Special Collections Roadshow was created by students at the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College in the Spring of 2014. It normally showcases various artifacts from Special Collections at Gettysburg College. For our tenth episode, we went on the road to the Gettysburg National Military Park. Thank you so much to the park staff, specifically Andrew Newman for letting us film an episode on an enlisted man’s uniform and to film in their facility! #FindYourPark #GettysburgNMP
On Wednesday, April 20, 2016, Gettysburg College students and faculty gathered in Penn Hall Lyceum to acknowledge the centennial of the Easter Rising. On April 24, 1916, the day after Easter Sunday, an armed rebellion led by Irish Republicans seized the General Post Office and other major buildings in the center of Dublin, and declared a “Republic of Ireland.” Approximately 1,600 members of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army participated in the six-day rebellion. The Rising was an act to overthrow the British government in Ireland and provoke a full-out revolution. After a week, however, British forces squashed the rebellion and arrested 3,000 people. The following month, fifteen leaders of the Rising were executed. While the Rising did not initially gain support from the Irish public, the ensuing brutality administered by the British in the aftermath of the rebellion spawned public dissent and fueled political unrest and further violence.
Three Gettysburg College faculty members, Benjamin Luley, Ian Isherwood, and Robert Bohrer, presented at the Wednesday night panel. Vice Provost Jack Ryan gave opening remarks and introduced the panel.
Members of the faculty panel. Photography by the author.
Special Collections Roadshow was created by the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College in the Spring of 2014. It normally showcases various artifacts from Special Collections at Gettysburg College. For our tenth episode, we went on the road to the Gettysburg National Military Park. Thank you so much to the park staff, specifically Andrew Newman for letting us film an episode on an enlisted man’s uniform in their facility! #FindYourPark #GettysburgNMP
The Civil War Institute will be celebrating the National Park Service Centennial this spring with its brand new “Find Your Park Friday” series. Inspired by the NPS #FindYourPark campaign, the series will challenge our fellows to share their experiences exploring America’s national historical, cultural, and natural resources through trips and internships with the NPS. In our first post, CWI Social Media Coordinators Meg and Megan discuss their time interning at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.
How long did you spend at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park and what did you do while you were there?
Megan: I’ve spent two summers at Fredericksburg; the first summer I was a Pohanka Intern and the second summer I was able to return as a seasonal employee. I’ve worked at almost all the sites in the park in my two summers there. I’ve given tours at Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, and the Wilderness. I’ve also spent time at the Stonewall Jackson Shrine and Chatham doing informal interpretation.
Meg: I was a Pohanka Intern at FredSpot from May 2014 to August 2014. I gave interpretive programs at the Fredericksburg Visitor Center and the Spotsylvania Exhibit Shelter and led tours daily. On the weekends I led the Children’s Program with a fellow intern. We led four different programs including a cemetery program, a soldier’s life program, a flags-and-signals program, and a regular Junior Ranger program which alternated each weekend. Continue reading “Find Your Park Friday: Meg and Megan Take Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania NMP”
Many music and art students at Gettysburg College would recognize the name Schmucker as their building, or affectionately their ‘home,’ on campus. Alumni might even remember Schmucker Hall as their library. However, if asked who founded Gettysburg College, most students and alumni would probably not know his name. Fortunately, our campus is celebrating Founders Day this week to remember those, including our founder Samuel Simon Schmucker, who helped make our college #Gettysburgreat.
Samuel Simon Schmucker was born in 1799 in Hagerstown, Maryland to German immigrants. His father, John George Schmucker, was a pastor in Hagerstown before moving to York where he continued his ministry. Samuel Simon Schmucker attended the York County Academy before going to the University of Pennsylvania and then the theological seminary at Princeton. In 1820 he was granted membership in the Lutheran Synod and, by the next year, was ordained as a minister by the Maryland and Virginia Synod. As part of the Synod he was elected to a committee in charge of planning a Lutheran theological seminary. Gettysburg was chosen as the location for the seminary, perhaps because there was a large population of German Lutherans in the Gettysburg area and in Adams County. Classes opened at the Lutheran Theological Seminary on September 5, 1826, but after a year, Dr. Schmucker came to the conclusion that many of his students were not prepared in the manner they should be to continue theological studies. He devised creating a preparatory school to solve the problem. On June 25, 1827, the Classical Preparatory School opened and shared the same building as the Seminary. Due to financial problems, Dr. Schmucker bought the property in 1829 and changed the name of the Classical School to the Gettysburg Gymnasium. As both schools grew, there became a need for the Gettysburg Gymnasium to once again reestablish itself. Dr. Schmucker drafted and proposed a bill to make the Gettysburg Gymnasium into a college “for the education of youth in the learned languages, the arts, sciences, and useful literature.” On November 7, 1832, Pennsylvania College was “opened for the reception of Students.”
