Civil War Nursing at Gettysburg's Lutheran Seminary

good afternoon everybody this is jake nguyen from the national museum of civil war medicine coming at you live from the clara barton missing soldiers office museum in washington dc we have another live program for you all today i am joined by my friend uh pete from the seminary ridge museum and education center uh in gettysburg pennsylvania he is in the exhibits at uh at seminary ridge how are you doing today pete i'm doing well glad to be here excellent we are glad to have you so uh we are uh broadcasting live today and this is uh an exciting part of what has become the interpretive strategies for uh for both of our institutions we've been doing a lot of live programming over the last year as a result of the covid19 pandemic many of you uh watching with us today probably have seen some of our other live programming that we've done both uh for us at the civil war medicine museum and for seminary ridge uh museum as well thank you out there so much for for supporting us all through this uh difficult time in the uh for the entirety of the world but especially for the museum field as well we've uh we've all been uh working our way through uh this this crisis of the last year and uh it's thanks to all of you out there the viewers uh watching and supporting these videos donating to the museums becoming members of our institutions who have really done an amazing job of sustaining us and continuing to allow us uh to do the work that uh that we are able to do in a digital setting right now but also as we begin reopening both of our institutions have uh have begun that reopening stage we're at different levels of that um but uh it's exciting that we are moving back in in that direction um and we have a topic today that kind of resembles a little bit of that kind of getting towards normalcy um we're going to talk a little bit today uh with pete about the story at seminary ridge not about the heat of battle but about the the aftermath and the the striving to recover some normalcy and to move back towards uh everyday life uh to recover from the horrors of a civil war battle uh and a building that was used as a civil war hospital we're gonna be diving into some stories of that today so not uh necessarily the the three days or immediate aftermath of the battle of gettysburg but the long-standing consequences and that striving again uh to recover some level of normalcy so that's going to be our program today if you do enjoy these programs that both of our institutions have been doing over the past uh 12 months now uh you can assist us by becoming a member of our museums we're gonna be dropping some links into the into the chat section here in just a second you can go to our websites um and you can become a member or donate to our museums and that allows us to continue doing these sorts of programs allows us to to upgrade our technology to uh continue to share these important stories that are more important now than ever before and so we thank all of you who have become members who have donated to our institutions over the over the past year and in the years uh before that thank you for sustaining us and allowing us to continue doing this work i do have folks tuning in uh from all over the place today uh we've got uh our first comment came from kuwait uh uh we've got uh kenhorst pennsylvania springfield illinois we've got a nurse uh watching um appropriate for today's um we've got liberty town maryland central florida pittsburgh bel air kansas uh ellicott city maryland uh newark new york um got a happy st patrick's day happy st patrick's day everybody thanks for tuning in with us stafford virginia hollywood maryland um taunton massachusetts uh north carolina dallas texas orlando florida thank you all so much uh for for letting us know where you all are watching from continue to add to the comments section and if you have any questions or comments for myself or for pete who's gonna be doing most of the presenting today uh feel free to drop those into the comments we'll bring that into the conversation uh pete can't see those questions um just so you all know but i will be kind of the moderator for the online uh online comment section discussion so feel free to talk amongst yourselves send us any questions or comments you might have and we'll be uh i'll be happy to bring those into the broadcast uh so with all of that being said i'm going to turn it over to pete now um to uh inside the exhibits there at the same ridge museum uh to uh to do today's program yeah thanks thanks jake so um many people probably know if they've watched the videos that we've done previously this building where i'm standing right now is the original lutheran seminary building here in gettysburg constructed in 1832 and from the morning of july 1st 1863 all the way through september 16th this building was used as a hospital early on it's many of the men that are coming off the battlefield to the end of the first division of the first core the third division of the first court that are coming into this building and most of the the serious surgeries are being done probably around july 5th 6th 7th 8th as the confederate army retreats the union army retakes this building start to gather people wounded soldiers from from the battlefield and start to treat the men that are already in here so probably a lot of action a lot of uh strain and stress on personnel is happening going during those days uh but as jake said what i want to talk about is sort of the period from about the middle of july until the middle of september and by this time a lot of that intense action has died down and in fact by july 22nd there have been 11 000 wounded soldiers that have been evacuated from gettysburg that's one of those statistics that sort of gets left out is that there is this rapid evacuation on the rail system between july 7th and july 22nd so the