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    Civil War Ghosts of Sharpsburg
    Civil War Ghosts of Sharpsburg
    Civil War Ghosts of Sharpsburg
    Ebook157 pages2 hours

    Civil War Ghosts of Sharpsburg

    By Mark P. Brugh and Julia Stinson Brugh

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    The Maryland town devastated by the bloodiest day of the Civil War—the Battle of Antietam—is now home to its ghostly victims.
     
    In September 1862, fighting from the Battle of Antietam spilled into Sharpsburg’s streets. Residents were left to bury the dead from both sides. Today, locals report lingering echoes of that strife, from the faint taps of a Union drummer boy named Charley King to the phantom footsteps of Confederate soldiers charging up the stairs of the Rohrbach House. Two spectral girls seen playing by the Big Spring in Children’s Alley may be Savilla Miller and Theresa Kretzer, best friends torn apart by their divided loyalties. Tour guides Mark P. Brugh and Julia Stinson Brugh craft a vivid portrait of Sharpsburg in the Civil War and bring to light stories of the ghosts for whom the conflict never ended.
     
    Includes photos!
     
    “Folklore, social history, and a haunted village . . . Provides brief discussions of the historic architecture and ironwork of the village and sketches of the effects of battle upon the civilian population . . . Overall, the authors have set the folklore of hauntings with the context of a major historical event.” —Civil War Librarian
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateAug 31, 2015
    ISBN9781625854599
    Civil War Ghosts of Sharpsburg

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      Book preview

      Civil War Ghosts of Sharpsburg - Mark P. Brugh

      INTRODUCTION

      Sharpsburg, Maryland, looks about as tired and sleepy as any other small American village, with small homes tightly hugging the sidewalks and traffic that, for most of each day except during the evening rush, moves slowly over paved roads. Walking the streets and alleys here makes it difficult to remember that the town and its people suffered through days of warfare and months and years of personal tragedy after the events of September 1862. In those days, death came at large to the town via the battle, the graves of the dead lined the roads and houses filled with wounded of both sides and became, by definition if nothing else, hospitals—or morgues. No good episode of war is complete without accompanying sickness, and Sharpsburg was not spared that either. It came, it lingered and it took by death many townspeople in the months following. But there was more. Unexploded artillery shells were found for years after the battle, and their discoveries, although not predictable, certainly came with predictable consequences. The crops ruined by the armies brought a scarcity of food to Sharpsburg that drove hunger to extremes, requiring the support of neighboring areas to step forward and offer basic commodities. Finally, there were bodies with which to contend. They were everywhere in field graves and were mostly exposed when the dirt settled around the corpses.

      Like it or not, these elements contributed to an atmosphere ripe for stories of mysterious and unexplainable happenings. This book ties together and tries to set a context for them by reviewing and considering known historical events. It is an extension of research about the people of Sharpsburg and their role in history on America’s bloodiest day, September 17, 1862, that started in the early 1980s. After reading firsthand accounts of unnamed persons who stayed in Sharpsburg and witnessed the battle there, I became intrigued with the idea of discovering their identities by nuances and personal details that were parts of their stories. One of the persons was a boatman on the C&O Canal. Another was a former slave, while a third was the daughter of a master blacksmith. Small but important clues like these allowed first steps toward identification, but progress was only allowed at rare intervals, because so much of my time was committed to commuting to work and attending law school in the evening. Genealogical research was different and more difficult back then, but time has eased the difficulty and made the necessary research data more accessible.

      Travels to the Antietam Battlefield were replaced by visits to Sharpsburg. I spent many hours walking streets and alleys admiring original structures, including large limestone homes, low one-story cabins, two-story brick buildings, small sheds, barns and barn stables. My interest, of course, was to find battle wounds that were inflicted long ago. Chips in bricks and mortar were stared at and scrutinized. Knotholes in planks and boards were probed. I tried to see the features of every possible structure from every possible angle. Eaves, shutters and foundations of the buildings there became well known to me.

      Sometimes, curious people would stop and talk. Mostly though, I stopped them and began our chats by mentioning the weather conditions or the dogs they walked. Polite, impromptu talks about little things like that usually turned into conversations about why I was staring at the side of a building, and then another of type of conversation would take place. People would open up and talk about their town and themselves. From chance meetings like these, I learned that the people of Sharpsburg have stories to tell, and for lack of any better term, let’s call them ghost stories. In a period of over thirty years, the sidewalk conversations continued and revealed dozens of stories of unusual happenings, sightings and encounters. It seemed that anyone who lived in Sharpsburg had an unusual story, and every building did, too. Although the conversations and meetings were enjoyable, thoroughly pleasant and interesting, my primary mission remained focused on individual persons and their identities.

