GDG- Mary McAllister - July 4

[Ginny Gage]

July 4, 2004

By morning they were all cleared out, and when we came down there was nobody
about, only what were wounded.  I went out and Mrs. Horner came out and
began scraping off her pavement the mud and blood. And the first thing we
knew, a Union band began to play and I think I never herd anything sweeter,
and I never felt so glad in my life. After a while all that hushed, too.
They began to barricade the street. They brought out old wagons.  Those
rebel sharpshooters were keeping up a show as if to make another charge.  I
went over to old Mrs. Weikert¹s and on her back porch there was a man.  He
said, ³Take care, you will be shot!  Oh, I believe I am shot.²  He looked
down and a bullet had just gone through the fleshy part of his leg. Mrs.
Weikert had  student boarders and this was one of those students.  (He was
Amos Moser Whetstone, student at the Gettysburg Theological Seminary). I
started out to hunt for something good for a wounded man that was in our
house. He wanted bread and butter, so I thought I¹d go to see if Mrs. Abram
Scott had any.  A man came to me and said, ³Do get in off the street.  You
will get shot because of the sharpshooters.²  We were so happy with the
prospect that the rebels were out of town.  But this man went and got a
piece of meat and some bread and butter and I brought it home and Martha
fixed it for the sick man.  This shooting went on nearly all day on July 4,
but we heard that they really had retreated. But those sharpshooters did
keep our men back.  They took most of the wounded out of our house and over
to the church and we attended to them as well as we could.  Then we got
fixed some and the country people began to bring in vegetables, fowls,
bread, milk, or anything, but they had not many cows, as they had been
driven off by the raiders.  The morning after the battle was over, someone
came in and said there was a man on horseback (who) wanted to see me.  Here
was David Wills (Judge and respected citizen of Gettysburg) with a man on
horseback.  He said, ³Miss Mary, don¹t you know me?²  I looked at him a
little and I said, ³No-o!  You do look a little like Col. Morrow, but the
rebels took him.²  ³Why,² he said, ³God bless you, I am Col. Morrow, safe
and sound, and I called for my diary. I am going on to join the army. They
are going on toward Frederick and I want to catch them.²  I said, ³Tell me
how you got away from them.²  Well, they took him to the college and took
away his sword and everything, but he said he found a (green) surgeon¹s sash
and tied it on, and went among the soldiers.  He went among the wounded and
attended to them.  When it came night, he thought he would come to our
house, but he got lost and came to the square to the Wills house and they
hid him, and after the battle he came to see me.  He said, ³Now, you know I
had no coat and no sword.²  ³I have a sword here and it belonged to Gen.
Archer. You can have that one.  It is a pretty sword.²  That was a bad way
to keep a trust.  ³But,² I said, ³you must promise me if ever you meet this
man (and I told him Dailey¹s name) you must give it to him.² ³Yes,² he said,
³On the honor of a soldier and a gentleman, I promise to give it to him.²
So he buckled on this sword and went away.  In two days afterward here came
another man. I did not know him at all. He was carrying a gun and had an old
hat on.  Martha looked at him and said, ³Why, look here, you were taken
prisoner!²  It was Dennis Burke Dailey, 2nd Wisconsin. Well, I was scared.
The sword flashed on my mind at once. He said, ³I have come for the sword.²
I said, ³I thought you were in Libby Prison and maybe they would come back
and take me, and I gave it to Col. Morrow.²  Well, he did not seem to blame
me, but he looked so disappointed.  Then Martha said, ³Come in and we will
give you something to eat.²  He said, ³Yes, I am hungry.  I have had nothing
to eat since that piece of bread you gave me.  They took me to the mountain
and they all were tired out, and they came around and gave each of the
prisoners a little flour, but we had nothing to cook it with, an I took out
my piece of read and ate a little.²  Well, he said he watched the guard and
after a while his gun sank down and the man went to sleep. Dailey said he
rolled over once to see how it would work.  He said he never heard so many
sticks crack in his life.  Then he rolled a little more, over rocks and
briars. He rolled and rolled until he came to a big log and there scraped up
the leaves.  He said he would have given anything for water, but he ate a
little bread and there, under the leaves, he went to sleep.  In the morning
he could hear nothing, but was afraid to move.  He laid there all the next
day.  He knew those troops had gone on, but he first heard firing and then
rumbling. That night he passed further off. The second day he came to a
stream and there he got water and that was so good.  That night he got into
a wheat field and lay there all the next day and was afraid to go out for
fear he would be captured, and had nothing to eat but dry bread.  He was
nearly famished.  He said, ³I met a man when I got into the country where I
could trust people. This man had been wounded and he said our men had all
gone toward Frederick to get ahead of the rebels at the Potomac River.²
After I told Dailey I gave the sword to Col. Morrow, I said, ³What else did
you give me?²  ³I gave you my pocketbook,² he said.  ³Now, while you are
eating, I will hunt for it,²  I said, ³but I know no more about it than you
do.²  I hunted until I was worn out. ³Now,² he said, ³don¹t worry. You will
find it, maybe, sometime; and I will come back when the war is over.²
Martha went out to the kitchen and pulled the dresser away. The pocketbook
was there, all mouldy.  Then he got ready, and, with that old musket, he
started off.  In a few days I got a letter from him.  He had got Gen.
Archer¹s sword from Col. Morrow.  But when the war was over, Dailey thought
so much of his general that he gave him a present of the sword.  But the
general he gave the sword to, died soon after the close of the war.  I think
his name was Meredith (correct ­ Solomon Meredith, who died Oct. 2, 1875).
Then Dailey thought he would like to have the sword back again.  He belonged
to the Iron Brigade.  He wrote to me that I should write him a letter, how I
kept that sword for him and then gave it to Col. Morrow. I had to write the
letter about the sword before he got it back again after his general died.
One morning when he went out just at daylight, a few days after the battle,
there was a woman leaning against one of the trees.  She was weeping. I
said, ³What is the matter?² ³Oh,² she said, ³I got a dispatch (saying that)
my husband was dying and I came here last night, in the night time, and
every place was shut up and I could not get in, everything was so full, and
they knew nothing about my husband.  She thought if she could just get him
home, she could cure him. ³Oh,² I said, ³come to the house and we will give
you some breakfast and we will help you try to find out something.²  Some
soldiers that saw me talking to her said, ³He died soon after the dispatch
was sent and he is buried and it will be almost impossible to find him.²
The governor had given free transportation to all Pennsylvanians to take
their dead away.  She said she had spent all hr money coming.  Well, she
sobbed and cried.  They (the soldiers) said they had dug a trench and laid
them (the dead) in rows in the old grave yard.  Finally, they told her they
had found her husband then the employees around the depot paid her way back.