Family at Antietam

While in DC, we are visiting several museums, but I am not reporting on them because we have seen them before.  It is easier for me to write about those places which are new to me.

Monday we visited one such place, the Antietam National Battlefield near Sharpsburg, Maryland.  It was 1 1/2 hours away, but well worth the drive because Lee discovered a few weeks ago that some of his ancestors lived in the area during the Civil War.  I love that Lee's interest in his genealogy has generated these little expeditions.  Learning about his family has made history come alive for me, less abstract and more real.

Lee learned that one of his ancestors on his father's side, John Miller, originally settled near Phoenixville in Pennsylvania.  Moving slowly south, he eventually purchased land north of  Sharpsburg in 1800, and built a log cabin and then a stone house on the property.  We found the house, not too far from the main battles that occurred in Antietam in September of 1862.  In fact, Major General Joseph Mansfield of the Union army was killed about a 1/4 mile away.  This is called the Samuel Poffenberger house on 1862 maps.  This house is privately owned and is not within park boundaries, so we had to view it from the road.

John Miller bought up several neighboring farms, and deeded them to his children when he died in 1821.  The Miller children married into other Sharpsburg families, which makes it more confusing.  For example, what is today known as the Roulette farm was in the Miller family for 8 decades.  John Miller IV sold it to his sister Margaret Ann Miller, who married William Roulette. The Roulette's lived here during the Civil War.  This house was left unharmed during the three-day battle of Antietam.

Here's another example.  In about 1833, Elizabeth Miller married Samuel Mumma and moved into the Mumma house.  The Mumma house was burned to the ground during the battle by Confederates, who wanted to prevent Union sharpshooters from using the house to get a better shot.  The Mummas rebuilt the house in 1863.

On the Mumma property is a small cemetery.  Lee found several of his Miller ancestors buried there.  None were killed during the battle, although one of John Miller's sons, Daniel, died one month later.  He had been ill, and it was presumed that the ordeal and stress of all the fighting had compromised his body's natural defenses. 

An important farm on the Antietam battlefield was that which belonged to David R. Miller, Lee's first cousin, four times removed (meaning first cousin, four generations back).  D.R. Miller was one of John Miller's many grandsons.  On the first day's battle at Antietam, the Union soldiers, many from Pennsylvania, marched through D.R. Miller's cornfield towards the Confederates.  The two sides eventually met head-on, and the ensuing battle was mayhem and chaos because of the height of the corn, the deafening noise, and the smoke.  More soldiers were injured and killed in this one battle, which lasted about three hours, then any Civil War battle before or after.  Even Gettysburg was not as bloody.  The corn was ruined (needless to say), and the house was used as a hospital.  Today, Miller's field of corn is known as The Cornfield, which has special significance to all Civil War scholars.

The National Park Service is in the process of restoring the Antietam area to conditions before the soldiers arrived in 1862.  The D.R. Miller house is currently being renovated, hence the scaffolding.

The Dunker Church has many ties to the Millers and other branches of Lee's family.  At Antietam, it was the location of a bloody fight, ironic because the Dunkers were pacifists.  The church is very modest, like the Dunkers themselves.

Men would sit on one side, and women on the other.

The Millers were Dunkers, and so were other branches of Lee's family.  Technically, the Dunkers were German Baptist Brethren.  Because they believed in "dunking" in a river to baptize, they were alternately known as Dunkers or Dunkards.  The Brethren came from Germany and shared many similarities with the Amish, Mennonites, and Quakers.  Different factions of the Brethren still exist in this country today.  The best known is probably the Church of the Brethren.  Now that I am aware of them, I see their churches occasionally all over the country.
 
I have to mention that Lee discovered, a couple of days before we left Pennsylvania two years ago, that another of his ancestors, the Reverend Jacob Price, was one of the earliest of the Brethren to come to America.  He came over in 1719, and first lived in Germantown near Philadelphia but later settled in Harleysville, Pennsylvania.  Harleysville is only 30 miles from where we lived in Newtown Square, but unfortunately we didn't know all of this about Lee's family while we lived there for 25 years!   

