In September 1862, after the Maryland battles of South Mountain and Antietam, Shepherdstown became a scene of immense suffering as wounded Confederates poured into town. Resident Mary Bedinger Mitchell wrote that the whole town was a hospital, with scarcely a building that could not claim that role. After the South Mountain fighting of September 14, the wounded arrived in growing numbers and became a flood totaling 2,000–3,000 by September 18, the day after Antietam. Places normally unfit for human habitation were turned into hospitals, including an abandoned tobacco warehouse at the north end of Princess Street and the unfinished town hall, now Shepherd University’s McMurran Hall. Mitchell recalled that rough boards, straw, and single planks quickly transformed the unfinished building into a hospital. The wounded continued to arrive until the town could no longer hold all the disabled and suffering, and they filled churches, halls, private houses, shops, schoolhouses, barns, cabins, corn-cribs, and farmhouses throughout the surrounding countryside. Shepherdstown endured the passing of armies for another two and a half years, but for residents the events of the 1862 Maryland Campaign were the most traumatic.
