Search Results for: Leister Farm

Lydia Leister Farm

• Maggie

Farm on the Gettysburg Battlefield Gettysburg farmer James Leister died in 1859, leaving his wife Lydia Leister and five children, ranging in age from 21 to 3. In March 1861, the widow Leister purchased a nine acre farm on Taneytown Road from Henry Bishop, Sr. for the sum of $900. The property included a modest, wood frame house with a single fireplace, two rooms and a stairway that lead to a small loft. Image: Restored Lydia Leister Farm today Looking north along Taneytown Road After the strong Confederate win at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863 CSA General Robert E. Lee effectively argued that the best use of limited Confederate resources was to invade Pennsylvania. In early June he…

Read Article

Slyder Farm

• Maggie

Farm on the Gettysburg Battlefield John Slyder married Catherine Study in Carroll County, Maryland on September 25, 1838, and the couple soon moved to Gettysburg. In the 1840s the Slyders resided on South Washington Street in town, and John went into business with a local potter named Edward Menchey. An 1847 an advertisement in the Adams Sentinel also listed Slyder’s house as a pick-up and drop-off location for a woolen manufacturing business. Citizens looking to have woolen goods manufactured at a factory located 3 miles outside of Hanover could drop off their own wool at Slyder’s residence and pick up the finished product at a later date. In 1849, the Slyders purchased a 74-acre tract of land at the foot…

Read Article

Lydia Leister

• Maggie

Home Used as Union Headquarters at the Battle of Gettysburg On July 1, 1863, Federal troops surrounded the Leister farm – it was in the crook of the fishhook battle line along Cemetery Ridge. When General George Gordon Meade chose the Leister house (image left) as the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac, Lydia and her children sought shelter with relatives who lived on the Baltimore Pike. Lydia Leister was a widow who owned a modest farm along the Taneytown Road, ½ mile south of Gettysburg behind Cemetery Ridge. Lydia had purchased the property in 1861, and moved into the modest two-room house with her six children, the youngest, only three years old. The widow Leister made her living…

Read Article

Frances Gibbon

• Maggie

Wife of Union General John Gibbon Frances North Moale Gibbon, called Fannie by family and friends, was the Darling Mama of General John Gibbon’s Civil War letters. From Gettysburg he wrote: “God has been good in protecting me from so many dangers. Both [General John] Reynolds and Stephen Weed were killed, the latter yesterday.” Image: General John Gibbon Husband of Frances Gibbon John Oliver Gibbon was born on April 20, 1827, in the Holmesburg section of Philadelphia, the third son and the fourth of seven children of Dr. John Heysham Gibbon and Catherine (Lardner) Gibbon. Although the family name was originally “Gibbons,” the doctor dropped the s, so that by the time Doctor Gibbon had married and graduated from the…

Read Article

Margaretta Sergeant Meade

• Maggie

Wife of Union General George Gordon Meade In letters home to Margaretta Meade during the Civil War, General George Meade commented frankly on every facet of the war. Two days after the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, he wrote: “The army are in the highest spirits, and of course I am a great man. The most difficult part of my work is acting without correct information on which to predicate action.” Early Years Margaretta Sergeant, born June 26, 1815, was the daughter of Margaretta Watmough Sergeant and the Honorable John Sergeant, Henry Clay’s running mate in the 1832 presidential election.George Gordon Meade was born on December 31, 1815, in Cadiz, Spain, where his father, Richard Worsam Meade, was serving…

Read Article