Gettysburg Civilians – The Gettysburg Compiler

A House Divided: The History and Memory of the Wentz Family at Gettysburg

Gettysburg was home to numerous families with split political allegiances during the war, but did you know that the farm of one of these Unionist families would play host to the Confederate battery operated by its very own political-defector son? Jessica Roshon (’23) shares the fascinating story of the Wentz family and how post-war writers chose to represent this ironic encounter between a family torn apart by war.

By Jessica Roshon ’23

War on the Doorstep: Civilians of Gettysburg

By late June of 1863, alarms warning of approaching Confederate forces were nothing new for the 2,400 residents of Gettysburg. Living just ten miles from the Mason-Dixon line, small-scale raids, kidnappings of freed-people, and rumors of an imminent clash between the two great armies had long plagued the borough and its surrounding community. Nevertheless, none of these events could prepare Gettysburgians for the ferocious 3-day fight between 165,000 soldiers in early July of that year that would transform the lives and lands of Gettysburg’s civilians forever. However, these civilians’ experiences were not monolithic; while some were defined by tragedy and blight, others included remarkable episodes of perseverance, successful pragmatism, and creative profiteering. This new blog series profiles the lives of diverse Gettysburgians who were forced to confront the war at their very doorsteps, each on their own terms, whose stories speak to the kaleidoscope of experiences of civilians struggling to survive, and thrive, along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border during the Civil War.

For many 19^th-century Gettysburgians, life on the Pennsylvania-Maryland border meant a nearly continuous interchange between northern and southern goods, civilians, and cultural values. For black Gettysburgians, life along the Mason-Dixon line created a tenuous and often terrifying existence between freedom and slavery. However, for many whites living in the area, the outbreak of war in 1861 wrought often irreparably destructive damage upon families who found their homes torn apart by fathers, sons, and cousins with conflicting political loyalties. Such was the case for the Wentz family, who not only experienced the physical impacts of war upon their doorstep and the emotional fallout of a house politically divided; they also became a focal point for postwar narratives about the meaning and legacy of the Civil War in the broader American consciousness.

Before the battle ravaged their land and home, John and Mary Wentz lived peacefully in a long, one-and-a-half story log cabin which stood at the intersection of the Emmitsburg and (what is now) Wheatfield Roads. Their quaint home and few outbuildings occupied a small tract of land adjacent to Joseph Sherfy’s now famous peach orchard. The couple had two children: Susan, who was from John’s previous marriage, lived with her parents at the time of the battle, but their son, Henry, had been disavowed by his father after deciding to enlist in the Confederate army in April of 1861. Prior to his disownment, Henry had moved to Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia) to establish his own carriage-building shop. He enlisted in Captain Ephraim G. Alburtis’s artillery battery, which formed in Berkeley County, Virginia. The unit’s command then fell to Captain James S. Brown and its name changed to the Wise Artillery, named for Governor Wise of Virginia, until it was discontinued in October 1862. Henry was appointed First Sergeant on February 10, 1862 and maintained this rank when he was transferred from Pendleton’s Battery to Brown’s Battery, eventually earning the rank of Corporal on October 8, 1862 after being transferred yet again to Eubank’s Battery. On January 1, 1863, Wentz was promoted once again to orderly sergeant, the grade he held when he finally returned home in July of 1863.

Images of the Wentz House taken during the early 1900s. The original log cabin which stood during the battle was replaced by this whitewashed house. However, this house was deconstructed by the National Park Service in 1960 and the property remains vacant today. (Gettysburg National Military Park)

At the time of the battle, John, age 73, Mary, age 74, Susan, age 27, and a boy named Charles Culp, age 15, were present in the Wentz house. The family was not in danger during the first day of the battle, but their luck changed when General Lee extended his battle line along Seminary Ridge and General Meade responded in kind by stretching the Union line on Cemetery Ridge in preparation for a second day of battle. As a result, the family decided to flee while John Wentz remained behind and hid in the cellar. John’s choice might initially come across as an intriguing one, considering the gendered expectations of men for the time; men were expected to protect their families at all costs, so one would assume that he would flee with his family. However, he likely viewed the preservation of the family homestead – the physical embodiment of his family’s future and financial stability – as most vulnerable and in need of his defense. In any case, this decision ironically caused him to come within a mere few hundred yards of his son’s own artillery battery, which ultimately was posted about 200 yards northeast of the Wentz house, just opposite the Sherfy House. In one of the great, but fitting ironies of the battle, although John Wentz had officially purged his son from his real life, his very residence along the porous boundary between North and South ultimately made real John’s fears that his disavowed son and his “repugnant” political leanings would assault the very foundations of the Wentz family’s livelihood – but this time not merely with Confederate ideals, but with literal shot and shell.

