Recently in Wrightsville Category

Photos courtesy of Bobby Housch and the popular Gettysburg Daily blog. Taken in September 2009 with Scott Mingus while videotaping a tour of Wrightsville's Civil War heritage.

This impressive old Civil War memorial has stood for more than a century at the intersection of Hellam Street (once the famed Lincoln Highway) and Fourth Street in downtown Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. It commemorates the town as the point farthest east reached by the Confederate army during the 1863 Gettysburg Campaign. Union militia burned the mile-and-a-quarter long wooden covered bridge over the Susquehanna River to prevent the Rebels from marching into Lancaster County.

Here is an old newspaper account of the dedication of this memorial, an event that marked the apex of the summer season of 1900 for the residents of the river town.

Baltimore Sun, July 10, 1900. newsinhistory.com

Note that the reporter got his facts a tad incorrect. Brigadier General John B. Gordon, of course, did accompany his brigade to Wrightsville and in fact watered his horse in the Susquehanna River. The Union militia was the local command of Colonel Jacob G. Frick, a future Medal of Honor recipient who reported to Major General Darius N. Couch (not Crouch) who was in his Harrisburg office during the invasion.

York County Heritage Trust Sanctioned Civil War guide Scott L. Mingus Sr. will present a PowerPoint presentation on the Confederate occupation of Wrightsville during the Gettysburg Campaign, with special focus on the Union defense of the town and the subsequent burning of the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge. It was the longest covered bridge in the world, stretching nearly a mile and a quarter across the Susquehanna River.

The dinner and talk is sponsored by Historic Wrightsville Inc. and will be at 6:30 PM on Friday November 20, 2009 in the fellowship hall of the Locust Street United Methodist Church (314 Locust Street, Wrightsville, PA). It's a turkey dinner with all the trimmings for $11. For reservations call Carol Byers at 717-252-3319.

The talk is based upon Mr. Mingus's recent book, Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Gordon Expedition, June 1863 (Columbus, Ohio: Ironclad Publishing, 2009).

Headstone erected in 1988 to mark the approximate spot of an earlier grave of a Confederate soldier who perished in the June 1863 Gettysburg Campaign. 2006 photo by Dr. Thomas M. Mingus, Civil War historian and author from Manchester Township, York County, PA.

This modern headstone is nestled between scenic River Road and the Susquehanna River about a mile north of the Accomac Inn in northeastern Hellam Township in York County, Pennsylvania. Of all the gravestones associated with the Army of Northern Virginia in the Gettysburg Campaign, this one is farthest east (excepting those soldiers who died in captivity or in hospitals). It is one of the three known graves of Rebel soldiers from the campaign who are buried in York County - the other marked gravesite is in York's Prospect Hill Cemetery where five Rebs are interred after dying at the temporary hospital in the local Odd Fellows Hall. An unmarked grave near Big Mount marks the final resting place of Charles Brown of the Louisiana Tigers (I recount that story in my recent book on the Tigers). And, not to forget, at one time there were several Confederate graves from the Battle of Hanover in southwestern York County, but these men were disinterred in the late 1800s and re-interred elsewhere..

So, who was this unknown Rebel who is remembered with a small headstone alongside the mighty Susquehanna?

The popular Civil War blog "Gettysburg Daily" has now posted the second installment of my video tour series of the skirmish at Wrightsville and the Confederate approach to the Susquehanna River. Have a look!

Scott Mingus' tour of Wrightsville, Part 2

I have read several excellent books on the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, including the late Greg Coco's fine works, especially his classic A Strange and Blighted Land. More than 150,000 combatants descended upon the town of less than 3,000 people and left the buildings, countryside, and streets littered with dead, dying, and wounded men, and the debris of war. Among the more deadly of the war materiel left behind were unexploded artillery shells, loaded pistols and rifles, and other weapons. Greg Coco related several stories in his fine book about civilians who perished at Gettysburg in the weeks and months following the battle, including the sheriff of York, Pennsylvania. Disease was the number one cause of death, but another significant problem was children (and at times adults) who were playing with or handling explosives that detonated.

York County had its own tragic story.

During the Skirmish of Wrightsville, Captain William Tanner of the Confederate army fired forty rounds from his battery, the Courtney (Virginia) Battery. At least one of those rounds failed to explode as designed.

It had tragic consequences.

Here is a newspaper article from the Columbia Spy of March 3, 1866, that related the ultimate result of Captain Tanner's long-delayed shell.

