Edward McPherson Farm

[tlyne]

How many men lost their lives here?

 

[MRB1863]

Such a beautiful spot nowadays! Hard to imagine all the carnage happening at such a peaceful spot as it is today.

 

[Tom Elmore]

Lt. R. B. Beath of the 88th Pennsylvania, who acted as a medical attendant to avoid capture and wore a hospital corps insignia that was recognized by the Confederates, went to the McPherson barn on July 2 to assist the wounded there. He "found it full of bleeding and mangled soldiers in a most distressed and sickening condition, without a surgeon ... many so shockingly lacerated that they were unable to move, being in some cases glued to the floor by the blood flowing from their gaping wounds." Beath spent the day caring for them, tearing his underclothes into strips for bandages. [Greg Coco, A Vast Sea of Misery, p. 5]

Lt. Beath could not help them all. Gettysburg attorney William McClean wrote that he visited the barn on July 4 and found some men who had been without food for four days. The wounded were closely packed together. Incidentally, one of them told McClean that General Lee had stopped to give him a drink from his canteen [Coco, ibid]. [another post had raised this incident and most found it improbable, but perhaps it was true]

First Sergeant Albert E. Bigelow of Company I, 24th Michigan, was badly wounded July 1 and lay in a stone barn [possibly McPherson's], unattended until July 4 [from his obituary]. Yet Bigelow survived. He married Lydia Houk in 1882, and he attended the dedication of the monument to the 24th Michigan on the field from June 12-14, 1889.

Assistant Surgeon P. S. Arndt of the 2nd Wisconsin is also reported to have attended Private Luther [Lorenzo?] M. Preston of the 6th Wisconsin in McPherson's barn, but this might have been on or after July 4.

 

[Tom Elmore]

Another mention of this barn appears in Thomas Chamberlin's History of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers: First Lieutenant John Q. Carpenter of Company E, 150th Pennsylvania was captured in town on the late afternoon of July 1 and taken to the rear about one to two miles with other prisoners; they spent the night in a red barn near the Chambersburg Pike. The following day Carpenter was permitted to assist the wounded, and "through his efforts Lieutenant Henry Chancellor was carried into the McPherson barn." On July 3, Carpenter, along with some fellow captives, tried to escape by heading north, but they were rounded up by a Confederate cavalry patrol.

First Lieutenant Henry Chancellor, Jr., of Company B, 150th Pennsylvania had been shot in the left leg. He was afterwards transferred from the barn to the Lutheran Seminary Hospital, most likely where his leg was amputated; he died on August 5. (Union Casualties at Gettysburg, p. 994)

 

[Tom Elmore]

Captain John H. Bassler, Company C, 149th Pennsylvania, was wounded in the hip around 2:30 p.m. on July 1 when the 45th North Carolina and 2nd North Carolina Battalion of Brig. Gen. Junius Daniel's brigade made their first assault at the western-most railroad cut. He was carried to the southeast corner of the McPherson barnyard, and lay out in the open but protected from enemy fire. An hour later Bassler witnessed Color Sergeant Brehm carrying the colors just moments before Brehm was shot down and the colors were captured. When the heavy rain set in on July 4, Bassler was soaked and chilled. A passing wounded comrade lifted him out of a pool of water, aided by two Confederates who had taken refuge from the rain under the fore-bay of the barn. Bassler was carried into the horse stable, stripped of his clothes, and placed on clean hay, and covered with a blanket by Capt. Francis B. Jones, of Company G, 149th Pennsylvania, who on the first day had crawled 125 yards to the barn with a shattered leg. Jones was rescued four days later by none other than Gettysburg attorney David Wills, who took him to his home on the square.

[sources: The Color Episode of the One Hundred and Forty-Ninth Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers, Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 37, p. 266; Busey and Busey, Union Casualties at Gettysburg, vol. 2]