Jennie Wade: Gettysburg's Lone Civilian Casualty | History Traveler Episode 137

[Music] i think that whenever we are studying the history of war and combat different battles that that have happened throughout history becomes very easy for us to get caught up in you know troop movements and and tactics and casualties on both sides very often we forget that there's a another element of human suffering in war and combat and that is amongst the civilian population well right now i am here at evergreen cemetery in gettysburg pennsylvania and right here is the grave of jenny wade who is the only civilian casualty from the battle of gettysburg [Music] well as i mentioned this is the grave of jenny wade who is the only civilian to have died during the battle of gettysburg says here that she was 20 years and two months old killed july 3rd 1863 while making bread for union soldiers and then if you go over here on the other side it says whatsoever god willeth must be the would nation mourn you can see where a lot of people have visited this grave and left coins to show that to show that they were here but today we are going to go to the home of jenny wade and see where she spent her final [Music] moments [Music] all right well here is the jenny wade house now uh things in gettysburg of course are a lot different than what they were in the 1860s uh and as a matter of fact this is not technically jenny wade's house this is the house of her sister on the first day of the battle jenny wade was in her home which was more in the town of gettysburg so right now i'm facing to the north where most of the fighting in the first day would have occurred so confederate troops would have been coming in this direction well jenny wade fled to her sister's house where she thought she would be you know away from the fighting so here on the left uh this is the north side here on the right is the south side and what they would find over the next two days is that they were going to be right in the firing line of the confederates and [Music] union [Music] what we are looking at now is the north facing side of the jenny wade house and i was mistaken i thought that there was just one bullet that went through a door and killed jenny wade uh turns out that they counted over a hundred and fifty bullet strikes on this house and you can see a lot of the the bullet damage here today so those are a few strikes if you go over here here's another place where the the brick has been chipped here's another spot where it got right in between the bricks and then you can see some more strikes up there uh here's a big one right here wow so uh the house that was supposed to provide some safety and uh some refuge from the battle not so much all right we're gonna go inside and uh take a look and see what the inside of the jenny wade house looks like [Music] all right so uh i just got inside the home here and i do need to make one clarification before i go on technically this is not a house house it's it's a duplex so i just entered in through the south side of the house the the south side of the house would have been occupied by a family called the mcleans and then the north side of the house would have been occupied by jenny wade's family georgia mcclellan her sister so anyway here is the front parlor of the mclean side of the house now here on the mclean side of the house they have everything furnished to look uh you know the way that it might have looked in 1863 which i i really appreciate but really in this room what i have found most interesting are these three pictures now of course they're in the center we see jenny wade but the the two gentlemen on either side of her uh were friends so they they grew up in gettysburg the guy on the left his name was jack skelly and on the right uh was another friend by the name of wesley culp now what makes this story really interesting is that whenever the civil war broke out uh jack skelly ended up joining with the union side he was with a pennsylvania regiment wesley culp who had got a job down in virginia ended up staying in virginia and joining up with the confederates i think he ended up with the stonewall brigade if i'm not mistaken uh but really there's there's kind of a tragic story with these three so so jack skelly ended up getting wounded at the battle of winchester somehow or another wesley kolp found out about it and went and visited him in a confederate hospital there was there's maybe a romantic interest between jenny and and jack so jack gave wesley a letter to deliver to jenny if he ever made it back up to gettysburg well of course wesley culp does make it up to gettysburg but unfortunately before he delivers the letter he is shot and killed at culp's hill jenny wade is killed in her home on july 3rd and jack ended up dying of his wounds like 9 or 10 days after the battle tragic this is the parlor area on the mclean side of the house now mclean was a stone mason so they were a little bit more well to do and something that's interesting in this room is this mantle clock was here during the battle of gettysburg so this is one of the original pieces here in the jenny wade house all right we're gonna go upstairs now okay now as you are going upstairs the wood on these stairs right here is all original so all of these boards are original to the home you can hear me squeaking as i come upstairs and this first bedroom was the children's bedroom one quick thing that i want to point out with this bed so if you look underneath this is not the original bed to the house but a replica but you see it's got kind of these rope supports down below and there would have been no mattress per se but you would have filled it with straw or hay or feathers or something like that now this frame is what is called a rolling pin frame so you can take this part off right here and before bed you would smooth out the bed with that rolling pin and that was called hitting the hay so that's where we get the phrase hit the hay whenever