Out of this incident came several extraordinary, though ultimately debunked, stories about Henry’s return to Gettysburg and his supposed reunion with his father, which fell neatly into line with the iconic, though flawed, “brother vs. brother” narrative of tragic domestic and national divides and the ultimate reconciliation of both that emerged shortly after the war.

The earliest story appeared in the 1887 book, The Great Invasion of 1863 by Jacob Hoke. In this clearly romanticized tale, which played on tropes common during the sentimentalist movement, Hoke claims that Henry commanded a Confederate battery and allegedly hid his parents in the cellar of their house prior to firing upon the Union line, or more specifically, upon the Pennsylvania Reserves. The next most commonly known story lies in W.C. Storrick’s The Battle of Gettysburg, The Country, The Contestants, The Results, published in 1931. This story also claims that Henry was given command of a battery but differs slightly in the description of the encounter between Henry and John Wentz. According to this rendition, the night following Pickett’s Charge, Henry supposedly checked on his father to find him peacefully sleeping in the cellar, so he pinned a note reading, “Good-bye and God bless you!” to his father’s lapel. The final interpretation of the Wentz reunion can be found in the memoirs of Rufus W. Jacklin of the 16^th Michigan Infantry, who described finding paperwork connecting Henry to one of the dead soldiers being buried on the property. John and Mary Wentz replied to the pronouncement of the discovered paperwork with dismissal, claiming that their son was a traitor and they wanted nothing to do with his body.

As mentioned earlier, these stories reflect a domestically focused, overly sentimental and highly romanticized version of the Civil War which emerged around the same time as the “Lost Cause.” Such popular and politicized portrayals of the war and its aftermath often glossed over the uncomfortable roots of the conflict, wallowed in the tragedies of the war while celebrating stories of martial bravery and moral nobility, and sought to reconcile the North and South around comforting stories of domestic and national reunion and shared forgiveness. Jacklin’s story challenges key parts of this romantic trope with the family’s indifference to hearing of their son’s possible death – perhaps a result of Jacklin’s own military service which may have framed his personal perceptions of political disloyalty and family divisions within a more cynical, less forgiving light.

Despite witnessing intense fighting during the second and third days of the battle, the Wentz house suffered minimal damage. In April of 1870, John Wentz passed away at the age of 84. He was followed by his wife and daughter in the subsequent two years. John’s will stated that his estate would fall to Susan, and then to his surviving children after all his debts were paid, blatantly excising Henry from his inheritance. Henry had continued to fight with the Confederates until he was captured on April 6, 1865 at Sailor’s Creek near Farmville, Virginia and was subsequently released after taking the oath of allegiance on June 21, 1865. Once the Wentz homestead passed, by default, to Henry following the deaths of his mother and sister, he immediately sold it and ten acres of his own land in April 1872 to a neighbor named Joseph Smith, who had already acquired the neighboring Daniel Klingel farm. The property was later acquired by John Beecher, who remodeled the house in the 1880s. During the late 1890s and early 1900s, the original log cabin was dismantled and replaced with a number of white buildings which stood until 1960, when they were taken down by the National Park Service.

The history and memory of the Wentz family, and how that history is interpreted today, speaks to the complications undergirding interpretations of the Civil War itself as a whole. Rifts between families were quite common, especially among those living on the border, and showed how the war cut to the deepest parts of people’s lives, but the romanticization of Henry Wentz’s story reflects the nation’s need to heal and a forceful willingness to seemingly forget all that had transpired during the conflict itself. Stories of reunion and reconciliation were an integral part of the national narrative immediately following the war, and the myth of the Wentz family played right into these sentimentalist viewpoints. This romanticization of the war continues to be a convenient fallback for many still today as we often sanitize the truly unsettling, if not horrifying aspects of war. As the Wentz’s true family story reveals, such falsified representations of war inhibit our ability to comprehend, let alone accept how deeply scarred and divided the nation remained after the guns fell silent, leading to open wounds and sectional reverberations–generations out from the war that forever destroyed John Wentz’s home.

Saved by the Land: The Codori Family

By Lauren Letizia

“War on the Doorstep: Civilians of Gettysburg”

When Nicholas and George Codori emigrated to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania from Hottviller, France on 20th June 1828, they could not have foreseen the epic battle that would reshape both the physical and historical landscape of their new hometown.

