The George Spangler home

(Author photo)

Nestled between fields and timber, a stone house and red bank barn still stand just south of Gettysburg. The attractive farm was owned for much of the nineteenth century by George Spangler, who lived there from 1848 until his death in 1904. All was not pristine and pleasant for George and his family, however, during the summer of 1863.

George Spangler was the eldest son of farmer and prolific property owner Abraham Spangler and his wife, Mary. George was just a youth when he lost his mother, and his father soon remarried. In all, Abraham Spangler was the father of eleven children. It was George’s half-brother Henry, the eldest son of the second marriage, who inherited much of his father’s estate. Henry’s farm is the one located on what would become the fields of Pickett’s Charge in the summer of 1863. The brothers lived only a few miles apart. 

George was “a man of truthfulness and honesty in all things.” He was a dedicated farmer, and worked the land tirelessly. He purchased the farm that would bear his name in 1848 from Henry Bishop. Bishop had purchased the land from the former owner, John Dodds, who lived in an old log house on the property located in Cumberland Township just south of Gettysburg. Mr. Dodds received the land by purchasing it from the Manor of Maske, a large tract of land originally owned by the heirs of William Penn, situated on and around what would become the Borough of Gettysburg.1 

George and his wife, Elizabeth, were the parents of nine children: Harriet, Benjamin, Sabina Catherine, Daniel, Almira, Beniah, Mary, George, and Emma. The family needed a larger abode than the old log cabin where John Dodds had lived. George built a spacious stone house, which, by the summer of 1863, was two stories high. There was also a fine bank barn, a summer kitchen, a smokehouse, and a wash house. Through the decades, the farm was always in “first class condition”. Mr. Spangler’s farm also contained orchards, a wheatfield, a corn field, an oat field, and a meadow for his livestock. There was plentiful timber of oak and hickory trees that surrounded the property, and a stream ran through for the watering of livestock.2

The idyllic existence came to an abrupt end in the early summer of 1863. By that time, only four of George Spangler’s children remained at home. On June 30 and July 1, 1863, the Union army, which came for battle, camped in Spangler’s fields. By the evening, the Federal Eleventh Corps established a field hospital on George Spangler’s farm.3

George and Elizabeth decided to stay on their farm, partly to keep their eyes on their property. It was, after all, miles from the battlefield, and the stone walls would stop any bullets from penetrating their home. They soon regretted their decision, as artillery shells shrieked and exploded, and wounded and dying filled their barn and the lower floor of their home. It was estimated that up to 1800 wounded were at George’s farm at one time.

“Our hospital is a large barn and is full of some 200 on the first floor where I am,” a soldier from the 17th Connecticut Infantry wrote to his wife. “There are some 80 men in the barn with legs and arms off & it is enough to make one’s heart bleed to witness the amputations.” He added, “You know nothing of the horrors of war & cannot until you go & see it for yourself.”4

Through the duration of the battle, the Spangler family waited, trapped, on the second story of their home.

In addition to the Eleventh Corps wounded, some of the wounded from Pickett's Charge were also placed at the Spangler Farm. Brigadier General Lewis A. Armistead, a commander in Pickett’s Charge, fell mortally wounded at the High-Water Mark on Cemetery Ridge. He was taken to George Spangler’s farm, where he was placed in the summer kitchen. “Armistead did not groan or move” after he was shot, and for a while those around him thought he was already dead. 5

Armistead lived for two days at George Spangler’s summer kitchen, before expiring on July 5.6

Another who died at the Spangler Farm was the ancestor of a future U.S. President. George Nixon, a private in the 73rd Ohio Infantry and father of nine children, was severely wounded while fighting near the cemetery on the second day. Part of Colonel Orland Smith’s Brigade, Nixon was a member of the Eleventh Corps – so it was natural that he would be taken to the corps field hospital. He died on July 14, 1863.7

There were hundreds more who breathed their last on the Spangler Farm. The overcrowded conditions, the heat, and the miasma of death worsened for all in the vicinity. “The offal and skins of cattle slaughtered for beef were left just where the animals were killed,” one surgeon at the field hospital wrote. “All of those vile things were left unburied…the sink holes of the men were uncovered…and the stench from all these sources pollutes and poisoned the air.”8