Back to Antietam.

One of the first things I noticed about the area was its bucolic nature.  It is beautiful, especially in late spring, when temperatures are comfortable, everything is turning green, and the crops have just been planted.

The farms look so peaceful.

It is hard to believe that on September 17, 1862, a battle of horrific proportions was taking place.  Bodies of dead and dying soldiers were strewn everywhere, the deafening noise of the canons was constant, and the smell of smoke and death was all around.

One of the most difficult places to view was the "Sunken Road", sunken because of its constant use by local farmers for many years.  It is at the south end of the Mumma and Roulette properties.  At one point during the battle, the Confederates used the road as a ready-made trench.  It worked for awhile, but eventually the Union Army gained the upper hand and the dip became filled with dead Confederates.  A photographer took an iconic photograph of the scene a day or two after the battle ended.  It took many days for all the bodies to be buried in shallow graves, as was true throughout the battlefield.

A national cemetery was dedicated not long after the battle, just east of Sharpsburg, to which the bodies were moved and reburied.

Like Gettyburg, Antietam has its memorials, but it seems to me they are on a smaller scale.  Those of New York and Maryland are the grandest.  New York's is a tall spire.  The photo below is taken from where the Confederates were positioned on the first morning, looking towards The Cornfield.

Maryland's memorial is a round pavilion:

The pavilion contains panels in bas relief that depict several of the battles, including one on a bridge just southeast of Sharpsburg.  This proved to be the final push by the Union Army which caused Robert E. Lee to gather his trips and retreat to the other side of the Potomac River into Virginia.

The memorials of Pennsylvania are several, but smaller, spread throughout the battlefield.  They all depict one soldier of each regiment, in the location where that regiment fought.

In the map below, I have indicated the properties owned or lived in by the Miller family with red arrows (with the exception of the Dunker Church).  John Miller's home is indicated by the little red house.

Family Anecdotes

Lee uncovered several family anecdotes which illuminate life for the residents of the area during the battles.  I will relate three of them.

As fighting approached various farms, the farmers and their families most often fled.  One of Lee's relatives questioned her grandmother about her memories of the war and then transcribed the stories.  The grandmother was six years old in 1862, and told her granddaughter that the family packed up a wagon and set off for the house of an aunt who lived ten miles away.  To quote, "They drove the 10 miles in one full day.  Dead men were scattered thickly on the fields.  It was impossible to find the road.  All along the route they had to clear the dead soldiers from the road." 

Before fleeing the house, the then six-year old grandmother saw and heard more than enough action.  The same document relates, "At one time [a] regiment fought a terrific battle within 100 feet of grandma's home.... Grandma, her sisters and brothers were huddled in the cellar.  The barns were partly destroyed, and the house narrowly escaped distruction [sic].  Cannon balls dropped dangerously near the house.  In fact, one came in through the window and dropped on the bed.  If it had fallen to the floor, all three stories would have been destroyed."  It was right after this battle that the family left for the aunt's house.

The final story crops up in published books.  One of John Miller's sons, Jacob, lived in a house on Main Street in Sharpsburg.  As fighting erupted outside the house, the family ran for shelter at another home down the street.  Jacob then remembered he had left his daughter's parrot in a cage on the front porch.  He ran back to the house to retrieve it, but just before he got there a bullet pierced the leather strap attached to the ceiling that held the cage up off the floor.  The cage and parrot dropped.  The parrot was reported to have yelled, "Oh Poor Polly!" as the cage came crashing down.  Jacob rescued the bird, and both the bird and Jacob survived the battle.

I am not one to read books about battlefields or study the details, but when one is able to focus on a specific aspect of the war, as with people that have come alive through genealogy research, it becomes much more interesting.  I feel connected to these people and events.

Quick Note on Birds

I have never seen more tree swallows than we saw here.  They were everywhere.  Beautiful little birds.

That's it until the next post!