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Looking Back

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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.

Looking Back

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Recollections of the Civil War

by James Rada, Jr.

Editor’s Note: This is the first 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 was ten years old in 1861. Her family lived in Thurmont, and Sarah grew up seeing how the Civil War affected life in town. Decades later, in the early 1930s, she wrote up her recollections of the war for her son. When the writings were discovered after her death, the Catoctin Enterprise published the writings.

Her first memory associated with the Civil War was when the entire town turned out at the downtown square to see the Thurmont men march off to Frederick to be sworn in as soldiers. She wrote, “Never shall I forget that morning that crowd of women trying to be brave and send off their men with smiles when their hearts were breaking.”

The men seemed excited, as if they were venturing off for a grand adventure. For many of them, it would be an adventure, since in the days before the Western Maryland Railroad reached Mechanicstown, they hadn’t ever ventured far from town in their lives.

In the years to come, the wives and mothers of Mechanicstown would live in a state of anxiety, wondering what had become of the husbands and children. News about the war did not arrive often. There was no daily newspaper and mail came only three times a week. The telegraph had not been installed in town, and the telephone did not exist.

“News traveled slowly and when there was a battle on, many days would elapse before any report of it reached our town,” Sarah wrote.

In support of their Union soldiers, the women of Mechanicstown would often gather at St. John’s Lutheran Church to bag up old linen that would be sent off to Union hospitals to be turned into bandages. Sarah and other children would do their part by gathering wild cotton that was also sent to the hospitals.

One night around midnight in 1862, the Six family was awakened by a barking dog. Then they heard Henry Foreman, the neighbor’s son, calling, “Get up, Mr. Six! The rebels are coming.”

The family got dressed and turned out into the street, along with the rest of the town. In the dark of night, they watched army ambulances come through the town with wounded that they were transporting to safety in Pennsylvania. They also came with news that the rebels had crossed the Potomac River.

Most likely, this would have been early in the morning of September 5. After General Robert E. Lee’s victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run at the end of August, Lee moved his army into Maryland, with the intention of securing a victory in the North. He wanted to keep his army on the offensive and influence the fall elections in the North so that congressmen and senators willing to recognize the Confederate States of America might be elected. In addition, Lee needed supplies for his army that the South was running out of.

As the army had approached Frederick, citizens, military, and patients from the United States Military Hospital fled the city.

As the ambulances moved through town, drivers and patients requested food and coffee. It was provided as much as the citizens could manage, but Sarah noted that because Mechanicstown had no bakeries, many homes went without bread for breakfast that day.

Some of the residents in town packed up and headed north with the army. Others hunkered down and hid valuables, livestock, and food.

“Mother had valuables packed and ready to flee into the mountain. I had few treasures but two of them were in my pocket—a small silk union flag and my treasured china doll,” Sarah wrote.

The Confederate army did not continue north from Frederick. They turned west and would go on to fight the Battle of South Mountain and the Battle of Antietam before retreating south back across the Potomac.