York County Heritage Trust sanctioned Civil War tour guide Scott L. Mingus, Sr. stands in front of the historic Strickler farmhouse off the Lincoln Highway near Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. Confederates under Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon deployed near this farm for their attack on the Union earthworks protecting the crossing over the Susquehanna River about a mile from this spot.

Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guide Bobby Housch is a school teacher in Hanover PA when he's not guiding tourists around the sprawling battlefield. A couple of weeks ago, he and I spent a pleasant Sunday afternoon filming a series of a dozen or so short video clips covering the June 28, 1863, Civil War skirmish at Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. The fight was the second largest military encounter in York County during the war, behind the Battle of Hanover.

Part 1 of the multi-part Wrightsville tour series is now on-line for your viewing pleasure at Bobby's very popular blog, Gettysburg Daily. In the weeks to come, he will post the rest of the videos, which include stops at Bair's Mill, the Union skirmish line, the line of the Confederate advance through the picturesque George D. Ebert farm, the riverfront and canal, the "heroine of the Susquehanna" feeds breakfast to the Rebels, and the African-American cemetery in neighboring Columbia.

Viewing these videos and reading my book Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Gordon Expedition, June 1863 should give you a good grasp of the strategic importance of the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge, deemed so important by the Confederate high command that Robert E. Lee sent one of his finest divisions to go take it by force.

August 28, 1862, started out as a quiet day for the citizens of Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. People went to work at the bustling factories along the riverbank or shopped in the stores that lined Hellam Street. People idly gossiped or discussed the news of the day, because the newspapers brimmed with the latest war news from down in distant Virginia, where names such as Jubal Early were becoming prominent. However, in a startling portent of General Early's unforeseeable official visit to Wrightsville less than a year later, dark plumes of smoke filled the might sky and flames reflected off the Susquehanna River. By nightfall, much of the riverfront section along Front Street was engulfed in one of the most significant fires in the town's history.

However, this major event largely remains forgotten today, especially in the wake of the subsequent fire less than a year later on June 28, 1863, when much of the same vicinity was again consumed by a significant conflagration, this one ignited by flaming embers from the burning Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge. In the 1862 fire, the fire fighters were Wrightsville and Columbia volunteers; in 1863, they were the Georgia Volunteers (Confederate infantry, that is).

Philadelphia Public Ledger, September 2, 1862. Image courtesy of NewsInHistory.com.

Many of the same businessmen mentioned in this article would be filing damage claims after the war for the destruction of their property caused by the 1863 bridge inferno. A few never recovered from the double destruction.

Concurrent with the Confederate movement by John McCausland's brigade of cavalry into Franklin County and Chambersburg, fears spread throughout Adams and York counties that the raiders would turn eastward, as had the Rebels in late June of 1863 en route to the Susquehanna River.

Here is an article from the July 16, 1864 issue of the Columbia Spy which illustrates the typical fear that was again gripping the region. For the second time in 12 months, merchants packed up their inventories, residents began taking horses out of Adams and York counties, and refugees clogged the turnpike through York to the river. Now, because the toll bridge that had burn down June 28, 1863, had not yet been rebuilt, a series of small steam-powered ferries carried the fleeing populace into Lancaster County (for a fee, of course).

It was all a false alarm. No Confederates entered York County.

The ferry boat owners were the big winners.

Here's the short article...

The verbiage of this article echoes the fears of 1863. Luckily for the war-weary population, this was the last time that York Countians were in the potential path of Confederate raiders.

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The scenic Kreutz Creek in Hellam Township, York County, Pennsylvania. This creek roughly parallels the old rail bed of the Northern Central Railway and played a role in the June 28, 1863, Skirmish of Wrightsville. This was the line of approach used by a portion of the 35th Battalion, Virginia Cavalry to screen the movements of three regiments of Georgia infantry under Col. Clement A. Evans.

Cannonball reader Gerry Boehm is a history buff from Berks County, Pennsylvania. He has had a special interest in the June 28, 1863, Skirmish of Wrightsville, a subject that of course has special meaning to me. Gerry is working his way through my recent book, Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Gordon Expedition, June 1863, which focuses on the expedition of part of Jubal A. Early's Confederate division to seize the mile-and-a-quarter-long covered bridge spanning the Susquehanna River between Wrightsville and Columbia.

Copyright 2007, Scott Mingus and Tom Poston, all rights reserved. Map of the June 28, 1863 skirmish of Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. No reproduction without written permission.