Around Gettysburg

Last evening I picked up my Cousin Janice at Hagerstown MD. She came in, a little green around the gills, after flying a puddle-jumper on the last leg of her journey from Baltimore. It was a 6 seat plane with only 4 passengers. Guess it was pretty turbulent. Needless to say, we did not do any sight-seeing yesterday.

Today we started at Soldiers' National Cemetery. This cemetery is famous throughout the world as the site of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. He made his speech about 4 months after the battle of Gettysburg. The cemetery is the final resting place of some 3,307 post Civil War through Vietnam service men and women, and their family members.



You can see the graves are arranged in a large semi circle around this monument. The larger gray stones are the state section markers and they also indicate the number of dead from that state. The smaller stones usually have a number on it of the unknown soldiers from the different divisions. It was pretty hard to tell where someone belonged as dog tags were not used. They usually had to determine which section they belonged in by friends who identified them or by things found on the body, like letters. Also useful were the buttons on their clothing to determine, at least, their state origin.
The smaller states were closer to the statue and the larger states further out.

From there we went to one of the best museums in Gettysburg. It was the American Civil War Museum. Inside are life size figures whose mission is to provide "an authentic and accurate account of our nation's greatest conflict." There are more than 300 life-size figures showing scenes such as the underground railroad.


You can see a little bit of the basement, where the slaves would hide.

This one is Stonewall Jackson as he lay mortally wounded.


Clara Barton would follow the soldiers giving care to the wounded. Here, she is helping one of the injured on the battlefield. She later went on to found the Red Cross



Of course there were spies. This lady, Rose Greenow, was a spy for the south. While in Washington she would attend parties and social events, picking up and passing on information to the south.



The assassination of Abraham Lincoln. See the pistol in Booth's hand moments before the fatal shot.



We really enjoyed the museum and would recommend it highly. From there we came back to the MH for lunch and to walk Maggie.

This afternoon, I brought Janice to one of her favorite places on earth..........Boyd's Bears. I finished my book, while she shopped. On the way back, we took a brief tour of the battlefield so that Janice could get some pictures of the NC monument. We had a pretty full day. Until next time.