The Leister Home

(Author photo)

On July 2, 1863, surrounded by the shadow of night, a group of Union generals crowded in a small room in a miniscule house on Cemetery Ridge. The cottage, serving as General Meade’s headquarters, was situated in the center of the Union defensive line at Gettysburg. The clandestine meeting held that night proved to be pivotal for the battle that had already been raging for two full days.

The tiny Leister farm, which Meade had chosen as his headquarters, was “little more than a hut”. Up to the time of the battle the place housed a widow and several of her children. Unfortunately for its owner, the Leister home, located in a swale behind the deployed Union troops, proved to be in an unlucky location.1

The Leister house still stands today on the Taneytown Road just behind the High-Water Mark of the Confederacy on Cemetery Ridge. Located just south of town in Cumberland Township, the English style clapboard house is fashioned of Red Oak planks and topped with a shake roof, common in 19th century dwellings. Although the date of its exact origin is unknown, it is definitely an antebellum structure.

The land which housed the Leister Farm was first purchased, according to Adams County records, by Thomas Nolan. Mr. Nolan later sold the property to Henry Bishop in 1840. Mr. Bishop constructed a log home on the premises and added a barn to the property before selling the farm to Lydia Leister in 1860.2

Lydia Leister, the owner of the property during the war, was the former Lydia Study. Born in Carroll County, Maryland, the dates of her birth vary – she entered the world either in 1808, 1809, or 1811. She came from a large family. Her father, John Martin Study, was a respectable physician. Her brother, David, followed in his father’s footsteps and practiced medicine in nearby Taneytown, Maryland. Her sister, Catherine, married Gettysburg farmer John Slyder. Their farm was located in the dale below Big Round Top, and can easily be seen from Devil’s Den.3

Lydia married James Leister, also born in Maryland, in 1830 in Pennsylvania. Seven children were born to the couple: Angeline, James Jr., Eliza Jane, Amos, Daniel, Hannah, and Anna Matilda. James was chronically ill by the time the family moved to Pennsylvania in 1855. It is likely that Lydia, who knew her husband did not have long to live (apparently, he suffered from tuberculosis), wanted to be near extended family. James died in 1859, and less than a year later, Lydia Leister bought her Gettysburg farm on Cemetery Ridge.4

The house at the time consisted of a kitchen and small sitting room on the ground floor. A shaded porch is located on the south side of the building. By the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, four of Lydia’s children remained of the original seven. Daughter Angeline had died, James Jr. was a Union soldier and away fighting the war, and Eliza Jane had married. Amos, who was 21 in 1863, stayed on the farm to help his mother with the work. The 1860 census listed three adults and three children in the house. Since James was not yet at war in 1860, and Amos was of age, they made up the three adults in the house. Daniel, Hannah, and Anna Matilda were still considered minors.5

Just as Gettysburg had the misfortune of being located at the junction of ten roads, where soldiers had been marching toward one another that summer in 1863, Lydia Leister’s farm was centrally located in the middle of the Federal line of deployment. General Meade, who arrived in the early hours of July 2, 1863, chose the home because of its ideal location for him and his troops to reconnoiter. He wisely urged Mrs. Leister to flee with her children, and she promptly obeyed. She and her family took refuge with Lydia’s brother, David, in Taneytown.

While Mrs. Leister later regretted leaving her property because of the extensive damage it suffered, it was fortunate that she and her progeny left the area, as her farm became one of the most dangerous places on the battlefield.6

General Robert E. Lee, a by-the-book commander, had been using the outdated Napoleonic tactics for over a year, and it worked to his advantage over the younger Union generals such as McClellan, Pope, and Hooker. General Meade, however, was a bit older, and he remembered some of the old tactics, used to perfection decades before by the French military leader. Napoleon had written in his book on warfare the secret to winning a battle: Hit the flanks of the enemy line, try to surround them and cut off any hope of escape. If this tactic fails, the enemy will then strengthen his flanks in anticipation of another similar attack. Instead, hit the enemy line in the center, because it will be, supposedly, the weakest spot on the line.

The ruse had worked for Napoleon many times, until the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 when the Duke of Wellington had figured out his tactics. The same happened at Gettysburg, as George Meade was also familiar with them. During his Counsel of War that July 2 in Lydia Leister’s sitting room, General Meade vocalized his certainty: “If Lee attacks tomorrow,” he said to General John Gibbon, a division commander in the center, “it will be in your front.”7

On the next day, July 3, Lee proved Meade right.