uh whenever somebody's going to bed all right uh i'm passing out of the children's bedroom and into the bedroom of mr mrs mclean uh here on again on the the north side of the house crazy story so while the battle was going on there was a 10 pound confederate parrot shell that hit on this side of the home it went all along the floor blasted through this brick and lodged over in this corner of the home now that's not the original uh we're going to take a look at the original later uh but yeah that's a 10-pound parrot uh or there was a 10-pound parrot uh artillery shell that blew right through this house i'm now passing into the north side of the house which would have been where the mcclellan's lived so right now i'm on the mclean side and then passing over into the north side where uh georgia mcclellan and her husband would have had their bedroom now the bed would not have been up here during the time of the battle it would have been downstairs and i'll explain why in a minute but after jenny wade died uh they couldn't move her outside because it was too dangerous so they ended up bringing her up here and knocked a hole in this wall so that they could safely move her body to the south side of the house [Music] i can tell you one thing that's not going to happen in the jenny wade house nobody is sneaking up on anybody in here so we're now moving into the front parlor on the north side of the duplex so so this would have been the mcclellan side of the house and if you'll notice they have a bed set up here in the front parlor you might be asking yourself why would there be a bed in the front parlor that's because just a few days before the battle jenny wade's sister george mcclellan had given birth so while the battle of gettysburg was raging outside georgia mcclellan was in this bed clutching her newborn baby while bullets were striking the side of the house and going through the doors and windows as a matter of fact there was one bullet that came through a window uh this was on july 2nd struck the mantle ricocheted and then hit the bed post right above her head now this is not the original bed frame uh that georgia mcclellan was in but my gosh they had to have just been terrified okay now again the bed frame is not original but this this mantle is bullet hole over here bullet hole that is so crazy to me all right uh i am leaving the front parlor now and and entering into this back room and on the morning of july 3rd at 8 30 a 20 year old jenny wade was right here and she was preparing bread for union soldiers and just to offer herself a little extra measure of protection she she opened this door was preparing bread right here in this very spot whenever a bullet passed through this hole entered through this hole and then struck jenny in the back and killed her this really is quite remarkable so again this is the original doe tray that jenny wade was leaning over whenever a confederate bullet struck her in the back and i'll give you a little closer look at the bullet strikes so jenny was about she was not very tall she was about five foot tall maybe a shade over is what i'm told so even though that doesn't look like it's very high off the floor if if she's bending over working working this dough to make bread um yeah would have hit her right in the back how unfortunate and that's where the bullet passed that killed the only civilian casualty in the battle of gettysburg [Music] now they have a few items here that are tied to jenny wade for example they have a few envelopes this one is addressed to jack skelly and this one is addressed to jenny wade from jack here is a picture of jenny i mentioned that 10 pound confederate parrot shell earlier that passed through the house well there it is that's not a replica that is the real deal that came out of the house and uh funny story they they pulled it out of the house about 15 years later it had lodged uh on the on the south side uh and it was still live so that could have really been bad and then this is the piece that really gets me what you're looking at right here is the original floorboard that was underneath jenny wade and is stained with her blood from the day that she was shot on july 3rd 1863. [Music] wow i've now moved down to the basement of the jenny wade house after jenny's death as i've already mentioned they had to move her through the walls to the southern part of the house because it was too dangerous to go outside and they brought her down here to the cellar and as you can see they've kind of got a depiction of jenny being laid out to rest they also have a painting in here showing the scene with a couple of union soldiers and then her grieving family the only person not shown in the painting is jenny's mother and the reason for that is is the artist is depicting jenny's mother observing and and mourning uh the death of her daughter so anyway that was the jenny wade house i'm i'm so glad that that we came here today if you ever visit gettysburg you have to come to places like this uh it's easy to go to you know pickets charge in the round tops and then move on but if you do that you're not getting the the full story of the battle of gettysburg uh in order to do that you you have to kind of get off the beaten path a little bit and have to come to places like the jenny wade house a very very interesting experience learned a lot today [Music] you

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 100,947

Rating: 4.9712873 out of 5

Keywords: history, civil war, travel, gettysburg, battle of gettysburg, army of the potomac, army of northern virginia, battle of gettysburg documentary, gettysburg movie, history traveler, history underground, gettysburg documentary, culp's hill, jennie wade, jennie wade house, jennie wade house gettysburg, jennie wade ghost tour, jennie wade story, jennie wade house tour, jennie wade bullet hole, jennie wade death

Id: t6HKmDFEi3w

Length: 19min 15sec (1155 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021