Two mothers, who had been girls during the Battle of Gettysburg, often shared their experiences with their children and other family members of the younger generation. One of them, Lydia Zeigler Clare, remembered, “My children have long been urging me to give them in a short story my experience in the battle.” The other, Mary Elizabeth Monfort Melchoir, affirmed that her children, and nieces and nephews, insisted that she write down such an important chapter of American history. These two Gettysburg girls, at ages 12 and 13 in 1863, have recorded their summer that year – a most unforgettable July if there ever was one.
Mary Elizabeth Montfort, aged 12 in 1863, lived west of town with her mother, her grandmother, and her younger sister, Jennie Ann, who was six years old. Her father was a soldier in the Army of the Potomac. He had been granted a short leave in early June, and had visited his family in Gettysburg. When he left to go back to the fight, Mary Elizabeth was broken hearted. “I miss Father,” she wrote in her diary. She didn’t know if she would ever see him again.
Lydia Zeigler, aged 13, was the youngest of six children. Her father, Emanuel Zeigler, worked at the Lutheran Seminary. The family lived in the main building, Schmucker Hall, on the first floor.
“I shall never forget the June afternoon when I stood on the Seminary steps with my parents,” Lydia recalled, “to see a Confederate host marching in the Chambersburg Pike.” The day was June 26, and General Early’s Division of troops invaded the town, hoping to find provisions. Lydia thought that the Confederates were the most “ragged and unkempt set of men” she had ever seen. After being satisfied that no Union soldiers were near, Early’s men continued on to the north and east, toward York. A few days later, Union soldiers, a detachment of General John Buford’s cavalry, arrived. “We were glad,” she wrote, “by seeing regiment after regiment of our own men come and encamp around us. We gave them a royal welcome.”
The Zeiglers and other local families fed the soldiers some home-cooked meals, which the men greatly appreciated. “How well do I remember the happiness it gave me to hand out the cakes and pies that our kind mother made until late at night for those boys in blue,” Lydia remarked.
On the night of June 30th, Lydia climbed into the cupola of the Seminary and noticed a string of campfires in the mountains to the west. She knew that they belonged to the Confederates. “In the near distance we could see a large circle of men engaged in prayer, and as the breezes came our way, we could hear their petitions which ascended to the Father in heaven for His protecting care on the morrow.” Others were “singing with hearty good will, oblivious to the dangers threatening them.” Many were patriotic songs, such as The Star Spangled Banner, which Lydia confessed she “loved to hear.”
The next day, July 1, brought sounds of a different sort, sounds that were not so pleasant. The foreboding unrest gave way to the boom of cannon early in the morning, and filled the townspeople with terror. Eager to see the battle, Lydia crept outside from the safety of the Seminary building to the woods nearby. She was watching “an awe-inspiring scene, when a bullet flew so near my head that I could hear the whizzing sound it made.” A signal officer from the cupola called to her to get out of harm’s way, and she promptly obeyed, returning to the house.
Elizabeth Montfort and her family remained inside her home north of town while the battle raged around them. During the late afternoon, Confederate soldiers entered houses, looking for Union soldiers. Elizabeth remembered that they stuck their bayonets in woodpiles, in beds, ruining quilts and blankets, and even checking in chimney flues for anyone who might attempt to avoid capture. When the fighting died down, Mary Elizabeth and her mother headed to the train station where they heard that there were wounded soldiers.
At the train station, Mary Elizabeth saw a familiar face. It was her father. She knelt beside him and he opened his eyes. “Father looked at me,” she remembered, “and said, 'Mary Elizabeth', and then he closed his eyes. He had been hit by a shell. There was a big hole in his side. Mother told me to go home and take care of Grandma and Jennie Ann.” She kissed him and walked toward the door that led to Carlisle Street. It was the last time she would see her father alive. As she prepared to open the door, seeing the chaos outside, a soldier also watching the action in the streets warned her, “Look at that fighting, little girl. You’d better get out of here, fast.”
The streets thronged with soldiers in blue and gray, as they hurried from the field of battle. Wounded men, men on horseback, and men on foot crowded the streets as to make them nearly impassable. Shells burst in the air and the crackle of musketry could be heard. Amazingly, Mary Elizabeth made it home to her grandmother and her younger sister. When she reached the house, she saw that their cow, Bessie, was hidden in the parlor to keep her from becoming contraband. The ruse worked, and the cow survived the battle and remained with the Montforts.
Unlike the Montforts, the Zeiglers chose not to stay in Gettysburg. As the Seminary filled with the wounded and the dying, Emanuel took his wife and children and fled to the village of Two Taverns, about five miles south of town. They remained there with friends until the battle ended.
When the Zeiglers returned three days later, they rode in a cart to the Round Tops, then walked the rest of the way home, a journey of three miles. “We decided to walk,” Lydia recalled, “for the ground was thickly strewn with unexploded shells, which were likely to burst of struck.” The walk took much longer than expected, as they met hundreds of wounded soldiers lying in their path, many of them without any food or water for days. The Zeiglers had been given several loaves of bread, and promptly fed the famished men. “I can picture to my mind even to this day my father and mother as they stood by these wounded men, father with his pocket knife cutting off pieces of the bread which my mother would have to put into the mouths of some who were too weak even to lift the bread to their lips, or take the water which we children carried from the little streams or springs nearby in cups made by fastening leaves together.” She plaintively added, “Pen cannot describe the awful sights which met our gaze that day.”