The troops and civilians alike were awakened before dawn with artillery pounding Culp’s Hill – Lee’s last attempt at turning the Union flank. When the Union lines held, an uneasy quiet pervaded the field. At the Leister house, George Meade sat on a box eating stew and drinking coffee. At approximately 1 p.m. a shell hissed through the air and landed near the Leister home. Meade jumped up and ran for his horse. Just minutes after he did so, another shell exploded where he had sat. One shell hit the Leister roof, another hit inside one of the rooms. Two Union officers, Lt. Washington Roebling and General Seth Williams, missed being killed by inches. The fragment killed one of the staff orderlies and seriously wounded Meade’s Chief of Staff Dan Butterfield.8

In addition to the human toll, a number of Union horses on the Leister property were killed. “The sight around Meade’s headquarters…was terrible,” remembered Gettysburg boy Daniel Skelly. “Around the house and below it lay at least 12 or 15 dead horses, shot down no doubt while aides and orderlies were delivering orders and messages to headquarters.”9

According to another eyewitness, the number of slain horses was sixteen, and Mrs. Leister, after her return, claimed the number was seventeen.10 

Although General Meade realized the peril of the situation of his headquarters, he did not wish to move to an otherwise unknown location, where his troops would not be able to find him.

The artillery barrage lasted about two hours. It was followed by Pickett’s Charge, Lee’s Napoleonic assault on the Union center. The charge, which was excessively deadly, lasted less than an hour, and failed. Cemetery Ridge had taken a devastating toll.

Lydia Leister returned to her home to find it in ruins. The shell damage to her home was extensive, her furniture had been destroyed, bedding was unusable – much of it drenched with blood. Other items had been carried off. Her food supply was also gone, her crops and fencing destroyed. Her water supply was poisoned and dead men and horses surrounded her property.

Yet, she stayed and worked to make her home habitable once again.11

In 1865, a journalist named John Trowbridge stopped at the Leister home to interview the Widow Leister. He described her as “a barefooted woman…with a German face and a strong German accent…drawing water at the well.” When he asked her about the ages of her daughters, she claimed that she did not know. Her son, James had survived the war and was expected home at any time. She described the damages to her property and the losses she had seen upon her return to her farm: “There was seventeen dead horses on my land,” she said. “They burnt five of ‘em around my best peach tree, and killed it, so I ha’n’t no peaches this year. They broke down all my young apple trees…the dead horses spoiled my spring, so I had to have my well dug.” Two years after the great battle, Lydia Leister, like many Gettysburg farmers, still lamented their personal losses.12

After the war, with her grown sons helping her, Lydia added a second story to her small home. She purchased additional acreage for her property from her neighbor Peter Frey. In 1888 she sold the farm to the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association, and made a decent profit on the sale. She then purchased a home on the Emmitsburg Road at the edge of town. She lived there for the remainder of her days, dying at the age of 84 (or possibly slightly younger) on December 29, 1893. She is buried in Evergreen Cemetery.13

Today the Leister home is maintained by the National Park Service.

A serene solitude wafts over the now quiet fields of Gettysburg. The pastoral scene belies the horror that happened there during the summer of 1863. The resolute and hard-working Lydia Leister rebuilt that which was ruined during those awful days, and her little hut has earned its place in history as most likely the smallest house used as a headquarters for any wartime general. And, she lived to tell the tale.

A 19th century photo of the Leister Farm

(National Park Service)

Sources: Cleaves, Freeman. Meade of Gettysburg. Norman, OK: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1960. The Gettysburg Compiler, January 3, 1888. Coddington, Edwin B. The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968. Lydia (Study) Leister Family Tree, Ancestry.com. Leister Family File, Adams County Historical Society (hereafter ACHS). Lydia Leister Last will and Testament, Lydia Leister Estate File, ACHS. Pfanz, Harry W. Gettysburg: The Second Day. Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1987. Skelly, Daniel. “A Boy’s Experiences During the Battle of Gettysburg”. Civilian Accounts Files, ACHS. Trowbridge, John. “The Leister House.” Leister Home File, ACHS. U.S. Census, Cumberland County Record, 1860. Copy, Ancestry.com.

End Notes: 

1. Trowbridge, Leister House File, ACHS. 

2. Leister House File, ACHS. 

3. Lydia Study Leister Family Tree, Ancestry.com. 

4. Leister House File, ACHS. Lydia Study  Leister Family Tree, Ancestry.com. 

5. Pfanz, p. 486. 

6. 1860 US Census, Cumberland County, PA. 

7. Cleves, pp. 155-157. Gibbon actually commanded the Second Corps on July 3, as Hancock was a wing commander during that time. 

8. Coddington, p. 496. Cleves, p. 160. 

9. Skelly, p. 21. Coddington, p. 496. 

10. Trowbridge, Leister House File, ACHS. 

11. Leister House File, ACHS. 

12. Trowbridge, Leister House File, ACHS. 



13. The Gettysburg Compiler, Jan. 3, 1888. Lydia Leister Last Will & Testament, copy, ACHS. Her tombstone in Evergreen gives her age as 84.