During the summer of 1863, the civilians in Gettysburg were tasked with a herculean duty: to care for the myriad wounded and dying left behind in their town after the battle.  Throughout the days and weeks after the fight, the groans of the suffering replaced the roaring of the guns.  With few in both armies left behind to care for those who had fallen, the men and women of Gettysburg rose to the occasion.  Among them was a woman who is nearly forgotten, as she had no descendants to remember her.  The devotion she showed to the suffering at Gettysburg marked the beginning of a lifetime of service.  Her name was Allie Powers.

Alice Cummings Powers was born in Gettysburg on September 25, 1842.  She was the second from the youngest of six girls born to Solomon and Catherine Powers.  Her sisters were Cynthia, Jane, Mary, Elizabeth Virginia, and Lydia.  Their great aunt, the former Abigail Powers,  married Millard Fillmore, the 13th President of the United States.¹

Solomon and Catherine Powers had courted and married in Baltimore – the hometown of Mrs. Powers.  They moved to Gettysburg in 1838, when their third daughter, Mary, was an infant.  Solomon was hired to help with the railroad being constructed in Gettysburg: the brainchild of Thaddeus Stevens, in what came to be known as the Tapeworm Railroad, as it took many years to finish – at a significant cost to the taxpayers.  Soon Mr. Powers left that employment and became a stone mason, the first stone cutter to live west of the Susquehanna River.²

Both Solomon and Catherine Powers encouraged service and kindness in their daughters.  Mrs. Powers was the model of Victorian grace, and many soldiers who came to know her during and after the Battle of Gettysburg called her “the Angel of Mercy.”³

The family lived on the corner of High and Washington Streets, just a few doors away from the St. Francis Xavier Catholic church.  Just across the street from their home stood a young ladies’ academy, funded by the Lutheran Theological Seminary.  Both Allie Powers and her neighbor and friend, Salome Myers, were young teachers.  Sallie Myers had just reached 21 years of age just days before the battle, and Allie was still twenty years old.  She would pass her 21st birthday the following September.

Allie was the only one of the six Powers women to remain unmarried all her life.  Before the battle, she had become engaged to a young Seminary student.  The youth came from a wealthy family, and when his parents learned that he was betrothed to a poor school teacher, his father threatened to disinherit him.  Alice offered to release him from his promise, saying, “You can choose between your father’s money and me !”  Her fiancé chose the money, and the decision devastated her.  She decided to devote her time to her career, and she taught in the Gettysburg schools (as well as country school houses) for the rest of her life.⁴

When the war came to Gettysburg, the first day’s battle brought hordes of soldiers from both sides through the town.  The Catholic church on High Street was soon filled with the desperately wounded.  The wounded and dying vastly outnumbered those able to treat them, and a surgeon from the 150th Pennsylvania Infantry hurried to the neighboring homes asking for help.  Among those who answered the plea were Salome Myers and three of the Powers girls.

Alice stayed for several days assisting the doctors at the church's makeshift hospital.  One of her tasks was to carry amputated limbs and discard them.  Undaunted, Allie continued her gruesome task.  Her niece recalled, “Arms and legs which many surgeons cut off are thrown out the church window, where the pile now nearly reaches the window sill.”  Allie later told her students that “I threw amputated limbs out of the window of the Catholic Church until the piles almost reached the window sills.”⁵

There was another ghastly sight for the civilians on High Street.  Alice recalled: “Beside the steps at the east end of the church, a soldier who was assisting in the hospital was shot.  In the night someone cut off his head.  These dead soldiers lay on the sidewalk until Saturday morning [ July 4 ] as the squad of Louisiana Tigers who guarded the street would not permit the citizens, who begged the privilege to bury them at night….At nightfall all was quiet but the tramp of the guards reminded the town that its citizens were prisoners…Restless and uneasy we slept in our clothes that night, getting up often to watch that no harm came to the dead who lay in sight of our doors.”⁶

Allie’s friend Sallie Myers had taken a few soldiers from the church to her parents’ home to nurse them, among them two mortally wounded.  She had hoped to make their final days more pleasant.  The Powers family already housed some of the wounded in their cellar, hiding them from Confederate eyes. They realized that they still had room for more, so the girls walked to the Catholic church and offered their home to those that they noticed were yet not receiving care. 

A wounded soldier from the 143rd Pennsylvania who had fallen on McPherson’s Ridge remembered when Alice and Jenny Powers came to him as he lay untreated at the church on High Street.  “Come with us,” they said.  “The people here are too busy.  We can dress your wound.  We have fixed up lots of the boys and have a whole houseful.”  The young soldier, George Engle, agreed to go with them.  Private Engle, later promoted to the rank of Captain, remained friends with the Powers family for the rest of their lives.  Alice corresponded with him regularly until her death in 1905.⁷

Another soldier remembered that in the Powers’s home, “Their wounds had been dressed as skillfully as the attention would have been given by the most expert nurse.  Nourishing dishes had been prepared such as would appeal to the appetites of fevered and pain-worn men.”  He called the Powers girls “noble women” and declared that to them, “each man that wore the blue was a hero, no matter what his nationality or how lowly his rank in life.”⁸

A Civil War romance transpired between Alice and one of the Union surgeons.  James Fulton was the appointed surgeon of the 143rd Pennsylvania.  When he joined the Union cause, he first mustered in with the 150th Pennsylvania regiment, but was transferred in the autumn of 1862 to the neighboring 143rd Infantry.  Many of the men from both regiments hailed from Luzerne County, so he was well acquainted with both units.  He often visited his wounded in both the Myers and Powers homes.  He grew close with Allie, and soon declared his love for her.  Since Allie had recently been betrothed to the Seminary student, she was still emotionally injured.  Though she cared for the brave surgeon, she refused to marry him.  He came back to visit during a brief leave and still implored her to reconsider.  She again told him that no, she would remain single.  And she did.⁹

