the Old LadyClarence “Chip” Jewell

Traditions - Whitewashing the Old-Fashioned Way William H. Zinkham

Historic Places – James W. Tyson’s Elba FurnaceJohnny Johnsson

Food – Of Worms and Weevils: Hard Living on HardtackAriel Burriss

Catoctin History Tour #11 – Monuments of Monocacy

Backcover – From the Mountain Top to Fifth Avenue

Issue #12 (2014)

A World War II Secret: The OSS in Catoctin Mountain Park John Whiteclay Chambers II

Invitation to Battle: Special Orders 191 Tracy Evans

The Postmaster and the General: Franklin and Braddock in Frederick Stephen Powell

Traditions – The Battle Against Boredom: Game Playing by Civil War Soldiers Calvin Fisher

Food – Margaret Artz’s Daybook Mary K. Mannix

Catoctin History Tour #12 – Freedmen’s Bureau Schools Dean Herrin and Edie Wallace

Documents – Children of the Battlefield Andrew Borsa

Catoctin History Index

Backcover – Tree Stump in Marble: A Monument to Milton Sarah Hovde

IndexCatoctin

H I S T O R Y

CROSSROADS OF WAR: Maryland and the Border in the Civil War

Website Wins Award!The Catoctin Center for Regional Studies recently received the Maryland Preservation Award for Excellence in Media and Publications for the “Crossroads of War: Maryland and the Border in the Civil War” website. This website explores the history of the Civil War era in central Maryland and the surrounding region, offering viewers detailed information on all facets of this critical time in America’s history. From Antietam to Monocacy, Gettysburg to Harpers Ferry, and from John Brown’s Raid and the causes of the Civil War to post-war Reconstruction efforts, “Crossroads of War” provides a comprehensive look at how the war affected people’s lives in this tense border region. Interactive maps, images and videos, a guide to historic sites, lively essays, and research databases that allow users to explore period newspapers, letters, diaries, and information on hundreds of individual soldiers help make this complex and chaotic era both more understandable and more personal.

Explore the website at: www.crossroadsofwar.org

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This unusual monument in Rose Hill Cemetery in Hagers-town, Maryland, marks the grave of Milton R. Hawken, a veteran of the Spanish-American War. Hawken was a

thirty-year-old lieutenant in Company B of the First Regiment Infantry of the Maryland National Guard, based in Hagerstown, when war was declared with Spain in 1898. The regiment was renamed the First Maryland Regiment, U.S. Volunteers, and Hawken was appointed a battalion adjutant. The regiment per-formed garrison duty at various camps in the U.S. during the war. After the war, Hawken worked as a clerk in Hagerstown and briefly as city tax collector. He remained a member of Com-pany B, which was designated a Maryland National Guard unit.

Milton Hawken died in 1901 of “consumption,” presumably tuberculosis, at the age of thirty-three. Seeking a fitting tribute to their fallen comrade, the men of Company B chose to honor him with this monument in the form of a tree stump, symbol-izing a life cut short, and ornamented with military gear includ-ing a sword, knapsack, hat, canteen, and belt. This tree stump monument is six feet high, and was carved out of Bedford mar-ble by the local Hagerstown marble and stone works firm of Jackson & Shuford, located on the corner of South Jonathan and Antietam Streets. The inscription on the gravestone reads:

Milton R. Hawkin [sic] 1st Lieut.

Co. B 1st Reg. Inf. M.N.G. Born Sept. 7, 1867 Died Feb. 2, 1901

Aged 33 Yrs. 3 Mos. And 25 Days

_________ And Served As Battalion Adj.

In The 1st MD. U.S.V. In The Spanish American War During 1898

Erected in fond remembrance by his

comrade

Tree Stump in Marble: A Monument to MiltonSarah Hovde

CatoctinCatoctinH I S T O R YH I S T O R Y

Frederick Community College7932 Opossumtown Pike

Frederick, MD 21702

NONPROFITORGANIZATION

US POSTAGEPA I D

FREDERICK MDPERMIT NO 172

Date post:	12-Apr-2018
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