When the guns of battle finally grew silent and the Spanglers could leave their home at last, George Spangler surveyed his ruined property. When Mr. Spangler requested reimbursement from the U.S. Government, he claimed that his property was used as a hospital for 37 days.9

George Spangler spent nearly two decades attempting to receive funds for his damaged and destroyed property – to no avail. He requested over three thousand dollars for his destroyed oat, corn and wheat crops, his ruined fences and barn, the depletion of his stores and the damage to his home. In all, he received just ninety dollars.10

George Spangler repaired and replaced his broken farm, and continued to work until all was restored. He and Elizabeth, and their children lived to see the new century. 

At the beginning of the year 1904, Mr. Spangler worked in the freezing temperatures, chopping wood for many hours. He took cold, and returned to his home. He never recovered, and died on February 2, 1904 of “exposure added to infirmities of old age.” He was 88 years old. Until his death, he had never had an illness – a trait shared by many of his family. At his funeral, five of his eleven siblings attended, including Henry, whose farm had also seen much damage from Pickett’s Charge.11 

George Spangler was buried in Evergreen Cemetery. His wife, Elizabeth, died in 1907.12

Today, the farm and former field hospital is owned by the National Park Service and is operated by the Gettysburg Foundation.

The farm today is reminiscent of the owner who, during the Civil War “was very efficient” and “honest”. The granite home and summer kitchen stand near the magnificent barn. The bucolic surroundings belie the awful scenes witnessed in the summer of 1863. Like its owner after the Battle of Gettysburg, the Spangler farm has survived the horrors of war, and thrived.13

The Spangler barn

(Author photo)



Sources: Ancestry.com: The George Spangler Family Tree. Cole, James M. and Roy Frampton. Lincoln and the Human Interest Stories of the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Hanover, PA: Sheridan Press, 1995. The Gettysburg Compiler, Feb. 3, 1904. The Gettysburg Compiler, Feb. 17, 1904. The Gettysburg Compiler, Sept. 8, 1904. The Gettysburg Compiler, Sept. 21, 1904. Glatfelter, Charles H., Wayne E. Motts, and Arthur Weaner. “The Chain of Title for Manor of Maske: Tract 241: The George Spangler Farm”. August 2008. Copy, Gettysburg National Military Park (hereafter GNMP). Kirkwood, Ronald D. “Tell Mother Not to Worry”: Soldier Stories from Gettysburg’s George Spangler Farm. El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie Publishers, 2024. Quartermaster Claims: Record Group #92, George Spangler Farm, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Transcribed by Kathy Georg Harrison, May 2011, copy GNMP. Rollins, Richard, ed. Pickett’s Charge! Eyewitness Accounts. Redondo Beach, CA: Rank and File Publications, 1994. Warner, Ezra J. Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1994 (reprint, originally published in 1959). Welch, Dan. “Eyewitness and Primary Source Accounts of the XI Corps Field Hospital at the George Spangler Farm”. Compiled for the 150th anniversary of the battle, 2013. Copy, GNMP. All historical newspapers found at newspapers.com.

End Notes:

1. Compiler, Feb. 3, 1904. Glatfelter, Motts and Weaner, p. 1. 

2. Ancestry.com: George Spangler Family   Tree. The Gettysburg Compiler, Sept. 8, 1904. Quartermaster Claims, #92, GNMP. 

3. Ibid. 

4. Kirkwood, p. 22. 

5. Rollins, p. 192. Armistead, born in 1817, was 46 at his death.

6. Warner, p. 12. 

7. Cole, James and Roy Frampton, p. 38. Welch, p. 85. 

8. Kirkwood, p. 64. 

9. Welch, 150th Anniversary Compilation,  GNMP. 

10. Ibid. 

11. The Gettysburg Compiler, Feb. 3, 1904. 

12. The Gettysburg Compiler, Sept. 21, 1904. 



13. The Gettysburg Compiler, Feb. 17, 1904.