During the Battle of Gettysburg, fought just north of here on July 1st–3rd, 1863, some 27,000 wounded men were caught in furious combat, and after the battle nearly 10,000 injured Union and Confederate soldiers were concentrated in a vast network of military field hospitals established by the U.S. Army of the Potomac nearby. For six to eight weeks during July and August, these field medical stations provided basic care under extreme weather conditions while facing shortages of proper food and medicine. The Old Aaron Sheely farm held overflow patients from adjacent hospitals, as well as an encampment of several thousand Southern prisoners of war and the headquarters of General Marsena Patrick, the Union Army’s Provost Marshal.