On July 11, 1863, while the family was still busy caring for the many wounded in their home and at the nearby church, Solomon and Catherine Powers celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary.¹⁰

The Powers family still provided aid while President Lincoln was in town for the dedication of the National Cemetery.  Solomon Powers frequently offered to help locate the dead buried on the field for a grieving parent.  The week before Lincoln was to visit and give his famous address, Mr. Powers helped uncover the body of a Union soldier for a Philadelphia father, whose name was Russell Briggs.  Mr. Briggs found an unexploded shell on the field, en route to the Powers home.  Once he reached the house, he began to tinker with it, in an effort to empty it from its gunpowder.  The shell exploded, killing Mr. Powers’s young apprentice, Allen Frazer, who was just fifteen years old.  Mr. Briggs, too, was mortally wounded in the explosion.  Because Allen Frazer’s family had no money for their son’s funeral or burial, Solomon Powers placed the remains of the boy in his own family plot.¹¹

At war’s end in 1865, Alice Powers gained employment with the Gettysburg School District.  She worked as a school teacher until the end of the school year in 1904.

Miss Powers proved an excellent educator.  Because she had no children of her own, she considered her pupils her children, and treated them with kindness and compassion.  She also brooked no nonsense.  She lived with her parents until they passed away, Solomon in 1883 (shortly after his 50th wedding anniversary), and Catherine in 1892).  Five of the Powers daughters survived their parents.  The exception was Cynthia, the firstborn, who died of complications of childbirth in 1864.  Alice continued to live in the home at the corner of Washington and High Streets.¹²

In addition to her busy life as a teacher, Allie also taught Sunday School at the St. James Lutheran church for fifty years.  She was the superintendent of that school for the last decade of her life. ¹³

On a “bleak November day in 1894”, a young pupil from Miss Powers’s class died of diphtheria.  Because the disease was highly contagious until the introduction of anti-toxin, the funeral was private, with only the family members attending.  No one expected Allie to attend, especially since she had to teach school, but Allie came to the funeral.  The boy’s mother remarked years later “what a great comfort Miss Alice’s presence was to her on that day.”¹⁴

Alice Powers died on April 6, 1905 after a short illness.  Some believe she died brokenhearted because the school superintendent forced her to retire from teaching in late 1904.  “Few lives were richer in service than that of Miss Allie Powers” wrote one who mourned her.  Her close friend and fellow teacher, Salome Myers Stewart, said, “It was hard to find one so kind and patient as Alice Powers.  All of us will miss her.”¹⁵

She was buried in Evergreen Cemetery beside her parents and young Allen Frazer.  Her grave was “piled high with floral tributes.”  One of Allie’s friends visited the grave days later, and saw a young boy, one of her friend’s former students, standing there.  On one of the wreaths were the words “Gates Ajar”.  The boy asked what it meant.  She replied that it meant the gates of heaven were opening up for Miss Alice to pass through them.  The boy “stood silent for a few moments and then said, ‘Well, if the gates will open for anyone, they will for Miss Alice.’” ¹⁶

So many acts of compassion took place during the worst battle in American history.  The Powers family comprised one household of many.  Yet, a further view of just one of that family shows the essence that, when in the worst of situations, the goodness of a kind heart can make all the difference.

Sources:  The 143 rd Pennsylvania Muster Rolls, Gettysburg National Military Park (hereafter GNMP).  The 150 th Pennsylvania Muster Rolls, GNMP.  McPherson, Byrle F.  “Miss Alice Powers, Volunteer Nurse in the Civil War, Taught Primary School for 30 Years.”  Manuscript, copy Adams County Historical Society (hereafter ACHS).  Alice Powers Civilian Accounts File, ACHS.  Powers Family File, ACHS.  Powers Family Tree, Ancestry.com.  The Gettysburg Compiler, 01 July, 1903 (copy, Alice Powers Civilian Accounts File, ACHS).  The Gettysburg Compiler, 08 Jan., 1908.  The Gettysburg News, 14 April, 1905.  The Gettysburg Times, 13 April, 1935.  The Star & Sentinel, 20 Nov., 1863.  The Star & Sentinel, 11 July, 1883.

End Notes: 

1.  Solomon Powers Family Tree, Ancestry.com. 

2.  Powers Family File, ACHS. 

3.  McPherson, p. 1. 

4.  Ibid. p. 2. 

5.  Alice Powers Civilian Accounts File, ACHS. 

6.  The Compiler, 01 July, 1903. 

7.  The Compiler, 08 Jan., 1908. George Engle, who was a private at Gettysburg, was with Company A of the143 rd Pennsylvania. He was wounded a second time at the Wilderness but survived the war, and eventually earned the rank of Captain.  He returned to Luzerne County, where he married and lived until 1921. 

8.  The Compiler, 08 January, 1908. 

9.  The 143 rd PA and 150 th PA Muster Rolls, copies at GNMP.  McPherson, p. 5. 

10.  The Star & Sentinel, 11 July, 1883. 

11.  The Star & Sentinel, 20 Nov., 1863. 

12.  Solomon Powers Family Tree, Ancestry.com.

13.  McPherson, p. 5. 

14.  Ibid. 

15.  The Gettysburg Times, 13 April, 1935.  The Gettysburg News, 14 April, 1905. 

16.  McPherson, p. 7.  

Editor’s Note:  The house where the Powers family lived, and Allie’s home until her death in 1905, no longer stands.  The site where the house once was is now a brick edifice known as the Zentz Apartments, located on the corner of Washington and High Streets.  The explosion that occurred within the Powers house in November 1863 weakened the foundation, and with the passage of time, the house could not be saved.