Errors in the 1864 Elliott Burial Map

[BowieResearcher]

I've always wondered about a set of Confederate burial trenches which the SG Elliott Map places across the Samuel Mumma Lane. It makes no sense because a) the road would be compacted and hard to dig in and b) it was an actively used road.

The Bowie List records graves in this general area, but not in the exact location Elliott placed them: "In Samuel Mumma's field joining Rulett's lane, S.E. Corner, 20 steps from rockbrake."

When we add the Roulette Lane to the map, the situation becomes clearer:

If the graves surrounded by the red box were shifted northeast, they would be in the same location described in the Bowie List:

My hypothesis in this instance is that whomever worked on this section of the map confused the Mumma and Roulette lanes, or was working with materials which made such an error. This would not be the first instance where Elliott appears to have misplaced features. Indeed, this corrective shift would be a relatively minor one compared to some others which appear to be necessary.

One argument against matching the Bowie and Elliott graves is that Bowie recorded 20 graves here, while Elliott shows 69. Indeed, the shorter of Elliott's rows is 32 graves long, which itself is 50% more graves than Bowie's total. But these are the only Confederate graves both Elliott and Bowie placed in this field. Unless Elliott missed the 20 graves in Bowie, and Bowie missed the 69 graves in Elliott, there can be no other candidates. Some of the graves present in 1864 may have been destroyed by 1868-69. I also believe it's possible that at least some of the multi-row trenches on the Elliott Map represent one trench which is two bodies deep, which would appear to contain fewer bodies to an observer in 1868. However one of these observers would have been Aaron Good, who was not only present during the battle but compiled a list of burials within days of its conclusion. One would think he might be aware of double burials.

Despite being one of the most famous areas of the battlefield, and achieving that status while the burials crews were still at work, the area around the Sunken Lane was not treated well by cartographers. Elliott made errors in this location. So did the Maj. Nathaniel Michler, the army engineer who surveyed the battlefield in 1867. Michler's survey of the Roulette Farm includes numerous errors, including where the farm lane enters the Sunken Lane.

 

[BowieResearcher]

Elliott's depiction graves across the Mumma Lane may have helped resolve another mystery.

The next Bowie entry records "Twenty Unknown" buried in "In Samuel Mumma's bear hole field." My assumption has always been this refers to a small cave or space in one of the rock ledges which dot the battlefield, and which may no longer exist. Alternatively, "bear hole" could be a 19th century colloquial term for a similar feature. In any event, we can safely rule out the presence of a bear on the Samuel Mumma Farm in the mid-19th century.

While this entry locates the burials on the Mumma Farm, which field is the "bear hole field" remains uncertain. However, there are two clues to which field this may have been.

The first is the apparent sequence in which the Bowie team recorded graves. By mapping the Bowie entries for the Mumma and Roulette farms on the Mumma Farm Map, we can observe a pattern. The Bowie team appears to have started in the Mumma field across from the Dunker Church and worked its way clockwise: northeast on the Smoketown Road, then southeast on Mumma's lane to the his graveyard and buildings, then southeast to the Roulette's buildings and farm lane, then south on Roulette's lane to the Bloody Lane, and then west along the Bloody Lane back to the Hagerstown Pike.

Identifying the southwestern-most Mumma field as the "bear-hole field" would complete this clockwise pattern.

There are some uncertainties in this. Bowie describes SMF-02 as "in S. Mummas graveyard field" and SMF-03 as "Near the graveyard in Samuel Mumma's field" (emphasis added). There appears to be a distinction between the "graveyard field" and "in Samuel Mumma's field" which could potentially place the latter entry in the field south of the graveyard field, but close to the cemetery itself. However in other instances Bowie described the field in which the house was located as the "house field," and he does not do that here despite the fact the field south of the graveyard contains the Mumma buildings. Elliott shows only one cluster of graves in this area, and they are all north of the lane in the Graveyard Field, lending support to both groups being in the same field. While the issue cannot be resolved definitively, both fit into the identified pattern regardless of whether SMF-03 was north or south of the lane.

Likewise the placement of SMF-04 and WRF-01 are conjectural, as neither description is precise enough to make a definitive conclusion. Referring to contemporary battle maps is unhelpful, because fields that were meadows in 1862 may or may not have been meadows in 1868-69 and Bowie often describes features in their post-war condition. But again, their general locations can be inferred from the pattern of Bowie entries.

The second clue is Elliott's depiction of the graves running across Mumma's lane. This is one way to describe these trenches. Another way to look at it is Elliott shows graves in the fields on both sides of the lane, which would be the "field joining Rulett's lane" and the "bear hole field." These are the only graves to appear in either field.

Using that interpretation, for some reason Elliott may have combined the two groups described in Bowie: the one in "In Samuel Mumma's field joining Rulett's lane, S.E. Corner, 20 steps from rockbrake" and the other in "In Samuel Mumma's bear hole field." This would also put Bowie's total for both groups (40) closer to Elliott's (69) and may explain why Elliott shows the trenches running across the lane and into both fields.

If some of these graves were in fact located in the "bear hole field" their exact location is hard to determine. The fact Elliott placed them across the lane may suggest they were near it (the argument against this is that the "adjoining field" graves should not be, based on Bowie's description), that modern satellite imagery shows a low area just west of the farm lane and just north of the Bloody Lane (a location which would have been a logical place to dig a burial trench in 1862), and that Bowie had just recorded graves along the Bloody Lane (suggesting these trenches were at least in the southern part of this field if not along the Bloody Lane itself) all point towards the graves west of the farm lane being in about the right spot on the Elliott Map, but these are speculations and the exact location is open to interpretation.