York: July 2009 Archives

Background posts:
Dr Henry Palmer ran York's U.S. Army Hospital
Gettysburg wounded soldiers entrain for York Hospital

During the last three years of the American Civil War, the U.S. Army Hospital in York, Pennsylvania, treated more than 14,000 patients, ranking it among the largest such facilities erected during the war. It had the enviable record under superintendent and chief surgeon Dr. Henry Palmer of having relatively very few fatalities. A stickler for orderliness and cleanliness, Palmer and Dr. A. G. Blair not only ran an extraordinarily sanitary hospital, they were by all accounts also very good surgeons and doctors.

Here are just a few accounts of patients known to have been cared for at the York facility.

Dr. Henry Palmer played a prominent role in events in York, Pennsylvania, during the Gettysburg Campaign. He helped organize his patients into a fighting force that drilled each day on the hospital grounds. When the Confederates approached York, he hastened the removal of most of the non-ambulatory patients to Columbia under the supervision of his assistant surgeon. However, Dr. Palmer stayed behind in the hospital with a handful of men too badly wounded to be safely moved. He was captured by Jubal Early's Rebels on Sunday, June 28 when they occupied the hospital. Palmer later managed to escape during the Battle of Gettysburg and return to York.

After the Confederates left town, he began the process of sanitizing the hospital (it was filled with lice) and made it presentable by the time that trainloads of wounded men began arriving a week later from the Battle of Gettysburg. He stubbornly refused to treat any Rebels, however, and they were instead taken to the nearby Odd Fellows Hall.

During the war, Palmer's 5-year-old daughter, Kittie, died after a lingering illness of three weeks. She was buried in Prospect Hill Cemetery. Palmer and his wife Edna intended to exhume the body and take her home to Janesville, Wisconsin, after the war. According to Jim McClure's East of Gettysburg, the child's current gravesite is unknown.

This house sits at the northeastern corner of the intersection of N. Sherman Street and Druck Valley Road. It is located on the heights northeast of York near village of Pleasureville in what in today Springettsbury Township in York County, Pennsylvania. Back on Monday, June 29, 1863, the brick two-story structure housed the general store of a young merchant named Emanuel G. Keller.

In real estate, one often hears the term "location, location, location" in terms of desirability. The unfortunate Mr. Keller was in the wrong location at the wrong time.

Many of you know that a publisher has asked me to research and write yet another book in my popular series of human interest stories. In the never ending quest for fresh material, I was perusing an old copy of Confederate Veteran last night when I stumbled across a different account of John Gordon's brigade in Pennsylvania by an author I had previously used in Flames Beyond Gettysburg. Here are a couple of fresh anecdotes from Private Isaac G. Bradwell of the 31st Georgia Volunteers. The second one is particularly interesting, as it is the only known first-hand account from a Confederate of Gordon's campsite west of York on Monday night June 29, 1863.

Unlike other Rebel accounts, the young Georgian had some very positive things to say about the people of York...

Bradwell remembered, "At early dawn the rattle of the drum called us to ranks, and we set out on the march to York. This place was much larger than Gettysburg and the inhabitants did not shut themselves up in their houses through fear of us, but were so anxious to see us and converse with us that we had some difficulty in forcing our way through the city.

It was Sunday morning, and everybody was dressed in his very best. So great was the pressure that our officers marched us through the town in single column of twos. Handsomely dressed women extended their hands from each side, anxious to have a word with us; but our officers hurried us along as rapidly as possible. Among the men I saw several who were suffering from wounds, but these kept themselves well to the rear and did not seek to come in contact with us.

The people of York were the most refined and intelligent folk we met in the State and reminded us of our friends at home, both in manners and personal appearance. They did not seem to be a bit reserved, and if we had not known where we were, we might, from their conduct, have supposed ourselves in Dixie."

Bradwell and the brigade marched to Wrightsville, where they attacked Union militia entrenched west of town but failed to capture the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge, which was burned by the retreating Yankees. On Monday afternoon about 4 PM, the Georgians marched back through downtown York and camped in the countryside along the Carlisle Road (Route 74 today).

The young private added some interesting details...

This years marks the 150th anniversary of the celebrated raid on the U.S. Arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) by abolitionist John Brown and his followers, which included a Pennsylvania free black man named Osborn P. Anderson who had been a Canadian congressman. Anderson was one of five of Brown's group to escape, eventually making his way here to York, Pennsylvania, where wealthy black businessman William C. Goodridge gave him shelter in his Philadelphia Street home (and his Centre Square business as well) and later smuggled him in a rail car across the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge. Anderson was never captured.

As part of the regional events commemorating the 1859 raid, Wayside Theatre in Middletown, VA will present the production "Robert E. Lee and John Brown; Lighting the Fuse" beginning August 29 through September 26, 2009. The play is written by Warner Crocker and with music Steve Przybylski. The production is one of the events of the Quad State 150th Anniversary of John Brown's Raid at Harpers Ferry in 1859. The play tells the story of John Brown's dramatic raid on Harper's Ferry and paints a picture of that tumultuous time in our nation's history. The play brings these two important historical figures face to face using many of their own words to tell the story that concluded with Lee's refusal to accept command of the Union army in 1861.

Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8:00 Pm and Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:30 PM. Except Sunday, August 30, when the official opening performance is at 6:30 PM. Cost is $25-$30 for adults. Children 17 years and younger are $10.00 for any performance.

Call the box office at (540) 869-1776 to reserve your seats, or reserve them on-line at www.waysidetheatre.org

Cephe F. Place
Sales & Outreach Coordinator
Wayside Theatre
P.O. Box 260
Middletown, VA 22645

cephas@waysidetheatre.org