The Codoris’ sprawling tracts of land and multiple houses would become some of the most significant locales during the Battle of Gettysburg, with one of the family farms playing host to over 500 buried Confederate dead, the most of any farm in the area. Although, like most Gettysburg civilians, the Codoris’ livelihoods were dramatically altered during and after the infamous clash, their story is, in many ways, one of mixed struggle and ironic success as a result of the bloody battle that transformed their town forever.

Like many European immigrants of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Codori brothers viewed American land ownership as the key to personal opportunity and family fortune. Inspired by the promises of a free labor society that championed hard work and the ownership of one’s own labor as the foundation for successful, stable, and moral living, twenty-two-year-old George and nineteen-year-old Nicholas hoped to become successful, independent, and contributing members of their local community. The U.S. Census lists their occupations as butchers. Nicholas became an apprentice with local butcher, Anthony Kuntz and eventually started his own business behind his home on York Street. Interestingly, his was the former house of Gettysburg founder, James Gettys. During the aftermath of the battle, the York Street house would be used as a temporary church for the displaced congregation of the Catholic church, St. Francis Xavier, which served as a hospital for wounded and dying soldiers.

Ambition defined Nicholas Codori’s life. In 1835, he married Elizabeth Martin, with whom he had two sons, George and Simon. Distrustful of banks, Nicholas continually invested his life savings into new land and farm properties. In 1854, he purchased approximately 273 acres of land along the Emmitsburg Rd., just outside the borough, and proceeded to build a brick house on the property between 1854 and 1863, leasing the farmhouse to tenants. In 1861, he purchased an additional 66 acres across the Emmitsburg Road. During the battle, Nicholas’s niece, Catherine Codori Staub, and her husband, John Staub, were renting the farmhouse. John was serving in the 165th Pennsylvania at the time, so an extremely pregnant Catherine, her children, and her parents were alone in the house. Codori family history states that Catherine hid in the basement; however, there are no records or diaries to indicate this as fact. Other rumors suggest she fled to Carlisle, but this is unlikely given the advanced state of her pregnancy; she gave birth to twin girls on July 8, 1863. (A more likely explanation states that the Staubs may have owned their own farm behind the Sherfy property, giving Catherine and her family another place to wait out the violence).

However, according to an officer in General George Stanndard’s Vermont Brigade there were occupants in the Codori farmhouse on the eve of the battle. The officer writes that, when his brigade stopped at the farm, an old man ran out of the house, opened the gate, and (rather comically) begged the soldiers to “move around his wheat field and not pass through it.” This man may have been Catherine’s father, Anthony Codori, as there is no record of Nicholas’s and his family’s movements during the three days of fighting.

During the Civil War, George’s family would suffer the worst of the Codoris. In 1829, George had married a fellow French immigrant, Regina Wallenberger. They had made their home on West Middle Street and began a family, raising two daughters, Suzanne and Cecelia, and a son, Nicholas. Apparently eager to go to war to defend his family’s adopted nation and the ideals of Union and free labor that defined the northern war effort, Nicholas enlisted in Company E of the 2nd Pennsylvania on April 20, 1861. Discharged after his 90-day enlistment expired, it is unknown why he chose not to immediately re-enlist. In 1864, perhaps fearful of the draft or due to community pressures, he finally renewed his enlistment with the 210th PA, but deserted twelve days later. Perhaps the divergence between romantic notions of warfare and the realities of soldier life was simply too much for young Nicholas.

The Codori Farm (George Neat via Flickr)

During the Battle of Gettysburg, while George’s daughter, Suzanne and her husband hid in his brother Nicholas’s basement on York Street, George fell victim to marauding Confederates and was one of eight Gettysburg citizens to be captured and imprisoned by the Confederate Army. There is no definitive record of why 57-year-old George was arrested, but the family claims he was detained by suspicious southern cavalry as he was returning home from a business trip to Baltimore, perhaps wearing his son’s old Union soldier’s jacket. Conversely, Annie McSherry, the great great-granddaughter of George, states that he and part of his family had fled to the Culp Farm on July 1 and had returned home on the 4th to find a wounded Confederate soldier hiding in their home. McSherry claims that George helped the soldier return to the lines and that George may had been detained while doing so. Whatever the circumstances, George was transported to a prison in Richmond, Virginia and then moved to Salisbury Prison in North Carolina. The Codoris anxiously awaited his return, baffled by how Confederates could justify his continued incarceration following the Gettysburg Campaign. Sadly, George did not return home until March 1865 and severely weakened by his time in southern prisons, he died of pneumonia just days later. Regina soon followed, passing away a few months after. The George Codori family story speaks to the myriad unexpected tragedies that upended the lives of numerous families living along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border during the Gettysburg Campaign.

