Northerners fleeting from the southern army. Roaring guns, interminable din. Soldiers sleeping in one’s own front yard, bringing flour to be baked into bread.
These and other vivid memories of the Blue and the Gray surrounding the battle of Gettysburg were recalled this week, anniversary of the turning point in the Civil War, by a Lincoln resident who as a 9 year-old boy lived within a few miles of the bitter early July fighting.
The man, who recalls those memories of Gettysburg is now quietly carrying on his duties in the office of the state land commissioner. He is J. W. Kerns, 1514 Garfield Street. Although a resident of Lincoln for nearly half a century, Mr. Kerns still recalls clearly the old scenes around his boyhood home and some of the unusual sights in connection with the battle of Gettysburg.
Lived Northwest of Gettysburg
As a boy he lived at Mount Holly Springs, a few miles northwest of Gettysburg, on the Baltimore turnpike. The little village where he lived was in a water gap in the hills and ranges which broke up the entire area. From there he roamed over much of the area traversed by the contending armies.
The confederate army, he recalls, was reported coming down the Chambersburg turnpike, which ran through Carlisle, a few miles north of his home village. Hundreds of families poured down the turnpike ahead of the army, taking all their stock and household equipment they could with them, as they sought to escape into the hills or to Harrisburg ahead of the advancing southerners.
Still more heavily packed, according to Mr. Kerns was a state road to the south of the macadamized Chambersburg turnpike. The state road was a scene of unceasing activity for three days and nights before the arrival of the confederate hosts.
Crowd Hastened to Safety
Wagons of all descriptions moved down the road, with cattle, horses, negroes, white people, pouring along in a turmoil of excitement. It was an indescribable scene, says Mr. Kerns., one which he has often wished he could put on canvas, as the motley crowd hastened to safety.
The wagons were for the most part old fashioned wagons with big rear boxes. They traveled with everything that could be crowded onto them, moving at night and day, giving no rest to animals or people.
This roaring, excited crowd, stirring the dust, plodding, hurrying onward, perhaps struck Mr. Kerns more vividly than the road of the battle or some of the weird scenes which followed it.
When the confederate army came, it ransacked the country side, injuring no one but taking livestock and raiding stores for goods to eat.
Soldiers Slept on Lawn
Mr. Kerns, then 9 year-old Joe recalls awakening one morning and confederate soldiers sleeping on the lawns around his home. Others were plucking cherries from the berry laden trees which stood nearby.
Joe wandered out among the soldiers, who were all friendly and jovial to him. Times had been hard for the Pennsylvania settlers and they were not overly well fed. Joe saw a biscuit in one soldier’s pocket, reached up and started to take it out to eat it. The soldier felt it going and grabbed it, then smiled at the boy. “No, sonny, don’t take that hard-tack. I need it myself.”
General Lee’s army was camped at Carlisle and in the vicinity of the Kerns’ home for several days before it changed position during which time an unexpected clash of union and confederate forces threw the troops into battle line and led to the three-day struggle about Gettysburg as the confederates unsuccessfully stormed the height of Cemetery hill and other eminences occupied by the Union forces.
Baked Bread for Soldiers
The Kerns had no flour. Times had been too hard for them. They had been living on cornmeal. But the soldiers wanted bread. So they raided the stores and brought flour to Joe’s mother asking her to bake them some bread. The mother of the little girl whom J.W. Kerns later married was also called on by the soldiers to bake bread for them, after furnishing her with the flour.
After the bulk of the confederate army had moved south and southeast again, several hundred of the troopers stayed in hiding in the vicinity to get away from the war. Some hid in barns, others in holes under barn floors. Little Joe Kerns helped tell some how to find their way out through the hills to escape into the mountain country where they could be safe from the war. Many of those in hiding, however, stayed in the community, married girls there and made their homes there, never returning to the south.
One amusing incident in connection with the way the army ransacked the country for stock for its food supplies, was told by Mr. Kerns., it having particularly struck his interest when he watched the affair years ago.
Refused to Part With Cow
The main part of the army had gone but several groups wee rounding up cattle to take with them. One band of four or five men was driving a herd of cows down the road. A woman who as a neighbor of the Kerns saw her cow in the herd.
She rushed out into the road, called her cow, and drive it through her gate. When she appeared the soldiers ordered her away, threatening to shoot. “Shoot! Shoot” she cried, “But I’m going to have my cow.”
While in this case, the woman emerged victorious, the boy saw a number of sad scenes in connection with the removal of livestock. Many women, he said, ran screaming down the road their hair streaming behind, as they shouted almost hysterically, their stock, almost their only possession, being swept by armed men down the road away from them.
During the battle of Gettysburg, Joe Kerns and other boys heard the constant roar of guns and artillery. They had little knowledge, however of how the battle was going until after it was well over.
He went to the battlefield July 5. Even then, many corpses still remained on the field, so fierce had been the struggle. Union soldiers had been cared for first, he said, so that those remaining were confederate bodies. At one place, he came upon a group of men who were rolling the dead bodies into blankets, loading the blanketed bundle onto stone sleds and pulling them to a spot in a stream bed where water had washed a sink hole. There the bodies were rolled out and into the hole, the men told him.
He didn’t go that far. He had had enough when he saw them loading the bodies.
He saw one confederate sharpshooter, who had strapped himself to a tree limb and who, after having been shot, was held up by the strap around his waist. He also saw many bodies in the crevices of Devil’s Den, from where confederate sharpshooters had operated.
Among the other interesting sights of the battlefield was the old stone fence, behind which Union soldiers had waited part of the confederate onslaught and then mowed their enemy down at close range.
Veteran Recalled Capture
A single tree stood a short distance in front. An interesting anecdote was told by Mr. Kerns about the tree. Several years later he attended a reunion of Civil war veterans there from both sides.
One confederate veteran walked to the tree, as he described the battle and said, “And here was where I was captured.”
An old Union veteran then stepped up, grasped his hand and beamed at him, “And I’m the man who took you prisoner.”
Only once as he recalls it was Mr. Kerns badly scared. During the retreat from Gettysburg, he and a group of boys were sitting on a fence near their village when a cannonball roared by near enough to frighten although not to endanger them.
“We just fell over the fence backwards and never stopped running,” Mr. Kerns said smilingly as he recalled the incident.
Another incident revolved around the fact that it was a pre-prohibition era. The hotel owner had two barrels of whiskey in his cellar, but on approach of the confederate army, dug a hole in his backyard, placed the barrels there and covered them with a manure pile.
A resident who knew of the whiskey gave it away to the soldiers in the town. They salvaged the barrels of whiskey and a crowd of fifteen or twenty began to make merry in the village street.
They were beginning to get noisy when an officer approached, drew his saber and ordered them to empty their canteens which had been filled at the barrels. They quickly obeyed and were subsequently lined up and marched away. “It was a good thing,” says Mr. Kerns, “as there was no telling what might have happened, otherwise.”
News of the war was almost impossible to get. One man in the town took a New York paper, the only paper in the vicinity with any war news. He used to get on a store box and read the news aloud to the community, while hundreds of people listened to him so that they could discuss the war until the next paper came around.
Source: The Lincoln Star (Lincoln, Nebraska), Sunday, July 5, 1931.
Find A Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/70499833/john-w.-kerns
Ancestry.com
Notes: John W. Kerns was born in January 31, 1854 in Plainfield, Pennsylvania. He was married in 1878 to Amanda Nickle and showed up in the 1900 Federal Census in Lincoln, Nebraska. He died July 15, 1942 and is buried in Wyuka Cemetery, Lincoln, Nebraska.