Recollections of the Civil War, Part 2
by James Rada, Jr.
Editor’s Note: This is the second of two articles recounting Sarah (Six) Schnure’s recollections of life in Thurmont during the Civil War. Schnure wrote her recollections while living in Hollywood, California, in the 1930s.
Sarah Six had been ten years old when the war started. She had watched most of the fighting-age men march off to join the Union Army in 1861. She had watched wounded soldiers being transported through Mechanicstown.
Her family lived in a state of uncertainty. They knew very little of their friends and family who had marched off to war. They didn’t fear an invasion so much as worried over losing what they had to Confederate scavengers.
Word had spread through the region that Confederate soldiers were taking horses and cattle when they found them. If they paid, they paid in Confederate scrip. Sarah’s father, William Six, was so worried about losing his stock that he took his two horses north to Wrightsville, Pennsylvania.
One night while William was away, Sarah was spending the night with her friend Mollie Foreman. The young girls were sleeping in the back of the house when they heard something that awakened them. They realized that it was the steady tramp of horses’ hooves.
They crept downstairs, unlocked the front door, and stepped out onto the front porch. From an upstairs window, someone whispered hoarsely, “Go in and shut that door!”
“I can tell you, we went up those stairs quietly but faster than we had gone down, for when we realized we were down there alone and in inky darkness, we felt as if a rebel was after us for sure and we were scolded good and proper,” Sarah wrote.
All they had been able to see were the shifting shapes of horsemen moving in the night. In the morning, she found out that the men had been suspected Confederate soldiers.
While the town had hidden from the Confederates, they were overjoyed when Union soldiers came to town.
“Everyone (except southern sympathizers) came on the streets and with waving flags, gave them a welcome for they were usually close on the heels of a reported invasion, which made them doubly welcome,” Sarah wrote.
Another night, the town was once again awakened by troops riding through town. This group stopped in front of the Six house when they saw a light shining in a second floor window. They called up to the person in the lighted room.
William wouldn’t answer them, but Sarah’s mother walked to the window and called out, “What do you want?”
“Where does George Johnson live?” one of the men replied.
“Who are you?”
“We are Union men. We are going to Chimney Rock to display signals. We were told Mr. Johnson would feed our horses and point the way to the mountain.”
“How do I know that you are Union men?”
The soldier rode up closer to the house and into the light. “See the uniform?” the soldier asked.
She did, but she still doubted. The soldier finally talked her into telling him where Johnson lived. He was home. He fed the horses and then led the soldiers up the mountain in the dark. Eventually, those people who were still awake did see signals on the mountain.
Since there were no street lights, children stayed close to home as night began to fall. They would sit on their porches and sing Union songs.
Mechanicstown was eighteen miles from Gettysburg, but it might as well have been hundreds of miles, according to Sarah. She knew the name of the town and that it had a college in it, but that was all. Sarah wrote that the road to Gettysburg was so bad and full of stones that it was sarcastically nicknamed “featherbed.”
She remembers seeing the soldiers marching to Gettysburg. “The weather was cloudy with rain and very sultry,” Sarah wrote. “It hurts me even now as I can see those poor men on that forced march in heavy wool uniforms, not allowed to stop for a drink but some would scoop up a hand full from the gutter alongside the street.”
They heard nothing of the battle until they started seeing weary soldiers marching south.
She also remembered the solemn tolling of the church bells after news of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination was announced.
Such sad memories for a child to have.