Luckily for Nicholas Codori, fortune once again favored ambition and boldness. In 1865, Nicholas purchased a large tract of land across the Emmitsburg Road from Nicholas’s farmhouse which had belonged to William Bliss. Capitalizing on the damages the Bliss land and burned-out house and barn sustained during the battle, Codori purchased the property from a despondent and financially desperate Bliss. Three years later, in 1868, Codori decided to further profit from the prime location of the farmland east of the Emmitsburg Road, where hundreds of Confederate soldiers had been buried in shallow graves. When this was discovered, he sold the land to Southern organizations that were commissioned to repatriate Confederate remains. He bought this portion back in 1872 after the soldiers’ bodies were removed and sent back to the South. Nicholas continued to prosper from his rampant purchase and sale of local farmlands until 1878, when he sustained mortal injuries from a mowing accident on one of his farms. While driving a horse-drawn mower, Codori fell into the sharp blades of the mower after his horse became spooked and suddenly jerked its body. Nicholas lay alone amidst the mowing with a partially severed leg for approximately 30 minutes, until help finally arrived. He survived for a few days afterwards before succumbing to his wound on July 11, 1878. In one of the great ironies of his life, the cherished land that had long sustained his family’s fortunes, and which had enabled his family to endure and thrive in the wake of the cataclysmic battle fought around them, had fatally failed him.

Despite Nicholas’s tragic death, the Codori family fortunes continued to prosper. By 1880, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) had purchased significant ownership of the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association. The combined GAR-GBMA began to encourage widespread erection of monuments and memorials on pivotal pieces of the battlefield. Well-aware of the enormous historical value of the family’s sprawling farm and sensing a financial boon for the Codori family, Nicholas’s son, Simon started selling large portions of his family’s land to veterans’ groups, stating that wished to memorialize their soldiers’ sacrifices. Codori land now claims monuments to the 106th and 26th PA, the death sites of Colonel Willard of the 126th NY and Colonel Ward of the 15th MA, as well as the site of General Winfield Scott Hancock’s famed wounding. Due to Simon’s foresight, Codori land was no longer solely of monetary value, but of pivotal commemorative value. The Codori family’s wartime experiences were defined by a kaleidoscope of emotions and fortunes—confusion, fear, chaos, tragedy, grief, and loss—but also opportunity, ironic success, and growth. However, in the end, it was Nicholas Codori’s antebellum foresight about the importance of land ownership, his unwavering belief in the power of free labor ideals and practices to secure upward mobility and financial security, and his family’s opportunism that enabled the Codoris to ride out the storm of civil war on the Pennsylvania border—and to emerge, largely, better for it. His land and various properties became battlefields, hideouts, havens, churches, burial grounds, and memorial landscapes. Throughout this constant repurposing and shifts in meaning, the Codori properties played an integral role not only in the family’s fortunes, but also in the history and memory of the Gettysburg landscape as we know it.

Preserving Prosperity: The Sherfy Family

By Lauren Letizia

War on the Doorstep: Civilians of Gettysburg

The surname Sherfy has been a pillar of the Gettysburg community for generations. It conjures up images of small, neat orchards, perfect peaches, and a devastating battle that forever altered the land. However, the story of the Sherfy family and their farm is also one of steadfastness, strength under pressure, and American ingenuity.

“The Sherfys of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania” was an established line well before their peaches became famous. They were descended from Kaspar Scherffig, a German immigrant farmer who came to Uniontown, Maryland in 1751 at the age of 16. His son, Jacob, was born in 1769, moved to southern Gettysburg, married a woman named Catherine, and raised eleven children. Their first home was built slightly farther south and to the east of the Emmitsburg Road than the red building now associated with their family. That first home is now called the Rose Farm. Sadly, Jacob and Catherine faced personal tragedy and death years before the Battle of Gettysburg. Their eldest son, Daniel, was thrown from a frightened horse and dragged through a tree thicket. Jacob was unable to stop the horse before Daniel died. In 1842, Jacob Sherfy passed away at the age of 73, passing the plot of land north of the Rose Farm to his son, Joseph. Joseph constructed the now iconic red brick house, and turned it into a homestead for himself and his wife Mary. They planted a four-acre peach orchard about 200 yards south of the home and expanded the orchard northward around 1862. Their farm also included a cherry tree grove and fields filled with oats, corn, and wheat, as well as hogs and other farm animals. In addition to tending his land, Joseph was a Dunker preacher. The Dunker faith was established in Germany during the early 18th Century. They espoused pietism, which means religion of the heart, and was closely aligned with Anabaptists, a religion that was against secularization of society and the conducting of warfare. As a core value of the Dunker religion, Joseph most likely subscribed to the belief in non-violent living and was likely greatly disturbed by the oncoming conflict. He and Mary had six children born between 1843 and 1860. Mary’s mother, known as Grandma Haegen, was also living with the Sherfy family at the time of the battle.

