Reformed Cemetery, one of Hanover's oldest graveyards, became part of the aftermath of the Battle of Hanover on June 30, 1863, when at least 39 men were killed, including two Union officers, 17 enlisted men, and about 20 Confederate soldiers, while total casualties reached about 343 and later deaths from wounds likely pushed the number killed above 40. Known Union dead were later reinterred at Gettysburg National Cemetery, while Confederate dead were sent south by rail for burial. On the evening of the battle, citizens carried Union bodies to J.P. Flickinger's foundry on Foundry Alley, at the current Trinity United Church of Christ, where the foundry served as a makeshift morgue, while nearby Marion Hall served as a field hospital during the Battles of Hanover and Gettysburg. By 9 p.m., all of the dead had been placed in caskets ordered by Henry Wirt, and Rev. W. K. Zieber of Emmanuel Reformed Church conducted ceremonies at Reformed Cemetery, where most were buried, though two were interred at nearby St. Matthew Lutheran Church Cemetery. York County furnished more than 6,200 soldiers in the Civil War, and although no final tally is possible, as many as 900 county men died from wounds and disease; Hanover's Mount Olivet Cemetery alone contains at least 235 Union graves. Across the Civil War, somewhere between 620,000 and 750,000 soldiers died, about two percent of the nation's 31 million people in 1860, and many more died from disease and injuries than on battlefields; the war also killed vast numbers of equines, with one estimate reaching 1.5 million. In the nearby Battle of Gettysburg, about 7,000 died in the fighting, another 30,000-plus died from injuries, and total casualties rose above 51,000, leaving a stench of death and injury that lingered for days and drifted for miles. A photograph taken in Hanover on February 6, 1864, by Peter S. Weaver is identified as the only known image of grave-raising from the Gettysburg Campaign; it shows Samuel Weaver, who supervised the exhumation of Union soldiers from the Battles of Gettysburg and Hanover for reburial in Gettysburg National Cemetery, and historians believe it may also include Basil Biggs, a former enslaved Marylander, veterinarian, Underground Railroad conductor, and disinterment specialist.

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Photo: Courtesy William A. Frassanito, <i>Early Photography in Gettysburg</i>

Photo: Courtesy Guthrie Memorial Library

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Pennville, Pennsylvania · USA