men that are left here from july 22nd through uh the last wounded soldier leaves camp letterman which is the big general hospital out on york road uh right around the time that lincoln gives the gettysburg address these are men that are too fragile to be moved they could have evacuated them out but as jonathan letterman the medical director of the army of the potomac is saying that it's very important for men to regain their strength and and be well enough to to be moved and to not move them too quickly so those are the kind of stories that we're gonna that i'm gonna talk about here uh today and um i wanna start by talking specifically about the four uh confederate officers that are in this building um they are isaac trimble james kemper robert powell and henry henry kid douglas and there are a lot of stories about these guys and people are coming into the hospital to to visit them to see them to kind of gaze upon them uh and there are some really interesting stories that that come out of of of those interactions um and the the first story uh which is i'm going to lead with what's maybe the most interesting story is the story of the almost knife fight that breaks out in this building um and it's told by uh the chaplain of the 28th virginia a man named peter tinsley episcopal minister who remains behind here in gettysburg as the confederate army retreats and uh peter tinsley spends a lot of time walking around the battlefield he goes out uh he's at uh black horse tavern he's at breams mill and he spends some time here in the hospital one one quote and jake i didn't need to tell you this one he has a lot to say about female nurses uh he calls them she doctors um and is very um sort of looks down upon them um from from his his lofty perch of southern manhood uh that there could be women that are helping out and and performing uh performing medical tasks he specifically calls out dr mary walker um and and has a lot to say a lot of mean things to say about her um but his he comes in here one day and he is visiting the room where uh james kemper uh who's one of the the uh brigade commanders in george pickett's division uh kemper is here and he is sharing a room with robert powell of the fifth texas and uh tinsley tells the story and i'm gonna i'm gonna read it just because his uh his his description of this story is so great first of all he says about robert powell he is tall well-formed has a natural ease in grace is a gentleman and a soldier every inch a hero and he goes on to say a few days before before powell uh before tinsley's visit um powell wished to pass some ladies from general kemper's room to general trimble next door and they were guarded at this point by the pennsylvania militia who were doing provost duties here in gettysburg trying to keep the order and trimble was similarly guarded the guards refused the wounded colonel draws his pocket knife knocks aside the guns of the militia with one hand at the point of the blade escorts the ladies by there was they were stupefied by fright the militia they did not like the ideas of having throats cut next day the colonel received the present of a very nice knife so um that's just one of the many stories that that is that is coming out of here um as i said earlier a lot of people are telling are telling stories observations about what's what's going on especially with those confederate officers um isaac trimble many people who are watching this probably know that isaac trimble is is uh one of the if not the most cantankerous uh confederate general in robert e lee's army it's probably a trade-off between trimble and jubal early but trimble is here and he is uh originally housed it down in town treated in town with a family of southern sympathizers and uh the the union commanders don't like the good treatment that that trimble is getting so they bring him up here in this into the seminary hospital and pretty much place him sort of in general population he does get his own room but he is really really angry about this um and he decides that he's going to go on a hunger strike and one of the female nurses female attendants here met a woman named martha eller from the patriot daughters of lancaster says that well well general trimble would order the best of everything cooked and if it did not please him send it back to the kitchen i was there one day when his dinner was returned it consisted of nice fried ham and eggs with mashed potatoes and onions but it did not please him i don't know why sounds pretty good to me narus who was the cook asked what he should do i suggested letting him wait until his appetite return improved which was done no other dinner was supplied so yeah that's oh what a what a what a good account um uh this thinking of thinking of food and and some of the the uh going back to talking about letterman and and the system of kind of supply for these hospitals their establishment we do have a question here um pete that i think would be a good a good time to address this um right now um and this comes from jan did the union army continue to supply this hospital post battle uh yes um there are supplies that are coming in a lot but a lot of stuff is coming in uh from the relief commissions patriot daughters are bringing food uh sanitary commission christian commission have very large presences uh here in gettysburg and are supplying um but the the a lot of times the female attendants are the ones that are doing the cooking we know that mary ziegler who's the seminary matron is downstairs in her kitchen uh cooking away down to where our museum shop is today and then there's also an account from sally myers resident of gettysburg who talks about the big ovens that are set up in the grove of trees about where our parking lot is today and there's there's a lot of cooking being done there so uh you know that's that's one of the one of the things i'm glad you brought it up jake