Gettysburg carries an unexpected calm for a place known for battles. Stand in the Soldiers’ National Cemetery or on the rocky spine of Little Round Top and you feel something closer to reverence than violence. On a recent visit, my wife, Nataliya, and I found that same calm running through the town itself, a borough of about 8,000 that hosts well over a million visitors a year.
At every stop, kids dashed between hands-on exhibits and costumed interpreters with curiosity. Gettysburg has a knack for making hard history make sense, even to a child. Watching that happen became the victory of our weekend.
Little Feet, Big History
We started at Children of Gettysburg 1863, in the old Rupp House on Baltimore Street, recently named one of the nation’s best children’s museums. At the door, each young visitor chooses a real Gettysburg child from the era and carries that child’s story room to room, picking up a piece at every stop. It’s a clever trick, transforming dates and history into a real child.
The rooms are full of details that make the museum feel like an actual household: a rug beater, bed warmer, egg separator, a toaster built for an open flame. In another room, kids can spy hiding soldiers and hide themselves. In another, kids tend a wounded soldier.
It was here we first heard about Sallie, the bull terrier who marched with the 11th Pennsylvania Infantry. When the Union line collapsed on the battle’s first day, Sallie went missing and her regiment assumed the worst. Later, they found her on Oak Ridge, licking the wounds of the regiment’s survivors, refusing to leave until the last of them was retrieved.
Sharpshooters in the Attic
A few doors down, the Shriver House tells of the battle from inside a family’s home. Our guide, Gail, in full period dress, walked us through the rooms where George and Hettie Shriver lived with daughters Sadie (7) and Mollie (5), then up into the attic that sharpshooters claimed as a nest.
Gail was just as proud of her garden out back, where she’d just pulled garlic, now hanging outside in bundles. She assured us there were no vampires in Gettysburg, although the number of ghost tours advertised leads one to wonder. They run every day, with a Family Friendly Ghost Hunt Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m.
Wool in August
That afternoon we drove into the battlefield. The Pennsylvania Memorial is the largest monument on the field, its base ringed with a bronze Lincoln and the state’s generals, a winged Victory watching from the top. Reenactors had set up nearby.
In one tent, women portraying volunteers of the U.S. Sanitary Commission explained what a field hospital actually required and who had to scrounge it up: bandages, broth, clean water, letters written home for men who could no longer hold a pen. Where the government came short, the Sanitary Commission picked up.
Nearby, soldiers of the 71st Pennsylvania stood in wool uniforms in the August heat, patiently working through a group of children asking about rifles, rations and how far a man could march in a day.
A Room Above Lincoln Square
We checked into the Hotel Gettysburg that evening and drew a sixth-floor suite overlooking Lincoln Square, complete with a gas fireplace we were almost tempted to light despite the warmth outside.
Directly across from our window stood the David Wills House, where Lincoln spent the night before the cemetery dedication and put the finishing touches on his remarks — a few sentences that would outlive everyone in the square.
We wandered the square and surrounding streets before dinner, into the candy store and chocolate market, then landed at The Upper Crust for wood-fired pizza topped with brisket and barbecue while a skee ball game rattled on in the back room. Later, down Steinwehr Avenue, families were finishing rounds of mini-golf at Lincoln Links, and Mr. G’s Ice Cream earned every bit of its local reputation.
Taps at Twilight
At twilight, we walked into the Soldiers’ National Cemetery for One Hundred Nights of Taps, held each evening from Memorial Day through Labor Day. A Navy officer played twenty-four notes, unaccompanied, drifting out over rows of white stones. Children who had been running 10 minutes earlier stood perfectly still.
After “Taps,” we strolled through the green, paying respect to the stones and monuments and what they represented. We came to the Lincoln Speech Memorial, his bust and the words of his address in bronze.
Standing Inside the Charge
Sunday began at the park’s Visitor Center and Museum, where a short film narrated by Morgan Freeman set the tone. We went upstairs to witness the Cyclorama. This is one of the largest oil paintings in the world: 42 feet tall and 377 feet around, painted by the French artist Paul Philippoteaux, unveiled in Boston in 1884, then toured, neglected, rescued, restored and finally at rest here in Gettysburg. Narration and shifting light walk you around the circle as Pickett’s Charge unfolds, smoke and cannon flashes and collapsing lines appearing in motion as the light moves. Kids leaned over the railing hunting for the seam where the painting ends and the three-dimensional foreground begins.
