Burkittsville

After the September 14, 1862, Battle of Crampton’s Gap, Union surgeons turned Burkittsville, a quiet rural village of some 200 people, into a hospital complex. The German Reformed Church served as Hospital D, where Henrietta Biser and Henry M. Wiener recalled pews thrown into the yard, amputations inside, blood on the floor and walls, and wounded Union and Confederate soldiers lying on the floor until straw and later cots were brought in. St. Paul’s Lutheran Church also served as a hospital, the Reformed Church parsonage may also have had a medical function, and the Henry McDuell farm north of town was Hospital A, where Union wounded filled the main house and outbuildings while Confederate injured were kept on the large porch, under the direction of VI Corps Surgeon James D. Robinson. These hospitals operated until January 1863, when the remaining patients were transferred to Frederick. Soldiers who died in Burkittsville were temporarily buried in the town cemetery, with Federal dead moved to Antietam National Cemetery in 1867 and Confederate dead to Hagerstown’s Washington Confederate Cemetery in the 1870s.

Burkittsville, Maryland · United States