Our family at 301 Baltimore Street were wide awake by the time rose on Wednesday, July 1st, 1863. It was impossible to forget the events from yesterday as the Union Cavalry rode through town and took up to placing their camp between the Lutheran Seminary and the western portions of town. As soon as we finished breakfast, there was a commotion outside the door.
My parents told me and my sister Margaret to stay close to the house. The Union Cavalry with horse soldiers, along with a few wagon trains, passed our house and headed north on Baltimore Street. We saw soldiers marching northward over the hill into the town as we waved and sang songs of patriotism. Later in the morning, around 9 to 10 am, we started to hear musket fire and cannon fire increasing in intensity towards the Lutheran Seminary. Soldiers continued to move northward on Baltimore Street but more of a double quick than a march up the hill
I had some lunch, (which in what turned out later was my dinner) and heard my parents talking with Mrs. Shriver, our next door neighbor. Her husband was at war serving elsewhere, and was scared to be in town with the fighting occurring close to town. Mrs. Henrietta Shriver and her two young children were going to travel south toward the Round Tops to get away from the fighting and head towards her father’s house, at the Jacob Weikert’s Farm. My parents suggested for me to accompany them down to her father’s farm, and I prepared for the trip. I took my best clothes down to our cellar in hopes that they might be safe when I returned, whenever that would be.
Mrs. Shriver and her children, along with myself, left our houses at the intersection of Breckenridge and Baltimore Street, which is the red house on the map. We traveled through the Evergreen Cemetery where we encountered Union soldiers placing cannons and running around the top of the crest of the hill. We continued the short walk towards the Taneytown Road and walked to the Leister House (blue flag) and continued southward towards the Farm. The blue flag later became General Meade’s Headquarters on July 2nd, the center of the Union forces. The roads, ugh, were unbearable. The recent rains and the hot weather made the roads feel like quicksand up to the hubs of the wheels of the wagon. We were able to take a wagon from the Leister’s House to the farm. We finally arrived at Mrs. Shriver’s parents house in the early afternoon.
As we enjoyed the farmstead and enjoyed some water and food, we saw hundreds of soldiers walking by the farm on Taneytown Road and headed north towards Gettysburg. Many were thirsty and would get out of formation and head towards the well spring on the northern side of the house. Later in the afternoon, wounded soldiers were starting to arrive and were talking about the fighting near the Seminary. Wounded officers were allowed to be inside the farmhouse, while the rest of the soldiers were filling the barn. Luckily, the farm and the barn still stands in 2026 and is a private residence.
What I did not know at the time was that I would stay with the Weikert’s family, and the wounded and the dying around the Jacob Weikert’s Farm for the next six days. What else would I see on my stay here would haunt me for my entire lifetime. When I wasn’t trying to stay positive for the soldiers, I would cry as well as worry about my parents back at the house on Baltimore Street. Would I ever see them again?