is that you know this this takes a lot to operate a lot to run this hospital there's a lot of moving parts uh it's not just wounded soldiers and doctors performing amputations there's food there's uh there's a dressing of wounds there's cleaning it's just there's a lot to do to make this place run efficiently and and just one other one other question that i have and i know we can let you get back to to your your program part of this yeah thinking thinking about um this um can you speak a little bit more about the the patriot daughters i i've not heard of this organization before yeah so the patriot daughters are our relief organization from lancaster uh they're um uh their president is a woman named rocina hubley and believe it or not i can see just past where the camera is sitting we have a letter that rosina hubley wrote to governor andrew curtin um july 4th of 1863 saying we have supplies ready to go to gettysburg um tell us where to send them and there's a great account that's written by martha eller she's the one that writes this account about about trimble and uh they eventually travel here from lancaster um they they get to the susquehanna river and they find that the bridge has been burned it's burned to keep jubal early's division from crossing over into lancaster and um they they finally make their way here to gettysburg they start uh performing duties in christ lutheran church um and then they go back to lancaster and then come back again to gettysburg and then start serving here at the at the seminary hospital and the book is called hospital scenes after the battle of gettysburg and it's a really great account it's available on internet archive a really great window into the work that women are doing here uh in in gettysburg and if you go to downtown lancaster today uh if you go around sort of the central square there in lancaster i think it's a marriott hotel there used to be a marriott but anyway there's a big civil war monument right in the center there and the money for that was raised by the patriot daughters of lancaster after the war awesome that's that's a fascinating group i i'm gonna dive in and read those read those accounts it sounds yeah sounds fascinating yeah so back over to you pete yeah yeah so um the the other person the other confederate commander officer that's in here is a man named henry kid douglas uh and he was on stonewall jackson's staff during when stonewall jackson was alive uh and then is serving on the staff here at gettysburg of edward johnson he's wounded on i believe it's re it's either really late on july 2nd or really early on july 3rd he ends up here he's sort of a uh a heartthrob if there if there is one during the civil war and um and so he's very popular here with with some of the ladies that are coming to see him um and he writes especially though about the daughters of charity and you can see behind me here i hope you can see um that that we have uh we have a model here of one of the daughters of charity it's a religious order from emmitsburg maryland that come here to help nurse the wounded soldiers and henry kid douglas specifically cites one of these these nuns who uh is is very um uh very beautiful and speaks uh takes time to speak to him he's actually from mississippi and has a brother in the confederate army so they they draw a connection over that um and kid douglas talks about how his room is set up that somebody has brought him a really nice chair to sit in and this female nun has helped uh put up some some drapes to make the room look really nice so i think that that angers a lot of northerners and a lot of unionists who come here through the hospital that henry kid douglas is receiving such such good treatment but um i i believe that this is kind of as the hospital is starting to empty out um and and space starts to open up that you start to see you know one or two or three people to a room rather than so many people here uh kind of crammed in wherever they can go uh henry kid douglas also meets the son of samuel simon schmucker who's the president here at the seminary and samuel schmucker jr comes and meets uh henry kid douglas and and gives him a copy of les miserables and uh and kid douglas is very very appreciative of that it has a lot of time to read so uh it's it's it gives a window sort of into what's what's going on here gets at that that idea that it's not sort of this this kind of massive uh emergency situations going on it's sort of like just the everyday everyday life of of of this this hospital um i'll stop there if there's anything to add but i have another story that kind of gets more at that too no uh that's a kind of two points to to add in um my my colleague john leustria i believe is uh dropping in some links so we do have a link to uh the book that you referenced the hospital scenes after the battle of gettysburg so if you want to read more about that i know i will be um after after the program is over and uh and also to note i failed to do this at the beginning of the show is that we do have some other videos that we have recorded together since the beginning of the painting that do explore more of the uh emergency situation um in the during and immediately after the battle so if you want to know more of this story of course go visit the seminary ridge museum and education center um but uh but we also have these videos available online i'll drop those links in here as well so back to you pete yeah um so we recently uncovered a great collection of letters written by a soldier named franklin fayette pratt and franklin pratt is a soldier in the 76th new york he hails from homer new york which is up in courtland county and he does not fight with his with his regiment uh out north of the the regiment is fighting north of the railroad cut uh not too far from where i'm standing on the morning of july first but franklin pratt had become ill with malarial