As the Union and Confederate armies thundered into Gettysburg, Joseph and Mary decided to send their children to safety south to the John Trostle Farm, located behind Big and Little Round Tops. However, either due to fears of unchecked destruction to the farm in their absence or a sense of stubborn pride, Grandma Haegen refused their pleas to leave the home, so Joseph and Mary elected to stay with her. On the morning of July 2, the sharpshooters of Colonel Hiram Berdan, under the command of General Daniel Sickles, found General Richard H. Anderson’s Confederate soldiers positioned in the woods behind the Sherfy Farm. A brief skirmish commenced, causing a bullet to burrow through a fence post, rip through the folds of Grandma Haegen’s dress, and land on the ground nearby. Haegen allegedly picked up the bullet and said, “It’s time to go to Taneytown!”

With the old woman’s approval, the Sherfys finally fled their farm, which would prove to be fortuitous. General Sickles, convinced that (at worst) General Robert E. Lee would push southward around the Federal flank toward Washington D.C, or that the Union defensive line would be far better suited along a forward salient anchored in the Sherfy’s peach orchard than it would be behind that critical high ground), ordered over 6,000 troops from his III Corps to advance from their original position along Cemetery Ridge and protect the Emmitsburg Road. There, Sickles established numerous batteries of southward-facing artillery to reinforce his one- and-a-quarter mile long line of infantry. Dangerously exposed along the open high ground and separated from the main Union lines, Sickles’s men were besieged by heavy Confederate artillery fire for approximately two and a half hours. Some of the shells and shrapnel collapsed portions of the Sherfys’ roof. Later in the evening, around 6:30pm, the advancing tide of William Barksdale’s Confederates finally broke through the Union lines along the Emmitsburg Road and, in tragic irony, the land of the peaceful Dunkards witnessed a bloodbath. The buildings were poked with bullet holes and the home began to fill with wounded and dying soldiers who were seeking protection. After the battle, survivors dug trenches around the farm to bury the dead and about 30 dead horses littered the torn land. Infamously, the Sherfy’s red barn caught fire during the fighting with scores of Union soldiers inside. It is not known how the barn ignited, but the fire could have been set deliberately by the 18^th Mississippi to rout out possible Union sharpshooters, or simply could have fallen victim to a fiery shell. Most of the soldiers trapped in the barn were wounded men from the 73^rd New York and the 57^th and 68^th Pennsylvania regiments. Due to the severity of their injuries sustained in battle, they were too weak to escape the inferno and ultimately perished.

After the gruesome battle, Joseph and his son Raphael returned to Gettysburg on July 6. They were forced to confront the barren and charred state of their family’s property. Not only were their buildings peppered with bullet holes and their barn completely destroyed, but the burnt bodies of the victim soldiers were gruesomely intermingled with the charred debris. It is estimated that 150 soldiers who were killed on or around the Sherfy farm were ultimately buried on the land. On July 7, Mary and the other children returned to witness the devastation. Joseph submitted three claims to the federal government after 1881 for compensation. The claims amounted to $2,500; they were mostly denied due to the government’s statement that much of the damage was not caused by the Union Army. The Sherfys, determined to reclaim their lives, started to rebuild all they lost. Remarkably, they were able to harvest peaches from the 114 surviving trees and canned them for sale. Joseph and Mary planned to use the earnings to pay for the reconstruction of the family homestead. They were baffled when their peach products began to fly off the shelves. Realizing a unique marketing strategy, the Sherfys branded their peaches as those grown on the iconic battlefield. The family continued to live on the property until Joseph’s death from typhoid at the age of 70.

Various Images (https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2016/03/sherfy-farm.html)

The history of the Sherfy property is bloody, morbid, and macabre. The now deceptively picturesque landscape and red house, the tidy peach orchard, and quaint barn had once been transformed into a singed, ravaged, desolate tableau. The fate of the Sherfy property is one that many families’ homesteads around Gettysburg faced when the violence subsided. However, like some of their neighbors such as Lydia Leister and Nicholas Codori, the Sherfys did not let the bleak landscape and destruction discourage them from reaping future fortune. They immediately searched for innovative—and indeed, unlikely–ways to better their predicament and become self-sustaining once again. Their story exemplifies the power of determination, the benefits of flexibility, and the ingenuity of familial innovation. They made sweet (and financially fruitful) peach preserves out of war’s scorched orchards.