When the sound of heavy guns thundered, interrupting the quiet summer of 1863 in Gettysburg, the lives of the town’s citizenry was forever changed.  The fight for liberty was sanguinary indeed at the crossroads town of history.  When the musketry ceased and the artillery grew silent, the tide of the war had turned.  A young girl who lived in Gettysburg was one of thousands who never forgot the sacrifice.

The girl, who was sixteen years old when the men in blue and gray came to Gettysburg, had an unusual but appropriate name, considering her patriotic fervor.  Her name was Liberty.

Liberty Augusta Hollinger was born in Heidlersburg, Adams County, in the autumn of 1846.  She was the oldest daughter of Jacob Augustus and Sarah Diehl Hollinger, both Pennsylvania natives.  Called Libbie by her family, Liberty had four younger siblings: Julia, Anna, Alberta, and Augustus (called Gus).  A firstborn son, named John, had died in infancy in 1845.¹

The Hollingers were devoted members of the Christ Lutheran Church on Chambersburg Street.  They were musically talented, intensely patriotic, and read dutifully from the Bible regularly.

Jacob and Sarah Hollinger moved their family to Gettysburg after the children were born, as Jacob had secured work in a local lumber yard and warehouse.  They settled in a spacious home on York Street, near the intersection of the current Hanover Road.  Other members of the family, like Liberty’s Aunt Sallie Diehl, also lived in town.

Jacob Hollinger was forty-one years old when the winds of war blew across the nation, and thus remained at home when most of Gettysburg’s fathers enlisted to fight for the Union.  Liberty remembered that her father, “had a very heavy suit of hair and a long full beard, [which made him look] much older and quite venerable.”²

Liberty recalled the turbulent times during the Battle of Gettysburg.  She and her sister, Julia, watched the Confederates march in force into the town square.  “Many of our neighbors left their homes,” she remembered, “only to encounter greater danger elsewhere.”  Her father quietly and calmly convinced his family to stay at home, taking refuge in the cellar, where they awaited further developments.³

When Liberty’s Aunt Sallie learned that the Hollingers were staying in Gettysburg, she was incredulous.  “She was amazed that we were not going to leave such a dangerous place.  She was intent on going somewhere – anywhere – to get away from the danger.”⁴

The Hollinger house was shaken to its foundation by the roar of the cannon west of town at the battle’s commencement on July 1, 1863.  Feeling unnerved, the family briefly considered leaving after all, but soon realized it would be more perilous to go.  In the afternoon, two wounded Union soldiers passed by the house attempting to reach Cemetery Hill.  “We appealed to them for advice,” Liberty remembered, “and they immediately asked about our cellar.”  Liberty and Julia promptly showed them, and the soldiers told them it was best to stay there.  As the girls climbed the stairs to the main floor, they found their mother unconscious on the floor, having fainted from fright.  The Union soldiers, still in the Hollinger house, stooped to lift the weakened and pitiable mother.  They carried her, and her rocking chair, into the cellar.  “Now, we must hurry,” one said, “or we will be captured by Johnny Reb.”⁵

Liberty was aghast to realize that she and her family had placed the soldiers in such danger.  “We could not help thinking with fear of the two kind soldiers who had delayed their departure in order to give us help and advice,” she later said. They were overjoyed to learn that both, Captain Lloyd Harris and Lieutenant John Beely, of the 6th Wisconsin Infantry, had escaped capture and survived the battle.⁶

With their father away, Liberty and Julia hurried to bring their younger siblings into the cellar.  As they gathered there, another explosion from a detonated shell shook the house.  The noised roused their mother, who asked, “Have they shot the town?”  Gettysburg was indeed being mercilessly pummeled, but the girls were so glad to see their mother conscious that they didn’t worry about the battle at that time.⁷

Once the first day’s battle had ended, the Confederates infiltrated the town.  That evening, the Hollinger girls saw someone ride past their home, who appeared just as venerable as their father.  They recognized the silver-haired general at once.  He was Robert E. Lee.  He was conferring with other generals in the coming twilight.

