“The Trostle Farm”

July 2, 1863

                                                   

        In July 1863  Abraham  and Catherine Trostle and their nine children had only recently moved into their new home located on a lane about 600 yard west of the Emmitsburg Road.  The 134 acre Farm was still owned by Abraham’s father Peter.  As can be seen above the former home was still in the process of being dismantled and the new summer kitchen to the right of the house was still unfinished.

          Unfortunately for the Trostles, the Union and Confederate Armies conspired to stage an unwelcome housewarming. Upon making his move to the west General Daniel Sickles made his field headquarters near a tree just to the left of the barn.  When the Confederates began their attack, artillery overshots sprinkled the farm area, including one which struck Sickles in the leg while he was on his horse.

          The scene above depicts the situation about fifteen minutes after Sickles’ wounding. Members of the 114^th Pennsylvania Regiment along with isolated soldiers from other III Corps regiments retreat from the disintegrating Federal line.  Just in front of the Barn General Sickles smokes a cigar as he is loaded into an ambulance.

         This print is taken from the same vantage point used by photographer Alexander Gardner four days later when dead horses littered the Trostle Farm.  Those horses would fall victim as Bigelow’s 9^th Massachusetts Artillery made a desperate stand perhaps twenty minutes after the scene above.