My Antietam Blog

I recently spent a really fun afternoon in the West Woods at Antietam with Nick Picerno and Tom Clemens at the request of Larry Freiheit, who is writing a biography of General Joseph King Fenno Mansfield. Larry isn't sure that I got it right in my book when I included the above image and stated that Mansfield spent night of September 15th at Nicodemus Mills, a few miles east of Keedysville. (The also book has a really cool letter in it about there night at the location.)

Recently I had a chance to get back to reading Tom's latest volume of Carman's Maryland Campaign, and it mentions the slumber in question, so I thought I would quickly jot the notes down here, for the benefit of my memory as much as for Larry.

On page 24 of Carman/Clemens (hereafter CC) it reads, "During the afternoon and night of the 15th McClellan's forces moved to the positions assigned to them...Mansfield's (Twelfth) Corps was at Nicodemus Mills or Springvale." Here is the great clue. There are a few Nicodemus houses on the old maps up near the town of Boonsboro. And the Twelfth Corps did come down off of Turner's Gap. But I imagine Mansfield probably turned down what is now Rt. 67 to the Old Sharpsburg Road in order to relieve congestion. But it is Springvale that dials us in.

If you Google Springvale (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=springvale+md+map)...Voila! Case closed. I was nervous there for a minute.

Postscript: On page 24 of CC, talking about the morning of September 16th, it reads, "During the forenoon the Twelfth Corps advanced from its bivouac near Nicodemus' Mill and massed in a field west of Keedysville..."

Thoughts...? If anyone knows of his movements here, I would love to hear about it. I think Alpheus Williams probably wrote about this march.

Yesterday morning I took my usual Saturday walk along the old tracks of the Western Maryland Railroad. I have a bunch of old stereoviews taken along that line by E.M. Recher and B.W.T. Phreaner and have been trying to find where they were taken. Also, it is just simply beautiful on the run from my home in Smithsburg up to the top of South Mountain at Pen Mar. On this day I started up at Pen Mar and walked north. Lo and behold within a mile I found what I believe is a large cut in a view I have.

I was going to post about that today, but on the way home I saw a woman standing in the street with an old photograph of Smithsburg. She was standing right outside the Smithsburg Historical Society so I stopped to chat with her and went inside to donate a copy of my book. As I had hoped, local historian John Jakes was in there and we had a really great chat. John is an interesting guy who owns a huge peach farm where Jeb Stuart's artillery had six guns during the Battle of Smithsburg. But that's a story for another day...or two.

Anyway, he was showing me an old photo album that had been donated by the Bell family about a year ago, or should I say, since I had been back to see what photos they have. In this book was a photograph of E.C. Bell taking photographs up at the Devil's Race course, which is right off the tracks close to where I had just been walking. I was so excited that I grabbed a quick glare-filled photo with my phone and that is what you see here.

When E.M. Recher died in 1887, Bell took over his photo studio for about a year. In fact, I recently bought a stereoview on a Recher mount with Bell's stamp on the back. As John Jakes told me, BelMar is the Bell family home and it sits right across the street from the Smithsburg Historical Society. This is a lot of fresh information to explore.

I just made an exciting find. The building in Massachusetts where the 21st Massachusetts monument (that sits by Burnside Bridge) was made is being torn down. The sculptor's papers and photographs made it into my collection this week and I am very gratified and excited at the find. It even comes complete with O.T. Reilly graffiti, which is especially timely because I think I have decided to call my next book "Rare Images of Antietam Through the Eyes of O.T. Reilly."

Anyway, when I was trying to date these new photographs, I got to thinking about the dates the monuments on the bridge were dedicated. The first monument on the bridge was put there in October 1887. For some reason the park, on their website, has it being dedicated in 1906. Well, they can't be perfect.

The 21st MA monument was dedicated on Massachusetts Day in 1898, the same day as the Massachusetts State Monument was dedicated near the Cornfield. But the strange one is the 35th MA monument. All the sources I see simply say dedicated in 1898 with no date. John Shildt goes the farthest in his book Monuments at Antietam and says that it was probably dedicated on the same day, but does not give a cite.

I want to put the story about this sculptor in my next book, the O.T. hook being that his photos were taken when O.T. had graffiti on the bridge (I know, a tenuous link, but if you don't like it, write you own dern book.) So I think I will try to solve this mystery. If anyone has any info I would love to hear it. It is not a big, compelling mystery, but maybe I can use the hunt as an excuse to go to Massachusetts and get my portrait taken by David Bachrach's grandson. I spoke to him on the phone while getting permission to use some images and he is not only a really nice guy but he had some very interesting things to say about the Civil War.

I sure do lead a blessed life. Here I am with my good friend Tom Clemens as we show off our new books, both of which made it to the Antietam bookshelves in time for the 150th Anniversary. I spoke on Friday and Tom speaks this morning at 10am.

I know how much work it was to get my book here on time, so I can't even imagine how much effort Tom put in, as his is a scholarly tome of about 600 pages. I believe he spent the better part of the last twenty years culling through thousands of letter just so we can all study the Battle of Antietam without having to put in a similar effort. Thanks Tom!

In addition to release dates, our books share some images from Ezra Carman's photo collection, scans of which we secured after a long drive across Pennsylvania in the snow. Ah, good times.

Well, I have to get dressed and head back to Sharpsburg for some more book signing. See you there!?

Man, I just stopped by the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts to check out their new Civil War exhibit. It is AWESOME! So much O.T. Reilly stuff that I am going crazy. Also a lot of things colelcted by Sharpsburg's Martha Ada Thomas, who somehow escaped my notice before. Ed Lewis, who works at the desk at the museum and who grew up in Sharpsburg, filled me in about Martha, who he knew when he was a young man. Apparently she is mentioned by Wilmer Mumma in his books. I'll have to check that out when I get home tonight. When you stop by the museum be sure to ask Ed for some stories. What a great day!