fever on the on the march up so he's not fighting and he's actually dedicated as being a nurse and he serves first down in the courthouse hospital uh right there on baltimore street uh right immediately after the battle but as that hospital is closed he comes up here to the seminary hospital and that's that's another thing important thing to consider is that as time goes on getting further and further away from the battle these hospitals are becoming consolidated and you start to have uh just fewer hospitals until it basically is just the seminary hospital here and camp letterman out on new york road so that's how that's how franklin pratt ends up here and he writes almost every every day or at least every third day to his parents in home or new york and and he it's great because it's just again it's that everyday stuff he's talking about the weather it's really hot uh it's really stifling heat here he talks about the way in which the hospital here is set up that there are many uh men in the building but then there's also tents outside and if you look um at that uh that very famous photo that's taken by matthew brady of the uh of this this building right after the well not right after the battle about two weeks after the battle the one with the guy sitting on the fence if you zoom in in front of the seminary building you can see some of the tents coming down uh the ridge so we know that there was a there were a bunch of tents set up here on the campus and then there were also soldiers in in here um and he uh first of all he also writes about seeing the the two rebel generals the colonel and the major so kemper trimble kid douglas and powell he said they talk with our men and some of them will own up that they are in the wrong uh he he writes about the how the wounds are dressed the wounds are dressed twice a day morning and evening regular either by the doctors or others detailed for that word i have dressed wounds considerable and can do it as well as any of them but i don't make a practice of doing it for i have as much as i can do without every one of the soldier of every one of the wounded men is now as a general thing fully supplied so again that gets back at that question about supplies that by the time that that franklin pratt is writing that and he's writing that on august 10th um there the supplies uh are have been have been coming in and our and everything is is pretty well supplied uh coming in through through donations and through those those commissions um but he also writes that about the tents being down the ridge and how um they're really kind of stifling hot and it when he first comes up here the confederates and union soldiers are in the same tent and sometimes there are six or eight men to attend uh whereas they were really i think he says they could only only supposed to hold four um but as time goes on and more men are being evacuated from gettysburg here the they they separate the union and the confederate soldiers and they get those tents back to where where it should be about two men to attend um but he talks about he's on duty for uh for for six hours uh from six o'clock at night until 12 o'clock at night one night franklin pratt's writing a letter to his parents uh and he says it's about ten o'clock and i'm on duty i'm sitting here with the guys uh they're they're laughing they're joking uh and and they are generally in good spirits although he does admit that one of those soldiers uh is going to have to have a secondary amputation where uh where they're gonna have to amputate a second time because the the wound is not healing correctly so uh again just that that sort of a slice of life uh that that is occurring within these walls so pete uh one question for me and then i have another question from jan here um my question is uh you you bring up camp letterman and we've we've talked we have another video about camp letterman um and i'm curious as to why you know so many of the hospitals and the makeshift hospitals get shut down in gettysburg um why why is it that the the seminary um continues to be used uh in addition to to uh to camp letterman yeah you know and that's it that is an interesting question and i have not really been able to uncover a good answer to that um it it is a it is a stout building it's sort of what you would uh what you would expect um franklin pratt talks about the really good air up here which may have had something to do with it in fact if you stand up in in the cupola which you can visit today uh you can see how you can actually see the site of camp letterman and it's interesting to think about to to look at the topography of town the town of gettysburg is sort of in a in a bowl um bounded on the east and the west side by uh by ridgelines so if you think about the prevailing theory in the 19th century that that fresh air is is what helps ward off would not ward off disease but bad air causes disease and you want an ample supply of fresh air uh you want that to be where uh you're where you're up most high so i i think that that might have something to do with it that that you know first of all you have this building you have uh a good um grounds for setting up those tents but then you also have um that really nice air prevailing breeze coming from the west so uh that's the best answer i can come up with um but i don't know i have not yet been able to uncover anything written that talks about that that reasoning yeah that's a that's a great a great point pete i can definitely see that and having been up to the cupola which highly highly recommend it is an amazing experience to to see um but yeah that the dominating kind of medical theory of the day in the 19th mid 19th century is that kind of myasmatic medicine the idea you know diseases spread through the air and you know being up high and getting this fresh air is something that is crucial to um to 19th century medical thought about