“They were in front of our house for quite a whil ,” Liberty wrote, “while General Lee was observing the hills south of the town through his field glasses…I heard him say to the officers near him something like this: ‘Those hills all around are natural fortresses….Wonderful, wonderful….It will be very difficult to capture them or dislodge the troops holding them.”⁸

Although they were impressed by the august presence of General Lee, Libbie and Julia seemed far more interested in a young, handsome officer on Lee’s staff.  Sitting atop a beautiful sorrel horse, he was finely dressed with a red silk sash that reached from his shoulder to his waist, a large red tassel dangling to his knee.  “He seemed to give no heed to what his master was saying about the wonderful hills where our men were entrenched,” Liberty recalled.  Julia bravely approached the officer and spoke to him, warning him that the Union was going to defeat them.  “He looked at her quizzically and seemed rather amused,” Liberty said, “but he made no unkind or harsh reply to her statements.”⁹

That evening the Confederates searched the deserted homes for food, shelter, and Union prisoners in hiding.  They found many families hiding inside, who had stayed like the Hollingers had.  “What seemed to dishearten them more than anything else,” Liberty wrote, “was the fact that on the farms and in the towns there seemed to be so many able-bodied men left for service in any emergency…Whereas they knew that with them all their men, young and old, were in the ranks with no reserves left.  They realized that the North could continue the war indefinitely while they had about exhausted their resources.”¹⁰

The Hollinger family attempted to remain in their cellar for the next two days as the battle continued.  They ate their food cold and by candlelight.  Father Jacob left the house only to feed their cow and mare, which so far had amazingly remained behind the house.  A group of Union sharpshooters hidden in a field near the Culp Farm kept firing at him.  A group of helpful Confederates gave Mr. Hollinger life-saving advice: “Why, man,” one officer told him, “take off that gray suit, they think you are a Johnny Reb.”  Jacob changed into his black suit, ending that particular trouble.¹¹

The young age of the Southern dead after the battle was made painfully apparent to the Hollingers, who spent countless hours caring for the many wounded and dying left in town.  During one of her mother’s visits to a field hospital, “she found a young Confederate soldier, a mere boy…He seemed so happy to see her, and begged her to come see him again.  He said he loved to look at her because she reminded him so much of his mother.”  Mrs. Hollinger returned the next day but could not locate him.  After a few questions to the staff, she learned that the boy had died.  His passing affected her deeply, as she had wanted to keep her promise to him.¹²

At approximately the same time, a “tall and fine looking” officer came to the Hollinger house.  He was “a perfect gentleman in appearance and manners,” Liberty remembered, “but he seemed weary.”  The officer, a surgeon, asked to sit on the family’s porch, and Mrs. Hollinger readily assented.  Young Annie Hollinger, age 9, was interested in the soldier and approached him for a closer look.  “He took her hand,” Liberty wrote, “and asked Mother if he might hold her on his knee.”  Again, Sarah Hollinger agreed.  Since she was preparing supper, she invited the surgeon but he politely declined.  He said he was “too heartsick from amputating limbs all day” and could not possibly eat.  It was then that the girls noticed his blood-stained trousers.  After he left, Annie told them she had seen him by the carpenter’s shop.  “There was a big pile of legs and arms outside the window,” she said.¹³

Annie’s experience with the surgeon prompted a keen interest in amputated limbs.  One day while walking through the fields, she found a severed hand among the shallow graves.  It appeared “ like dried parchment so that it looked like it was covered with a kid glove,” Liberty said.  It was a common sight “to see a hand or foot protruding from the ground ” in those days.¹⁴

To keep Annie from locating any more of the ghoulish treasures, Libbie took army coats with her when walking through the fields and covered up the exposed limbs.

A horrid stench of death pervaded the town of Gettysburg after the battle, and the civilians often sickened from it. The Hollingers were no exception, and Liberty was the only member of her family who did not become ill from the miasmic effects.  Even her father fell ill with a fever, which weakened him considerably.  Even so, he arose and ministered to the wounded, because there was such a great need.

The Hollingers’ mare, Hannah, had been captured by the Confederates, but as she was too aged to be of use, they left her and Jacob soon found her.  He hitched her to the family wagon, filled the bed with straw, and traversed the fields, finding surviving wounded and taking them to Camp Letterman, the more permanent field hospital, for care.