Very exciting times. The folks at Antietam are upgrading their museum in time for the anniversary, and today I got to see how they are presenting some reunion items that I have loaned them for the exhibit. They did an incredible job! I am so thrilled. They really have some stunning items in there. It is scheduled to be open next month. Good job, folks!

I am here to announce that my new book, Rare Images of Antietam, will be ready for the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. I am scheduled for a talk at the battlefield at 1pm on Friday, September 14th and a book signing at 1pm on Saturday September 15th.

The book is 152 pages with seventy featured images and hundreds of supporting images. I'd love to tell you more about it but I only have a week to get this book to bed. Thanks so much for all of the interest.

Last spring I had the pleasure of giving Tony Horwitz a tour of Antietam. Now, I love his book 'Confederates in the Attic', but the kicker is that so do many of the people in my extended family. In fact, most of the women in my life could care less about the Civil War, but have read that book and think of it as a favorite.

So, it was fun to have them share my excitement about my 'brush with greatness.' I had actually been booked to give Paul Giamatti a tour so that he could bone up on his role as Longstreet in an upcoming movie, but he dropped out of the project and the tour never happened. So when the Tony tour came around, everyone was happy that I had a new story to tell, the one about the time I met Madonna getting kind of old, and all...

I just got my copy of the article in the mail and reading it reminded me of when I used to play guitar on other peoples' records and I would get a copy in the mail. I was always nervous to hear what they had done with my work - if they would use the correct take and if they would mix the guitar correctly. But now, as then, I am pleasantly surprised. Tony is a great writer and the photographs made for the article are stunning.

But the best part of the whole experience, besides perhaps having slightly impressed my mother-in-law, was the lunch I had with Tony when he gave me some great advice. At the time I was still going to release my rare Antietam images book as a huge opus. I showed him a draft with 600 images and told him it would not be out in time for the anniversary. "Steve,' Tony said (please note with awe that we are on a first name basis...) "pick your dozen best images and get something out for the 150th. Just do it." Well, how could I ignore his advice. I mean, he did pick up the tab for lunch.

Last week I had the privilege to accompany Ted Alexander to the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg where he was the special guest of the Harrisburg Civil War Round Table's book club. One of the perks of the trip was that we had been invited to spend some time in their vaults before the event. Wow.

The curator had already laid out some insanely cool Antietam artifacts that he was going to have out on a table during the event (talk about service) including an original Lincoln letter to Little Mac ("What's the news from the front?"); a beautiful letter from a soldier describing the battle (which I will be using in my book); and a tiny photo album with the entire Gardner death series. I also found a framed bullet from South Mountain with a note from the Yankee that took it off a dead Rebel in the vaults which was also put on the table.

But I was really there to see what Antietam images they had. Long story short, the most interesting to me was a glass plate negative of an image that appears in Scribners Magazine in 1903. It says that it a photograph of the Bloody Lane, but it has never looked to me like it.

The most glaring problem is the fence line on the left. If the camera is standing with the tower to its back, the fence on the left would be Virginia Worm. If the image is flipped horizontally, the fence on the right was a post fence by the 1870s, but it would have rails, not boards.

But with the mountains in the distance, the camera is looking East and would be up by the curve below the 130th PA monument. At that spot, I don't think there was ever a post and rail on the left, and again, if the image was flipped, the post and rail that was on the right for a while had rails, not boards.

And if this is looking East, what is that building on the horizon to the left? There is no building there and I don't think there ever was. There is a big tree where Richardson was putting a battery when he was wounded...but no building.

So, Bloody Lane? I'm not buying it.

Thoughts?

I am really having an amazing year. I got a call Wednesday night from a guy who asked, "Is this the Tipton expert?" I had to laugh to myself. It depends who I am with. If I am with Tim Smith then, no. But Tim was not there, so...Anyway, I told him "I know a little bit about Tipton" and wondered why he was asking. It turns out he had just bought at auction eight boxes of glass plate negatives from Tipton's old studio and was trying to find out what they were worth. Yow! We figured out that he lives ten minutes from me and I jumped in the car.

He drives trucks for a living and goes to auctions for fun. He bought these boxes of negatives without any idea what they were. Unbelievable. We spent five hours going through everything and I was having the time of my life. It was a real glimpse into how Tipton worked. There were glass plates of every size and dozens of the original boxes. Lots of film negatives. Supplies to make glass slides. You name it.

I knew instantly who should buy this lot. If it were Antietam I would have gone for it, but this collection should be in Gettysburg, I thought. I chose a few plates for myself and got on the phone to a friend who bought the lot sight unseen. Almost as much fun as looking through the negatives was driving to Gettysburg the next night and seeing my friend's face as we unpacked the boxes.

The image above is one I got from the collection. It was marked "Antietam" on the box, but it says "Artistic" on the slide so it may have been misplaced. I don't know where this is. Does anyone have an idea?

BTW, the clarity of the scanned original glass negative is insane, non!?

A few years back I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of O.T. Reilly's grand-daughter, Missy. She spent a lot of her childhood with 'Pop' Reilly and has a million great stories. Recently I drove past her home and saw that it was for sale. Fearing the worst, I called her son and found out that she is fine but has moved into assisted living. Phew.

I went to visit her today and want to let her many friends know that she is doing well. As often happens she is not all that clear on the present but still remembers her times with O.T. and recounted some of the old memories. We spoke about how marvelous it was that she grew up around this interesting man who would garden and sweep yet maintain a crisp white shirt.

If any of her friends wish to come along next time i go or wish to go on their own, please contact me directly and I can get you set up.