what is going to help soldiers uh and people recover from from illnesses or or from serious wounds and infections i i that that sounds like you know i hadn't thought of that i think that's a really good um a really good suggestion for why that might be um the other question that i have here is from jan thank you for submitting questions if anyone has any questions feel free to drop them into the comments section um she asks uh did the families of wounded soldiers begin to arrive um in the aftermath of the of the battle great question and and and you're anticipating where i'm going with this dan so thank you um yes there are families that do show up and actually one of the best documented uh visits is the family of lieutenant colonel george mcfarland uh who is commander of the 151st pennsylvania here on the first day of the battle uh mcfarland is a is an educator and he is actually going to be the patient that that remains in this building the longest he's the last one to leave on september 16th and his family comes and visits his wife addie his three-year-old son horace and his infant daughter emma come and uh he writes and i as i was preparing for this program i was rereading mcfarland's diary uh addie mcfarland comes and stays here for seven weeks helping to helping to care for her husband helping to to care for other men within this building so uh that she comes from juniata county and she basically stays and it's interesting because when she leaves he he gets really sort of he you can sense this change in his writings that he gets really lonely and that he gets a little bit more despondent and he he leaves about a week after she does and and heads home um but that week you can sense again in his writings is really difficult for him he had gotten used to having his his wife here uh there are other family members that come there's a uh one of the the accounts that i have seen is the mother of um a soldier named andrew greg andrew greg tucker uh who's a lieutenant in 142nd pennsylvania he uh actually unfortunately dies in this building on july 4th and is buried first outside in the garden right outside this building but his mother and their uh church leader and the president of bucknell university where tucker had recently graduated the three of them come down to remove his body uh and take it back to uh to uh louis berg so there they are there there are those great stories a little bit more about about george mcfarland so he probably provides the best window into what is going on in this building on a regular basis between july 1st and september 16th because he is in here for that entire time and and luckily for us he is also a very uh prolific diarist he keeps a diary almost every single day and also writing letters home he recognizes what the role that he and his men have played in the battle of gettysburg and he is trying as almost as quickly as possible to to record everything so it's it's become an invaluable tool for understanding the ins and outs in the day-to-day of what goes on in this building during those months he's in a lot of pain he is wounded on july 1st about 20 paces off the northwest corner of this building he's dragged into the building uh into the north end of the building as the confederates are coming in the south end of this building and he is a prisoner until the union army retakes the building on july 5th and he says that he uh he is lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood for three days without food water or medical attention because the confederates have taken the medical supplies for them his right leg is amputated below the knee on july third and his left ankle while it's saved uh is shattered and he he writes in in throughout the month of august and into september first of all he writes about how hot it is in this building that that uh during the day it's really hot and at night he's really cold um and he writes about the pain i think it's august 24th he writes that his pain is as bad as ever uh it's taking a really long time to heal and in fact it's never going to fully heal this is the pain that he is going to suffer for the rest of his life he has a bout of diarrhea sometime in uh in late august which adds to his adds to his discomfort adds to his troubles um and for about a week he is the only patient in this building that week between about uh this a little over a week between september 7th and september 16th he's the only person in this building and uh he writes about samuel schmucker the the president of the seminary the elder um coming and talking to him and sitting with him and he actually for a while he says well if i stayed it wouldn't be such a bad thing because then i could learn theology uh but he does talk about uh a a a jollification as he calls it that takes place in this building one night on the night of uh september well it happens on the night of september 2nd i am the only one on my floor except some noisy drunken attendants and doctors last night they took a general jolification a regular drink in which rumor says all or nearly all were engaged even many of the patients downstairs waiting for transportation of course they annoyed me and mentioning mentioning it to dr riley he remarked they felt jolly wanted fun a story worthy of saint patrick's day it certainly certainly is um i have a good question here from one of our our great supporters at the museum and this is a this is a good question i had thought of this particular aspect of the hospital here uh here at seminary ridge but um she asks what's the closest source of fresh water for the seminary excellent question yeah yeah so we we do know that there were pumps uh there were wells that were dubbed um behind the building here uh on the on the the west side of the building there were probably three pumps one for each of the buildings up here there may have been multiple ones for uh for the seminary building