Urban Combat in Gettysburg | History Traveler Episode 129

all right so i am in the town of gettysburg whenever people think of gettysburg they typically think of uh the the actions that occurred south of town uh like with pickett's charge and stuff with the round tops and uh the the actions may be on on the first day to the north of town but very little attention is given to like some of the urban combat that occurred here in gettysburg and and what the people went through and some of the damage that this town sustained so today i'm going to be going around gettysburg a little bit looking at a few spots and as i've said before i'm always trying to find people who are smarter than me to help me out and help me learn which is why i have tim smith with me tim is with the adams county historical society you've probably seen him on the youtube videos with the american battlefield trust he knows a lot more than me so we're going to kind of wander around town and see what we can find [Music] so a lot of people don't realize it but there was heavy fighting in the streets of town during the first day of the battle some 20 000 northern soldiers were treated through the town and some 30 000 southerners were chasing them somewhere around 2 000 citizens were hiding in their cellars scared to death and as the southern army overran the southern edge of the town northern soldiers took position on the hill south of it and fired into the town and for two and a half days there was a violent sharpshooter action at the edge of the town about 15 buildings in town today still show visible battle damage from the fighting damage that has not been repaired in the doors and windows and bricks of the buildings in the edge of the town so this house right here has a really interesting story i'm on the the southern end of town and as tim was talking about whenever union troops were pouring through the streets after that first day of battle you have like 20 000 union troops coming through the streets with about 30 000 confederates right after them there was a union general who who got cut off and i think he may have been wounded i'm not sure about that uh but he got cut off and ran into this alley and hid basically in a wood shed or a wood pile behind the building and stayed there for the entire length of the battle because he was cut off and was surrounded by the confederates the entire time and they have a little plaque here telling about his story his name was brigadier general alexander schimelfinig and since we are looking at battle damage here in gettysburg this house is just peppered so here you can see bullet strike here's another bullet strike right here if you come around the corner here's the one that that tim just pointed out so i can actually stick my finger through that one another piece of damage uh here's here's another bullet hole okay and there were people who were living here at the time and for three days just had their houses peppered with bullets [Music] so during the battle the southern army had sharpshooters at the edge of the town just south of us but they sort of put a line of battle across uh this area and we have a couple descriptions there was actually a barricade built across the street of items that the confederate gathered and they placed it right at breckenridge street and so it'll be a line of sharpshooters behind the barricade firing up at cemetery hill which from here must be uh like four or five hundred yards that they're firing so i guess you could argue about the effectiveness of the firing from this point but uh there is even one account that during the battle a piece of artillery was rolled up and a couple shells were fired from this location we we debate about whether that's actually true or not but this is one of the locations in town where we have a cannonball so let's walk up here just a little there are nine buildings in town that have cannonballs sticking out of them from the battle or artillery shells depending on which one it is this is a 12 pounder explosive shell obviously it never exploded you might look at the front of the building and notice this is not a civil war front the cannibal actually hit the building went through the building and then they added the cannonball to the front of the building later they even rebuilt the front facade of the building took the kind of water the original building and then put it back in so it's been twice it's been moved and it's just to represent where cannonball hit the building during the fight wow so we're on the southern end of town now and the building that you're looking at here is known as the farnsworth house inn but during the battle is known as the sweeney house we'll be talking more about that later but if you go across the street and kind of caddy corner from the farnsworth you'll be at the site where the mccreary house used to be and it took some damage during the time of the battle now there was a brickyard behind the mccreary house at the time of the battle and you can find some maps that were made at the time that show that uh behind the brickyard so kind of in in this area roughly was a confederate burial plot now a lot of those graves were exhumed and the bodies moved about 10 years after the battle but it's reasonable to assume that there might be some that are still in the ground there so here's something else that's kind of interesting by the mccreary house site uh this big old sycamore tree is a witness tree this is a tree that that would have been here during the time of the battle and there's a plaque that says that at this site or this witness tree uh basically saw the battle and abraham lincoln walked by on his way to deliver the gettysburg address and that big sycamore right there is also a witness tree [Music] [Applause] [Music] we're still here at the base of cemetery hill and this is the sweeney house which was really damaged during the battle uh we'll get to that in a later episode but this is the weinbrunner house and it was also damaged during the battle of gettysburg and is now an ice cream shop yeah and here are some of the bullet strikes that would have been made from union soldiers firing from cemetery hill here towards the weinbringer house so something that's kind of interesting to note about the battle of gettysburg is that