      With the inception of the Internet, barriers to information access were removed, and research became possible without taking time off from work or making long drives on weekends. Finally, firm identifications were made, and individual stories about the events in Sharpsburg on September 17, 1862, came to life. In some instances, possible origins connecting oft repeated stories about sightings of Confederate soldiers and children of past eras were revealed by documented history. A conundrum ensued: what to do with them and their historical connections?

      Partial inspiration and a new direction came from our involvement with a community theater group in Hagerstown. After a year or so of participation, I wrote a play about the people of Sharpsburg and their roles in gathering the dead from the battlefield and establishing permanent cemeteries. The concept was presented to the board of directors as an option for production in the fall 2010 season, and it was accepted. A strong cast was assembled, and the show went to stage for three nights. The formative plan I hoped for was to present the show at other venues as an educational opportunity for schools and historical tourism. Some inroads were made but not enough came through because the show had a large cast, and the cost to present it made the idea impractical. To make the story workable, I would have had to pare down the cast to a minimum—one seemed like the best possible number. Because the history of the people of Sharpsburg sometimes had roots in stories we already knew, the combination of the two gave rise to a Sharpsburg Civil War ghost tour in 2012. We prepare for our fourth season as this manuscript goes for final review to The History Press.

      We tried to present the stories we’ve heard in this book standing on their own. Sometimes, the background and history directly follow the story. Sometimes, we felt the stories needed to have the history presented within the framework in order to make sense. In the stand-alone versions of the stories, you’ll note the writing style is suited to the type of presentation you might hear sitting around a campfire late at night in a dark woodsy spot. These were written by Julia; she emulates an Appalachian gothic type of style to set a dark and mysterious mood.

      Sharpsburg has a legacy of great history and great storytellers who have handed down descriptions of important events and persons. O.T. Reilly, Wilmer Mumma and Lee Barron each made noteworthy contributions. History can sometimes be precarious to handle or explain well if taken from only one point of view. But sometimes only one point of view exists or is known, and the view through only one lens is usually a narrow one. Still, we lose something if we ignore such accounts, and a moderate, rounded view can be maintained merely by understanding personal dynamics, relationships and experiences.

      Sound stewardship of history is critical, particularly to a place like Sharpsburg, unbent by commercialism and mostly intact despite historical tourism. And yet there are differences among the presentation of history here, with the dominant view isolating the military history from its impact on the community it devastated, while another perspective gathers in and attempts to understand that impact by combining eyewitness accounts, personal experience and the logical consequences and resulting folklore.

      This book is intended to entertain those who love Sharpsburg, the Battle of Antietam, mysterious folklore and the drama of storytelling. We hope you enjoy!

      –MPB

      PART I

      THE GHOSTLY CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS’ PASSAGEWAY

      There is more than just traffic moving along the streets and alleys in the northwest quadrant of Sharpsburg. There are also regular reports of Confederate soldiers moving down the roads headed west toward the Potomac River. Some are only witnessed in the middle of the night, while others appear in morning hours or at dusk. There are dozens, and on our ghost tours, we simply do not have time to mention every one that we’ve been told. Although the thousands of Confederate bodies left in Maryland could not cross the river with their regimental units, it seems they may still be trying to head west and cross over the Potomac River to rejoin them.

      In this northwest corner of Sharpsburg, the sightings of Confederate soldiers continue like leftover memories from their past presence here. The quadrant is bounded by Chapline Street on the north, Main Street on the south, Mechanic Street on the east and the Potomac River on the west. Slicing east and west through the middle of the area is Alley No. 1, or what we call the Ghostly Confederate Soldiers’ Passageway. Over and over, during the Civil War, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia moved through and occupied the town. Lee first came in September 1862 and fought the bloodiest day in American history from his base in Sharpsburg. In June 1863, the Confederate army passed through on the way to Gettysburg but left units behind in Washington County to secure the crossings over the Potomac River. In July 1864, the Army of Northern Virginia again was on the move. After crossing the river near Sharpsburg, it circled southeast in a last ditch and failed effort to capture

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