itself but we we know where the well the other two buildings here on the campus during the battle are the schmucker house home of samuel schmucker and the krauthouse home of charles krauth schmucker house is south of us craft houses north of us but those were the three buildings on the ridge a few years ago up until a few years ago we knew we could see exactly where the schmucker well was because it was under the road and the road would would would kind of crater a little bit during the summer and you could see the depression and about three years ago they fixed that um sort of unfortunate um because you used to be able to point out that was where the well was we also know that there was most certainly a well behind this building um uh hugh ziegler who is 10 years old lives in the building with his with his family um recalls seeing his mother mary uh on the first day of the battle at the well pumping water for the wounded soldiers and in fact we have the pump handle on display uh right now so being that there were two there was a well for the schmucker house so well for the main building i'm i'm making an educated guess that there was also one for uh for the krauthouse uh a little bit up the ridge so that's those are the supplies of fresh water that are being are being used within this building excellent so uh we do have some other great questions here yeah i want to uh just to see pete um if you have any other uh aspects that you wanted to touch on before we get into questions no that's that's i'm happy to to jump right into questions i've told my stories excellent so um before before we get uh questions i do have a an amusing comment that i want to uh to add in we have christine watching from amsterdam in the netherlands uh thanks for tuning in with us uh today christine and uh she mentions that uh your background would make uh quite the background on zoom you know what i have i have really good images of all of the backgrounds here in the in the museum so there are four of these dioramas set up that look that show the building at different points and there's there's one that is um the wounded soldiers july 1st through 4th and i have used that as a zoom background from time to time just to grab the people's attention but thank you christine i'm glad we're thinking on the same wavelength here we also have a viewer watching from oslo in uh in norway as well so broadcasting across the world excellent fantastic um from david smith uh were there any female doctors or were they all males well the the only female doctor that that i know of that is documented as being here at gettysburg is dr mary walker um and uh we we we know that um she comes here is a couple of days after the battle um and that she's serving i've some of the uh i think it's the second for some reason the second core field hospital is is sticking out in my head um but as far as we know she's not up here at the seminary but 99.8 or 9 of the of the surgeons that are working here are males all right we did have um some some questions uh relating to prisoner of war camps and there's some comments back and forth about point lookout um i it's not directly in the comment section it's kind of related and and can you maybe talk about some of the the patients the confederate patients what happens when they are moved out of the seminary yeah um i believe that uh that kemper and douglas end up um at johnson's island um uh prisoner of war camp um and i'm not exactly sure i forget where trimble ends up um and so the confederates are shipped off now trimble and and uh and kemper and henry kid douglas are all um are all paroled eventually or or exchanged um and point i'm not sure how many end up a point look at i can't i keep seeing johnson's island show up in in a lot of these uh in a lot of these these reports um that's that's another uh rabbit hole that i have to go down someday is to really look at where the different confederate soldiers um end up uh i i know where the where the officers end up but i'm not sure where the the the rank and file are ending up okay another question here from jan thank you jan so much for all the great questions today uh she brings up chimborazo hospital in richmond and says that it was organized by state uh did the same thing happen at the seminary or at camp letterman um i have not seen that here so so maybe maybe from the from some of the primary sources you were uh speaking of earlier are there any conversations or anything written down about you know any ways that they did organize patients or were they kind of just scattered around the hospital i think by the time that it it turns into becomes a general and so administratively it's the the seminary hospital turns from a from a field hospital into a general hospital probably sometime in mid-july and that that is when you start to see soldiers from all different corners of the of the army of the potomac and even some of those soldiers from the army of northern virginia uh end up here uh i believe that earlier if you look at what what is prescribed for what's supposed to be happening between july 1st and about the middle of july it's it's really a hospital for um the men of the first corps you see men from the first division and the third division coming here and ending up in the hospital so at that point it really is structured um in terms of uh um the the the units of the army that these men are in but i have not seen a structure written up for what's going on when it is a general hospital besides the fact that you you're separating union and confederate soldiers those franklin pratt letters where he talks about the tents he doesn't i i didn't see him make a distinction about what what is going on in terms of uh in terms of states or even units all right um question from dan and we've mentioned this a little bit um we can get into it a little bit more specifically uh where did uh captured