For Mary Elizabeth Montfort, the aftermath was equally dreadful. On July 4th she wrote in her diary, “Today is supposed to be a holiday, but it is a sad day for Gettysburg. No matter where you look, there are soldiers hurt and dying. There are [dead] horses everywhere. The terrible smell all through the town is worse than the time we found a dead rat behind the loose boards in the cellar.”
Lydia Zeigler described similar horrors. “The dying and dead were all around us,” she wrote. “We could count as high as twenty dead horses lying side by side. Imagine, If you can, the stench of one dead animal lying in the hot July sun for days. Here they were by the hundreds.” Working all day ministering to the needs of the myriad wounded, it was night before they reached home. “Oh, what a homecoming!” Lydia lamented. “Everything we owned was gone – not a bed to lie on, not a change of clothing. Many things had been destroyed, and the rest had been converted to hospital purposes.” Yet, like the Montforts, the Zeiglers’ two cows were spared. The soldiers had used them for milk, and so they survived.
In the ensuing days, with over 20,000 wounded left behind in Gettysburg, the 2400 civilians were pressed into service until the train tracks could be repaired and fresh recruits could arrive in town to help with the wounded and the dying. “Many a poor fellow died within the first ten days after the battle for want of care and nourishing food,” Lydia recalled.
In the Seminary, both Union and Confederate soldiers received care. Where Mary Elizabeth and her family provided aid, most of the unfortunates were Confederates, about 50 in all. “I met a soldier who was 16 years old,” Mary Elizabeth remembered. “He kept asking for [cornmeal] mush and milk. We don’t have any cornmeal to make mush. Another soldier kept asking me for pickles. We didn’t have any but I knew that Mrs. Wagner had a whole shelf full in her cellar. She gave me some and I gave them to the soldier, who hid one under his pillow so he would have it to eat later on.”
“Nights and days were alike spent in trying to alleviate the suffering of the wounded and dying," Lydia recalled. "How often did I receive the dying message of a father or husband to send to his loved ones whom he would never again meet on earth! I shall ever hold in sweet memory the repeatedly uttered, ‘God bless you, my girl!’ from poor fellows after receiving some little act of kindness had been shown them.”
One particular event stood out in Lydia’s memory. She saw an elderly couple, sitting, exhausted, outside the Seminary, about a week after the battle. When she asked if she could be of any assistance, the gentleman replied that they were from Chambersburg, looking for their son. He was the youngest of four, and the last one still surviving, as the other three had been killed in the war. When the parents heard that their Charlie had been in the Battle of Gettysburg, they were frantic with worry. They had walked the twenty-one miles from Chambersburg, as no other mode of transportation had been available. Lydia noticed that the mother held a satchel full of food and “dainties” that her Charlie liked.
Lydia took the couple into the Seminary and there they found their son, desperately wounded and “in a dying condition.” Lydia’s own heart broke as she watched the grief-stricken mother bend over her unconscious son and weep. “For a short time consciousness returned to Charlie, and he knew his parents.” The next morning, the young soldier died and his parents returned to Chambersburg with their son’s body to bury him at home.
Mary Elizabeth met Abraham Lincoln when he came to Gettysburg to deliver his famous oration. The Montforts, who had lost their father in the Battle of Gettysburg, were close to the dais and listened attentively to the President’s words. Mary Elizabeth remembered scant applause after his speech, and the prompt end of the ceremony afterward. As Lincoln stepped down from the platform, Mary Elizabeth stood by the steps and looked into his face. He, too, returned her gaze. “Hello young lady,” he said to the girl. “Who are you?” He reached to take her hand and she grasped his hand in her own. “I’m Mary Elizabeth,” she said. She later acknowledged that her moment with the President was “the greatest moment in my life.”
More great moments of life were in store for Mary Elizabeth and Lydia Zeigler, who lived to adulthood and enjoyed the years of motherhood and grandmotherhood. Both married ministers. Mary Elizabeth wed Pastor Oliver Melchoir from Bucks County, Pennsylvania and made her life in that part of the state. Lydia married Richard Clare on a much happier 4th of July than she had known at Gettysburg in the wake of the battle nine years earlier. The couple had six children, five of them boys; and all the sons became pastors like their father.
Perhaps Gettysburg, Pennsylvania proved to be a great training ground for these two Gettysburg girls, giving them ample experience in selflessness and work to ease the suffering of thousands in the most horrendous of circumstances one summer in 1863.
Sources: Clare, Lydia Catherine Zeigler, “A Gettysburg Girl’s Story of the Great Battle.” 1900, Gettysburg Civilian Accounts File, Adams County Historical Society, Gettysburg, PA. Mary Elizabeth Montfort Account, Gettysburg Civilian File, Adams County Historical Society, Gettysburg, PA.