Within a week of the battle, the citizens who had fled now returned.  They discovered to their dismay that their homes had been looted and ransacked.  Some of the Hollinger neighbors criticized Liberty’s parents for not protecting their property.  “We felt somewhat indignant after our terrible experiences,” Liberty wrote, “to have some of our neighbors blame us because we did not watch over their houses.”  Indeed, the Hollinger family had watched over something far more precious: the life’s blood of the soldiers who were dying in plain sight.  “They did not seem to realize,” she explained,  that to save lives was the sole concern of those frightful days – property and material things faded into the background.”¹⁵

The Hollingers lived just two blocks east of the Square, and were nearby when Abraham Lincoln came to Gettysburg.  Liberty and Julia walked the short distance to the Wills House where Lincoln stayed the evening before giving his Gettysburg Address.  Liberty watched Lincoln from an upstairs window.  “He was pacing back and forth, back and forth, as if in deep study,” she said.  “The chief impression made on me as a child was of the inexpressible sadness on his face, which was in so marked contrast with what was going on down below [outside in the Square], where all was excitement and where everybody was having such a jolly time.”¹⁶

Coupled with the Southern defeat at Gettysburg and Lincoln’s famous speech, the Union populace remained steadfast in determination to save the nation.  Lincoln’s reelection was secured and the war ended a few weeks after his second Inaugural.  When the war ended in 1865, Liberty was eighteen years old.  She began teaching at a school in town that was connected to the Lutheran Seminary.  While there she met a young Lutheran minister, Jacob Clutz.  They were married in 1872.  His work in the ministry took them to Kansas, where they lived for many years.  Seven children were born to the couple: Franklin, Paul, Ralph, Claude, Edith, Julia, and Ruth.¹⁷

While Jacob Clutz served as President of Midland College in Kansas, he and Liberty were invited to the home of a Civil War veteran, a Mr. Hurah, who lived in nearby Lancaster, Kansas.  Having served in the Quartermaster Department for the Army of the Potomac, Mr. Hurah had been at Gettysburg.  When he learned that Liberty had lived in Gettysburg, he asked her if she might remember a man who lived in town who had impressed him with his untiring service to the wounded.  “ He was a fine, gray-haired gentleman,” he said, “who had a grain and lumber yard.  He was very fond of reading the Bible.”¹⁸

“I at once recognized the description as being of my father,” Liberty recalled, “and was only too happy and pleased to tell him who the man was.”¹⁹

Before the turn of the century, Liberty followed her husband back to Gettysburg, where he took a position at the Lutheran Theological Seminary.  While three of their grown children remained in Kansas, the younger ones relocated to Pennsylvania with their parents.  Jacob and Sarah Hollinger were still there, both advanced to a great age.  Jacob died in 1905.  Sarah followed in 1908.²⁰

In July 1925, 62 years after the Battle of Gettysburg, Liberty’s memories began to stir.  With gentle prodding by her children and grandchildren, she began to write a memoir of her life during the summer of 1863.  “As I think over the events of those tense and stirring times,” she wrote, “ I cannot help feeling again some of the mental and physical strain under which we passed our days and nights…the tenseness and strain served to fix impressions on my young mind so indelibly that now that I have grown old, I find them clear and undimmed.”²¹

Dr. Jacob Clutz served on the board that organized the Grand Reunion at Gettysburg in 1913 – an event that took eight years to prepare.  Liberty attended many of the special events during the reunion, including seeing President Woodrow Wilson as he addressed the veterans.  He reminded her of the time she saw another President, fifty years earlier, who had amazed her with his sad countenance.

Tragedy struck Liberty Clutz in 1925.  Her husband, Jacob, was killed while attending a conference in Sweden.  He was struck by a car while crossing a busy street.  Devastated by the loss, Liberty moved in with her daughter, Ruth Eckert, who lived near the Seminary on Spring Street.  Liberty lived as a widow for three years.²²

On December 1, 1928, Liberty died at her daughter’s home at age 82.  At the time of her passing, she had eight grandchildren.²³

The house and the lumberyard that had been the Hollinger home in 1863 no longer stands.  The dirt roads leading into town are now paved, and the bustling traffic into America’s most historic town continues to bring visitors from all over the world.

The consequences of war have faded from the fields of southern Pennsylvania, but the horror of those dreaded days is documented, thanks to some who lived through them.  We can be forever grateful to the young girl with the patriotic name and the liberty for which she and her family devotedly stood during America’s worst battle, and its equally horrific aftermath.