Gettysburg Gymnasium at Washington and Carlisle Streets, ca. 1882. Photograph courtesy of Gettysburg College Special Collections.
For our ninth episode we welcome our guest Dr. Ian Isherwood ’00 to talk about a Civil War medical kit and how to do research relating to Civil War medicine, as seen in the PBS series Mercy Street.
Special Collections Roadshow was created by the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College in the Spring of 2014. It showcases various artifacts from Special Collections at Gettysburg College.
Sources:
Clements, Lt. Col. Bennett. A Medical Record of the Army of the Potomac by Jonathan Letterman, M.D. and Memoir of Jonathan Letterman, M.D. Knoxville, TN: Bohemian Brigade Publishers, 1994.
Devine, Shauna. Learning from the Wounded: The Civil War and the Rise of American Medical Science. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.
Rutkow, Ira M. Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine. New York: Random House, 2005.
Schultz, Jane E. Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2004.
U.S. Army Medical Department. Illustrated Manual of Operative Surgery and Surgical Anatomy. San Francisco, Norman Publishers, 1990.
U.S. Army Medical Department. The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1861-65). Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1870.
You might be having mixed feelings about this Valentine’s Day week: maybe you think love is wonderful, or perhaps you are more pessimistic about love and deem it impossible. Whatever the case, it was not entirely wonderful, nor quite impossible for soldiers during the Civil War. Love and war coexisted quite well, as you will read from other posts this week. Yet, as is the nature of both, they can also be tragic. Warning: the story I am about to tell you does not have a happy ending, but it is nonetheless heartwarming.
This is the love story of Alexander “Sandie” Pendleton and Katherine Carter Corbin.
Sandie was born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1840 and graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1857, where he first met Thomas Jackson on staff at the college. When the war broke out, Sandie was working towards a Masters degree at the University of Virginia. He received a commission as second lieutenant of the Provisional Army of Virginia and was sent to Harper’s Ferry. While in the Shenandoah Valley, General Jackson asked Sandie to join his staff. By 1862, during the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, Sandie became Jackson’s chief-of-staff.
Sandie Pendleton. Photo via the Virginia Military Institute Archives.
While on sick leave in August and September of 1861, Sandie was troubled by an engagement he made to Laura Burwell of Winchester the previous winter. He believed he was not truly in love with her but was wary of breaking off the engagement. Perhaps reading Sandie’s mind, Laura broke off the engagement herself in October 1862. Sandie wrote to his mother: “I am cultivating the soft tones of my voice, as I intend to fill the void so lately left in my affections. . . . I need something to cling to. But I shall take pains not to cling too tightly another time. I shall only make love & not talk soberly about it.” Five months later, Sandie met his future wife. Continue reading “Love Amidst Tragedy: The Story of Sandie Pendleton and Kate Corbin”
Special Collections Roadshow was created by the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College in the Spring of 2014. Although the series usually showcases various artifacts from Special Collections at Gettysburg College, for our eighth episode we went on the road to the US Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, PA.
Thank you so much to the AHEC staff for letting us film an episode on Emory Upton’s Tactical Blocks and to film in their facility! We would definitely recommend checking out their website at and visiting their museum and archives!
Special Collections Roadshow was created by the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College in the Spring of 2014. It showcases various artifacts from Special Collections at Gettysburg College. The seventh episode features Megan McNish ’16 comparing the housewife from Lewis Tway’s collection to another housewife we just received from Rev. Theodore Schlach’s new collection in Special Collections.
Last Sunday, the Lutheran Theological Seminary Chapel was packed full of people eager to see the world-renown a capella group Anonymous Four for their final touring season. For nearly thirty years, the four women who make up the group have performed around the world with their unique style and sound. This season, Anonymous Four invited Bruce Molsky, “one of America’s premier fiddling talents,” to join them for their “1865” concert celebrating the end of the Civil War through their own interpretation of Civil War music. The event, co-sponsored by the Civil War Institute and the Sunderman Conservatory of Music, opened with remarks by the Civil War Institute’s Dr. Jill Titus, on the importance of analyzing and studying music when trying to understand the culture of the Civil War Era.
The program for Anonymous Four’s “1865” concert. Photograph courtesy of author.
