The Battle of Gettysburg, one of the decisive battles of that war, to most people is something they read about in history books. But to Mrs. Rosa A. Gettle, 85, of Wymore it is as vivid as an event of yesterday. Mrs. Gettle, who was four-year-old Rosie Snyder in 1863, lived in Gettysburg, a town of under 1,000 population at that time. As far as is known Mrs Gettle is the only living inhabitant of Gettysburg who was there at the time of the battle. The happenings of those three days, July first, second and third, were so strongly impressed on the four-year-old child’s mind then that even the small details are remembered today.
Mother Up Early
“I can remember it all so clearly,” Mrs. Gettle reminisces. “My mother had got up about four o’clock that Wednesday morning to start about her baking in the big outdoor oven. After she had set the dough, she worked in the garden a while, then she went over the way into the timber to pick blackberries.” In those same fields and woods the battle later raged.
Mrs. Snyder, Mrs. Gettle’s mother, noticed that the fields were thick with soldiers. “What’s going on?” she asked a neighbor. “A battle is going to take place here,” the man answered.
Feeds Soldiers Bread
Mrs. Snyder was a widow with eight children so her days were always full. On that first day of battle at Gettysburg, she finished her baking as usual and churned some butter. When the Federals or Union soldiers began coming back along Baltimore Pike with the Confederate prisoners, Mrs. Snyder fed them warm bread spread with the fresh-churned butter.
The younger children stood at the gates watching the prisoners and their guards. The wounded were being taken back to the court house and other public buildings, which were being used as hospitals.
See Wounded Man
The children noticed one prisoner had been wounded in the arm with grapeshot. When the wounded man reached the gate at which the children were standing, he said he could go no further.
The children’s mother took pity on him and ordered that he be brought into their house. She told his bearers to put him on the bed in the spare room, but when he saw the bed he protested because he didn’t want to get it dirty. He asked them to put him on the floor. Mrs. Snyder did not allow them to put him there.
The children, who were badly frightened at the sight of the ugly wound, were even more frightened when they overhead some one say that the arm would be amputated. The mother decided then that it would be better for the children to be with their Aunt Susie Benner, across Rock creek and down the road.
Begin Risky Trip
The oldest daughter, a girl of 18, started with the three youngest children – Rosa, 4, her sister, 6 and her brother, 8, on the perilous trip to the Benner house, Mrs. Gettle recalls.
To begin with the trip didn’t seem dangerous. But the children had just crossed a wooden, “zig-zag” fence after stopping at a spring for a drink, when they heard something hissing. They thought it was a snake at first until a cannonball whizzed through the foliage and bounced at their feet. Fortunately for them the cannonball did not explode. The children were walking between firing lines of the opposing forces.
Warned to Move
The children had been at Benners only a day when the authorities warned them that they were not safe there. In their search for a refuge they stopped at farmhouses along the way. The houses, Mrs. Gettle remembers, were full of soldiers. At one place they stopped, and officer picked up the four-year-old Rosa and kissed her. “Oh, the poor children!” the officer said.
Continuing on their way, Rosa lost her shoe. She was so frightened that she didn’t mention a word of her loss to the others. With one shoe off and one shoe on Rosa with her brother and sisters, finally found safety at a farmhouse.
Joined by Brother
It was while there that they were joined by their brother, John. John had been staying with a farmer in the neighborhood. With the battle approaching, the farmer and his family had fled and left John to watch over the house. As the fighting came nearer, John too, decided to leave.
On the way through the woods to the farm house where his brother and sisters were, John met a soldier. John was wearing a ring belonging to the farmer’s wife which the soldier wanted. John refused to give up the ring. The soldier told him to give up the ring or to give up his coat and trousers. John took his choice and arrived at the farmhouse in his drawers.
Bridge Burned
On Friday, the last day of the battle, the children wanted to return to their home. But when they started out they found that the bridge over Rock creek, which they must cross on the way home, had been burned by the soldiers. The children did not return to their home until the first of the next week. Not until then did their mother know whether they were dead or alive.
When they returned their mother had much to tell them. That gaping hole in the front room floor she said was caused by a cannonball which had penetrated the outside wall, tore the hole in the floor and gone through the partition in the next room where it went through a closet and broke a stove in the closet. A table and chair in the front room were also destroyed. Mrs. Snyder and her 16 year-old daughter were in the cellar when the shell struck. They left the cellar then for a place of greater safety.
Neighbor Girl Killed
The next-door neighbors, the Wade family, had gone to their cellar too, but not in time to save the life of 16-year-old Jennie Wade. Jennie was in the kitchen kneading dough for “shortcake.” A bullet entered the outside door of the Wade home, penetrated the bedroom door which was opened into the hallway and struck Jennie in the back. Jennie, the only civilian killed in Gettysburg, fell within a few feet of her mother, some pieces of dough still in her fingers.
After the battle the children wandered over the battlefield which was thickly littered with shells. One morning Mrs. Gettle said she was awakened by her mother closing the window of her bedroom. She asked her mother why she was closing the window since it was warm weather. Her mother replied that they were burying a soldier where he had fallen by their garden fence. The smell of the decaying body filled the air.
Saw Lincoln
A more pleasant remembrance to Mrs. Gettle was her glimpse of President Lincoln. When Lincoln came to Gettysburg to deliver the speech that since has been acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest. Mrs. Gettle was told to stand at the gate and wave her handkerchief to him.
When Lincoln came riding by, wearing his familiar stove-pipe hat, the little girl waved to him and was rewarded with a nod. “His pictures look just like him,” Mrs. Gettle says.
Source: This article first appeared in the Beatrice Daily Sun (Beatrice, Nebraska), Tuesday, May 30, 1944.
Table Rock Argus (Table Rock, Nebraska), Nov 11, 1954
Find A Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/54773093/rosa-a.-gettle
Notes: Mrs. Rosa Gettle was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 1859 and spent her life there until 1882, when she was married to Rev William G. Gettle, a minister of the United Lutheran Church. They had six children, three boys and three girls. The family moved to Nebraska, and lived in Franklin, Steinauer and later in Table Rock. Rosa passed away at the age of 95, on October 24, 1954. She is buried in Table Rock Cemetery in Table Rock, Nebraska.