confederates get treated were they were they treated in these same hospitals uh yeah i mean when the confederate army leaves they do leave doctors here and there and there are confederate hospitals that are still are are out towards the west of town the south and and southwest and northwest of town as the hospitals start to get consolidated you start to see them coming into these general hospitals like letterman like uh like the hospital here at at the seminary and in some cases the confederate doctors are still the ones that are are helping to treat them um there's a there's a big debate um among the the nursing staff the female nursing staff over whether or not they want to aid and treat confederate soldiers some women say well at this point they're all they're all uh just wounded soldiers some say no that you know they they're i think it's the second core field hospital there are there are groups of confederate soldiers in there they're segregated and and the female nurses don't want to go and help the confederate soldiers there so um but as uh you know the confederates leave uh somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 000 or so uh wounded soldiers here and then they take they take a lot of them with them a 17-mile long wagon train that goes from here down to williamsport maryland uh to take these soldiers back to the to to virginia uh relating to the kind of medical personnel working we have a question here two questions here from denise um the first one uh asks how did medical personnel civilian nurses cope with the building being in the midst of the battle while tending to wounded and performing operations i will recommend uh the video that we did with cody um cody ace from the seminary ridge museum about uh the the building being used on on july 3rd specifically during the battle that has been posted in the comments above denise so if you want to go check that video out after this it goes into detail on that um but there's a second question here that i'll throw your way pete which is are there any reports of anyone patients or doctors slash nurses being killed or wounded while in the seminary um so there i haven't seen anything about about nurses or doctors being killed or wounded the building is being hit with artillery fire uh from there's a there's a battery of confederate artillery at the north at the south east corner of the building and union counter battery fire from cemetery hill is hitting the building and we know that there are some some close calls george mcfarlane talks about getting out of uh getting out of uh a bed right and just in a or or lying back down um in the nick of time and watching a cannonball go over his head uh we also have another story of another soldier who who leaves his bedroom and goes into the hallway because the fire is so intense and he comes back and there's a cannonball in his bed where he adjusted ben uh but from from what i have seen nobody actually gets hurt or gets hit by any of that the other thing that occurs uh is that as a result of that that cannon fire um a group of men and i've seen numbers sarah broadhead who's another nurse here says it's hundreds of wounded men i'm not sure if it was exactly that many go into the cellar of this building below what's now the first floor um and that's that's where they're safe from the cannon fire well the building the basement floods uh during the during the rain and rain after the battle and these men are in just a few inches of water but they can't pull themselves out of the basement and they're gonna they're gonna drown now sarah broadhead says that they were able to save all of them but there are some other accounts maybe not as as no were as reputable that say that some of the men did die um of drowning so um that sort of answers that question yeah and another battle related question here from from timothy asking if uh any particular unit placed its surgeons at the semi at the seminary on july 1st it's uh probably men from the first division of the first corps of the army of the potomac we know that the building is uh is designated a field hospital by dr george knew of the seventh indiana who's acting as medical director of of the division and it it seems as though the building was meant to be the first core first division first quarter field hospital now by the end of the day there are soldiers from the third division that are rallies a double day or rallies division that are coming in here to the building uh and that there are surgeons like amos blakesley from 151st pennsylvania who stay behind and are treating soldiers in this building so it between the first and and uh and the fifth at least that it's it's a lot of first core first division or first core uh uh uh surgeons operating in here and uh we're going to take two more questions and then we're going to we're going to call it a day if you do have any other questions here feel free to drop those in myself um our our staff at the museum in the civil war medicine museum and i'm sure uh pete would be happy to answer questions as well in the comments and actually drop some some answers in there for you uh first one comes from richard um and richard thank you for sending in some stars during this uh during this program support the museum that way um he asks that did the nurses have their own quarters in hospital or nearby have you come across where the nurses may have been living during this time well some of them are coming up from their homes every day uh i know sarah broadhead talks about going home and coming back up and she lives about a quarter mile away the patriot daughters of lancaster are very concerned about making sure that they bring everything that they need and that they also find a place to stay so they're not they're not a burden on the already overtaxed resources of the town they are able to secure some lodging right across the street from christ lutheran