While many Gettysburg civilians left town during the three-day battle, some stayed. One family who lived on a hill that still bears their name braved the elements and the bullets when the men in blue and gray clashed at Gettysburg. 

Christian Benner and his wife, Susannah, were farmers who lived on what is still known as Benner’s Hill, located south and east of town. Their property included a part of Wolf’s Hill, and their house was located “just across the creek from Culp’s Hill.” Christian and his wife were both well into middle age by the time of the battle, and two of their five children were already grown and not at home. Sarah Anna Maria was twenty-eight and married; Henry was a Union officer in the 101^st Pennsylvania Infantry. Having been wounded in the Peninsular Campaign in 1862, Henry was in North Carolina with the Union Fourth Corps during the summer of 1863.¹ 

The family members left at home that summer of 1863 included two sons, Simon and Oliver, and one daughter, Julianne.  Both boys were old enough to enlist: Simon was twenty-two, and he would later enlist, serving in the 205^th Pennsylvania infantry; Oliver was eighteen. Both sons were busy working their father’s 400-acre farm when the boom of cannon disrupted their morning on July 1, 1863.

Oliver remembered that the “noise of the battle excited me greatly, and I went up on Culp’s Hill and climbed a tree and watched.” A sudden torrent of rain stirred through the trees, and Oliver became too soaked to remain. He ran home to find “two or three town families had taken refuge” at the Benner home. He noticed later that day that “there was a great rush of citizens out in our direction to get away. They cut right across our farm and through our wheat that was just ready to harvest.”²

They passed an uneventful night with their surge of overnight guests, then awoke the next day to a quiet dawn. They could hear the sound of chopping and falling trees, and Christian Benner walked outside to survey his wheatfield that had been damaged the day before with the many people crossing it. He didn’t return. “We didn’t know what had become of him,” Oliver recalled. “We didn’t dare risk going to look for him.” They had seen many Confederate soldiers in the area, and soon a Union officer appeared. “My colonel wants to talk with you,” he said to Simon and Oliver. They found the commander sitting on a rock near Rock Creek. He asked about the presence of rebels, but Oliver told him, “we were just as ignorant about that as a newborn babe. We weren’t accustomed to armies, and we didn’t understand their movements.” They returned home to see two Southern soldiers in their kitchen. They were hungry, so the Benners fed them, and sat down to supper themselves. Just then, a battle started, and the sounds were much closer than the previous day’s fight had been.³

Oliver said they didn’t finish eating. He ran upstairs to the third floor of his parents’ farm house, and looked out the window. “Some of our men were in the orchard…They’d take and load their guns and fire, and then fall back…the Rebels…had cut loose on them at a terrific rate.” Engrossed at the sight, Oliver almost became a casualty of the second day. “Presently…went a bullet right past my nose.” He went downstairs, and “a big Rebel came walking in. ‘Who was firin’ out of the gable window at our soldiers?’ he asked. When Mr. Martin, one of the guests replied that no one had done such a thing, the soldier retorted, “Well I saw somebody up there, and I took a shot at him.”⁴

Oliver refrained from any more climbing during the battle.

Soon the wounded began streaming into the house, filling the rooms, overflowing into the barn and the yard. Blood and gore, coupled with groans and curses from the wounded shocked the family at first. “It is remarkable how quickly one gets hardened to such things,” Oliver later explained. He spoke with one of the wounded, a soldier from North Carolina. “We got nothing against you people,” he said, “but the war came on and we were forced to go.”⁵

An errant shell hit the chimney of the Benner kitchen, and a second exploded in the kitchen as fighting on Benner Hill later that evening shook the entire area. “A Rebel was leaning against the doorframe,” Oliver remembered, “and the shell cut off the jamb opposite and keeled him over into the yard. But he picked himself up and walked in, brushing the dust off his trousers, no more concerned than if the accident was a mere trifle.” The shell that hit the chimney loosened stones that fell on the wounded on the floor, “but that didn’t seem to alarm them.”⁶

When darkness fell on July 2, the Confederate soldiers covered the windows with blankets, hoping the night would keep them safer. At nine o’clock, the family was relieved to see Christian Benner enter the house. He had stumbled upon a group of Confederates while surveying his wheatfield, and they kept him until dark so that he would not give away their position.⁷

That night, the Benners left home and stayed with Christian’s brother, Daniel, where they remained on July 3. From his house they could hear the sounds of Pickett’s Charge. Later that night, on July 3, Oliver could hear the Confederate wagons as they left their deployments. On July 4, the Benners returned home to find Union soldiers in their house, asking for food. Mrs. Benner made them pancakes. “The whole house was mussed up and turned upside down,” Oliver recalled. The Confederates had dumped out drawers and taken most of their food. They absconded with all five of the Benner horses. “Father was a man who didn’t often say anything, but when we came home after the battle and looked around he said, ‘I feel just like starting off and never looking back.’”⁸ 

The Benners nevertheless remained at their Gettysburg farm. The following year, Simon enlisted and served with the Army of the James, which joined with the Army of the Potomac in the siege of Petersburg. He became ill, likely with malaria, and died in November.