after the battle uh there aren't any churches that are conducting sunday services in this town almost every single church had been converted into a field hospital and like the the presbyterian church that i'm standing right to next to at this moment now this church has changed over the years but but the original presbyterian church would have sat right here and if you would have been here on the street you would have heard like the the groans and cries and uh agonized moans of of the the wounded inside these doors and there's something else about the churches that are kind of interesting so you'll notice here on the front of the presbyterian church they have a plaque that says army of the potomac medical department field hospitals cavalry corps each corps had their own field hospital and you had to go to the field hospital that matched up with the corps that you were in so if you were like say a first core guy and you've got a wounded arm well you might show up to these doors and the surgeon will say oh no you need to go three blocks down and two blocks to the left to get to your field hospital so that's that kind of stinks so here's a another structure that was here during the uh battle of gettysburg there have been some changes to it uh but on the third day of the battle there was a 20-pound parrot shell from the the union side that sailed into town and hit right here and uh the story is that the shell burst through the wall went into the attic bounced down the stairs and then uh landed on the floor there close to the family but did not explode yeah just another one of the pieces of uh artillery damage here in gettysburg so there are nine buildings in the town of gettysburg with artillery shells or cannonballs sticking out of them and this is another of the buildings it was owned by gettysburg lawyer david wills and it was a complex at the time of the battle that had a series of businesses in it on the second floor was a photographic studio of charles and isaac tyson and if you look at the third window from the center of the town you can see a huskish shell in the building it's a loud one and if you look at it the shell is on a slight angle obviously the shell came from the area near the eternal lake peace memorial northwest of the town uh and was fired into the center of the town by a southern artillery piece and to this day remains embedded in the wall i would be curious to know if at some point that artillery shell was pulled out the fuse was taken out of it and the powder was emptied out of it i would really hope that that would be the case that then they cemented it back in but it's possible that that shell has been there ever since the battle and uh might still be a live shell oh my gosh see it has a little piece of cement holding it in the building that we're looking at right now was uh originally the lutheran seminary here in gettysburg uh but the the lutheran seminary moved and this became a girls school and if you look up on the second floor by the window well you can see a confederate shell lodged in the side so we're here in the middle of gettysburg and these houses might look modern but all of them were actually here during the fighting uh during the battle of gettysburg they just have kind of a modern facade on them now and this house in particular was owned by a man named solomon powers and uh tim was telling me that he had six girls and uh as the the fighting was kind of raging there were wounded soldiers everywhere and they went out and gathered up what was it about 20 you said about about 20 soldiers and brought them back to the house and cared for them and people all along this street were doing the same thing bringing soldiers into their house and doing the best they could the structure that we are looking at right now would have been the residence of professor michael jacobs during the battle of gettysburg and on the first day as confederate troops were pouring through the streets here chasing after the union he and his family had retreated to the cellar and they were observing the union troops go by through those little windows there on the ground level they said they could see thousands of feet just pouring through the streets and uh there was one union soldier that got shot and fell dead right in front of him on on the third day of the battle uh whenever they heard the candidate that kicked off pickett's charge he and his son went to the roof and apparently watched the whole battle from there and then on july the 4th so the day after the battle the confederates had moved down this road right here and posted sharpshooters down towards the end to act as rearguard security and they were picking off union troops who were coming back in to recapture the town right here at this crossing well the owner's daughter was right here at the door and started warning union troops not to cross and i guess the confederates took a shot at her and if you were to peel back some of the paint you might see a bullet strike there along the door frame [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right so that was just a little bit of some of the the uh the battle damage and a few of the the stories from inside the town of gettysburg so if you ever come to the the battle of gettysburg site it's not just the fields to the north and the south that are the battlefield uh you're when you're in town you're you're standing on the battlefield as well uh so anyway if you're looking to come uh some great resources adams county historical society the american battlefield trust uh they they all have some some great resources that will help get you prepped for uh your trip here but anyway learned learned a lot today tim is a smart guy way smarter than i am but uh anyway we're going to keep exploring and see what we can see here in gettysburg [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 54,867

Rating: 4.9773412 out of 5

Keywords: history, civil war, travel, gettysburg, battle of gettysburg, army of the potomac, army of northern virginia, robert e lee, seminary ridge, battle of gettysburg documentary, gettysburg movie, history traveler, history underground, american battlefield trust, gettysburg documentary, gettysburg battle damage

Id: jbsNRLz0anc

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Wed May 12 2021