Two Sides, One Speech
The museum galleries displayed case after case of uniforms, sabers, canteens, drums and surgical kits that left nothing to the imagination. There’s a lock of Lincoln’s hair, a cast of his face and a somber corner given over to the assassination.
But the display that held us longest was a pair of walls quoting newspapers on the Gettysburg Address, printed within a day of each other. One wall is headed “A Perfect Gem,” where the Chicago Tribune predicted the remarks would “live among the annals of man.” The other wall is headed “Silly Remarks,” where the Harrisburg Patriot and Union hoped “the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them.”
Standing before those two walls felt uncomfortably familiar. Polarization goes way back.
Riding the Ridges
From the Visitors’ Center and Museum, we took a two-hour battlefield bus tour. Our licensed guide narrated troop movements across the ground where the battles happened: why a ridge mattered, why a hill had to hold, how 165,000 men flowed and collided across farm fields somebody was still hoping to harvest.
More than 1,300 monuments decorate the fields and tree lines, most placed by the veterans themselves. At one stop we climbed down at Oak Ridge, where we witnessed the 11th Pennsylvania’s monument: a bronze skirmisher on a granite pedestal. Curled on a ledge at his feet, small enough that you could walk past her, a bronze dog with her head on her paws. Sallie, the same terrier we’d met in the children’s museum across town, keeping watch on the exact ground where she refused to abandon her wounded brethren. The top of her head has been rubbed to a shine by more than a century of hands. Ours joined them.
Beyond the Battle
Our last stop was the Beyond the Battle Museum, which tells Adams County’s whole story rather than just its famous three days: dinosaur footprints, a meteorite, colonial taverns, Thaddeus Stevens and a World War II camp at the edge of town that held nearly 500 German prisoners, some of whom picked local fruit. Twelve galleries, more than a thousand artifacts. They provided age-appropriate scavenger hunt clipboards for anyone up to the challenge.
The museum’s centerpiece, Caught in the Crossfire, put us inside a Gettysburg house during the fighting. The windows rattle. Gunfire cracks beyond the interior walls. The floor shakes, a family hides in the cellar and bullet holes appear in the walls. The kids who came out behind us were talking a mile a minute.
Of the many stories told in this museum, two stood out. The first belongs to Corporal James Culbertson, shot in the Wheatfield July 2, a bullet entering behind one ear and exiting behind the other. He lay insensible for two days, then got up, walked 6 miles home to Middle Creek and lived until 1917. His hat sits in a case, both holes plainly visible, the most understated object in the building.
The second belongs to Mary Jemison. In 1758, a raiding party attacked her family’s farm near Marsh Creek, west of present-day Gettysburg, and killed nearly everyone in it. She later recognized the scalps of her family by hair color. Mary was 12. She was carried off, adopted by a Seneca family and lived until age 91 among the people who raised her.
Homeward Bound
The weekend in Gettysburg was relaxing and educational. The bloodiest three days in American history happened here, and the town has found ways to make sense of it in a way that even a child can understand: a dog who wouldn’t leave her family; a man who nearly died but decided to get up and walk home; a girl who built a life among the people who took her; 10 sentences that outlived every newspaper that editorialized about them.
Gettysburg in the Fall
Though its history is captivating at any time of the year, Gettysburg adds seasonal activities and celebrations into the mix for families planning their visit this fall. Here are some to add to your itinerary:
The National Apple Harvest Festival |Weekends Oct. 3-11
Located just 12 minutes from Gettysburg at South Mountain Fairgrounds in Biglerville, this festival features fresh apple cider, kettle corn, barbecue and all things apple, along with music, magic shows, hayrides, a Kids’ Kraft Korner, petting zoo and more to support local parks and charitable programs.
Parties and Parades
Lincoln Square comes alive with music, a kids’ costume contest and parade for the Gettysburg Halloween Dance Party and Parade Oct. 20. Kids can learn about Gettysburg’s place in Civil War history through the Remembrance Day Parade Nov. 14.
Living History
Hear Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address recreated on Nov. 19, along with the original music and prayers that accompanied the ceremony.
A Gettysburg Christmas Festival | Dec. 4-6
From Lincoln Square to Steinwehr Avenue, there will be live entertainment, holiday events and shop specials as families stroll through festive decorations.
Eric D. Goodman is author of seven books and more than 100 published short stories, articles and travel stories. His latest, the bestselling “Faraway Tables,” is a book of travel-centric poetry that made it to #1 in poetry on Amazon’s bestseller charts. Learn more about Goodman’s travels and writing at EricDGoodman.com.