church uh on on chambersburg street and that's where that's where they set up their headquarters but you look out at what's going on at camp letterman there are specific tents that are set up for the for the attendance and the nurses to say uh that's probably a similar thing that's going on here um the the ziegler family who i'm referencing throughout the talk uh the matron and the steward of the seminary they they return back here after fleeing during the first days fighting and they say that the doctors clear two rooms for them so now you've got six people seven people in fact living solely in two rooms the two available rooms that are here in the hospital all right and our final question comes from rex rex asks about the soldiers who died at the seminary were they all interred at the national cemetery um and do you have any count uh or any idea of account of how many of the patients there actually uh died while on the seminary grounds uh the number that i have is 68. 68 soldiers died here in the building 66 union and two confederate soldiers um it's it's tough to know if there were if there were more than that because the the record books that that that we have um it it doesn't cover necessarily july first second and third it's really only after the union army retakes the building um so we're not really uh you know what what goes on in the days of the battle is a little bit murkier than what's going on once things sort of get under control here uh some of the soldiers are buried um we have two accounts andrew greg tucker who i referenced earlier and uh robert cummins who's the command the colonel of the 142nd pennsylvania both of them are buried right out front in the garden of the seminary um and both of their bodies are are removed and taken home um there there are burial pits back behind the building if you look at the elliott burial map there are burial pits behind uh behind the seminary here um those have all been have all been disinterred uh likely brought to the national cemetery um so so long story short there are no there are no grave sites around here um some of the some of the wounded some of the the dead are taken home um and and but there are some yeah that are today entered in in the national cemetery all right thank you all so much for those great questions i i saw we had some some come in um afterwards we'll get to those questions um in after we are off air um we'll answer those questions in the comments section for you all um so for folks who are interested in uh you know have heard great things about your museum there pete uh and want to come visit you um what are what are the details about coming and visiting the seminary ridge museum sure thanks so uh we are open right now thursday friday saturday sunday and monday from nine to five so closed tuesday and tuesday and wednesday we have cupola tours that run throughout the day when you come and visit we ask that you wear masks and stay six feet apart uh but uh otherwise the building is open we're taking great uh pains to make sure everything is clean and sanitized as you come through here so it's uh you know you can you can come in and um and tour the whole building uh the whole building is open uh another thing that i will point out if you're far away one thing that we just launched this week is a virtual tour of the room in which i am standing um and maybe we can post that in the in the comments as well we have a 360 degree image of this room and uh we have a program that allows you to zoom in on different things and hear some some of the voices of people who are associated with the seminary hospital including franklin pratt uh and and zoom in on some of the exhibits so um that's a that's a great new thing that we're embarking on and no better place to start uh during women's history month than than the nurses the nurses experience so if you are far afield or don't feel uh comfortable coming here you can still see this this area from your own home excellent an awesome program um you'll find a link to the seminary ridge's website in the comments section specifically link to their membership page um and uh with all that being said thank you so much pete for for coming on today and thank you for joining us and sharing those incredible stories thank you very much thanks everybody for watching all right and if you've enjoyed today's program uh and you haven't yet liked this video go up and click that click that like button up there go click it um and that helps more people to see the video share the video uh this video will also be on youtube um as well so if you're watching on youtube uh feel uh please subscribe to the museum's uh museums channel national museum of civil war medicine over on youtube you can find this video as well as other videos that we've recorded with pete and other members of the staff at the seminary ridge museum in gettysburg pennsylvania you can also support both of our institutions by becoming a member of our of our museums you can directly support and sustain our institutions as well as get cool perks as a as well as uh as a result of supporting us so thank you all so much for tuning in today thank you pete for joining us and we'll see you next time take care

Channel: National Museum of Civil War Medicine

Views: 1,358

Rating: 4.9183674 out of 5

Keywords: Gettysburg, Battle of Gettysburg, Gettysburg Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, 1863, Pennsylvania History, Gettysburg History, American History, United States History, Military History, Medical History, US History, Seminary Ridge Museum, National Museum of Civil War Medicine, Pete Miele, Jake Wynn, History, Nursing, Nurse, Nurses, Nursing History, Women's History, Women, Women's History Month, Union Army, US Army, Confederate, Confederate Army, Army of the Potomac

Id: QmQpZEWHMUg

Length: 53min 45sec (3225 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 20 2021