Major Henry Benner survived the war, and returned to Gettysburg. Oliver married and purchased a farm in Fairfield. There were many Benner relatives in the area. In addition to Daniel Benner and his family, Christian and Daniel had a younger brother, Josiah, whose farm in Straban Township north of town also saw much fighting on Gettysburg’s first day. General Francis Barlow, who was severely wounded at Gettysburg, convalesced at Josiah Benner’s home.⁹

Christian Benner died in 1879, and his wife in 1892. Oliver and his wife, Elizabeth, decided to retire from farming in 1900, and they moved back to Gettysburg. Oliver’s home was located at the corner of York and Stratton Streets. In 1914, he was interviewed for a book about the Civil War, entitled Battleground Adventures, which was published the following year. The interviewer found Oliver “hearty and vigorous, and he spoke with ardor as he related those far-gone incidents of the battle.”¹⁰

Oliver’s most vivid recollection was not the day he was almost shot by a sharpshooter. The worst part for him was the sight of the dead. “We had found two dead Rebels lying back of our barn…One had his thumb and every finger of his right hand shot off.” Another was hanging from a tree at the house on the road to town. “A Rebel sharpshooter had climbed up in a tree…and buckled himself fast to a limb with his belt. He was picking off our men…at last they noticed a puff of smoke…that was the last shot he fired. They aimed at the place the smoke came from and killed him, and after the battle, I’ll be dog-goned if he wasn’t still in the tree hanging by his belt.” On Sunday, Oliver walked to Culp’s Hill and watched the burial detail at work. “They were burying the dead there in long narrow ditches about two feet deep. They’d lay a man at the end of the trench and put the next man with the upper half of his body on the first man’s legs and so on. They got ‘em in as thick as they could and only covered them enough to prevent their breeding disease.”¹¹

On July 7, Oliver and his father faced their worst sight. A neighbor told Christian that he saw a dead man in the woods. Oliver accompanied his father and the neighbor to the spot, where the body was “all bloated up, seated leaning against a tree.” It was impossible to grab the dead soldier, so they removed his belt, wrapped it around his lower limbs and dragged him to a spot where they could bury him. “He was so decayed,” Oliver said, “and no sooner did we start with him than his scalp slipped right off. We just turned him in on his side and covered him with earth…That was awful.”¹²

For one so young, as well as for all the others who witnessed Gettysburg, it was awful indeed.

The Benner family attended, along with Christian’s brother, Josiah and his family, the dedication of the National Cemetery on November 19, 1863. Oliver was among those who met Abraham Lincoln and shook his hand.¹³

Oliver Benner lived to the age of 83. He remained a prominent citizen of the town, and his near escape from the day a sharpshooter missed him as he watched the fight from his parents’ attic became legendary. He was among the last surviving civilians from Gettysburg who shook the hand of Abraham Lincoln. His grave is, like many of his family, in Evergreen Cemetery. “The whole fighting business is awful,” Oliver declared. “War is a reflection on Christianity and civilization. It seems to me, in the case of nearly every war, after each side has done its worst…they…begin to settle it by reason. Really, they might have done that in the first place.”¹⁴

Lincoln, and most of the American people, would have definitely agreed with him.



Sources: Ancestry.com: Major Henry Benner and Private Simon Benner Military Records, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Christian Benner Family Tree, Ancestry.com. Benner, Christian, 1860 Census, Adams County, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Josiah Benner Family File, Adams County Historial Society (hereafter ACHS). Oliver Benner Obituary, The Gettysburg Times, September 30, 1927. Johnson, Clifton, “The Farmer’s Son”, Battleground Adventures. Boston & New York: 1915. Copy, Civilian Accounts File, ACHS.

End Notes: 

1. 1860 Census, Christian Benner, National Archives.

2. Johnson, p. 167. Civilian Accounts File, ACHS. 

3. Ibid., p. 169. 

4. Ibid. 

5. Ibid., p. 170. Many Southern men were conscripted, as their population was far fewer than the North’s men. The fact that Oliver, at age 18, was still home must have been noticed by, and distressing to, the men from the South. 

6. Ibid. 

7. Ibid, p. 171. 

8. Ibid. p. 172. 

9. Christian Benner Family Tree, Ancestry.com. 

10. Oliver Benner Obituary, The Gettysburg Times, Sept. 30, 1927. 

11. Johnson, p. 174. 

12. Ibid., p. 176. 

13. Josiah Benner File, ACHS. Oliver Benner Obituary, The Gettysburg Times, Sept. 30, 1927. 

14. Oliver Benner Obituary, The Gettysburg Times, Sept. 30, 1927. Johnson, p. 175.