From small beginnings
By K I. White
Editor, The Last Campaign
Founded more than a decade ago, the
Central Delaware Civil War Round Table has seen its membership
grow tenfold to about 100 members. And some $10,000 has been
donated toward Civil War preservation.
The organization’s birth began with
a small notice placed in the Dover Post by Stan Petraschuck of
Odessa. In it he asked people interested in studying the Civil
War to meet at the Plaza Nine restaurant in Dover in August
1992. Enough people attended to encourage Stan to continue the
nurturing process.
Stan was elected the group’s first
president. He was followed by Craig Lamond of Delmar, Charles
Burris of Clayton, Jim Stewart of Dover, John Bochnowski of
Camden, Bill Sparks of Dover, Don Jagger of Frederica and
current president Tom Ryan of Bethany Beach.
In the early years, members often
volunteered to speak on subjects dear to their hearts. In
recent years we’ve been able to expand the topic range by
bringing in outside speakers, too.
Battles have been discussed: South
Mountain, Little Bighorn, Petersburg, Fort Fisher, Gettysburg,
Monocacy, Chancellorsville.
We’ve learned about people: Abraham
Author Bruce Weir Benidt discusses his
novel “Cross Over the River: Lives of Stonewall
Jackson” at the December 2004 meeting.
Lincoln, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain,
Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, U.S. Grant,
African-American soldiers. Regional topics have sparked
interest, of course: the 4th Delaware, the du Pont family, the
1st Delaware cavalry, Maryland in the war. And more esoteric
subjects haven’t been ignored: Confederate
prisoner-of-war art, Civil War shipwrecks, the Civil War G.I.
Joe, photographing Civil War sites, Civil War medicine and
ghosts.
We’ve also traveled. To battlefields
Antietam, Manassas, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg,
Spotsylvania, Gettysburg, Harpers Ferry. We saw “The
Civil War” on Broadway and held a group picnic at Fort
Delaware.
The years have shown that interest in the
Civil War remains strong in central Delaware. But our
membership reaches beyond Kent County, and folks regularly
drive south from Wilmington and New Castle and north from
Seaford and Bethany Beach to attend meetings. Maryland’s
also represented by members who live in Easton and Denton.
Today, many of the original members who
sustained the organization in its formative years have moved
on. Like in any army, faces often change. Job interference and
transfers, busy lives and other interests cause some to muster
out. But fortunately new recruits continue to enlist.
K.I. White photos
The group’s tour, led by licensed
guide Jim Martin (below right) of Day 1 at Gettysburg began at
Oak Hill, which offers a clear view of McPherson’s Ridge
across the way, Herr’s Ridge to the distant right and
Seminary Ridge to the left.
Fields of Glory
Gettysburg’s roads and terrain
made it a natural battlefield
made it a natural battlefield
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Today, just as in 1863, Gettysburg
remains the center of a compass, crisscrossed by roads
radiating outward in all directions, north to Carlisle,
west to Hagerstown, south to Taneytown, east to Hanover
and all the places between. Northwest to Chambersburg,
northeast to York and Harrisburg, southwest to
Emmitsburg, southeast to Washington and Baltimore, and
beyond all those to Dover.
But unlike the men marching toward
the 1863 battle, the round table’s journey north
to Gettysburg on the Oct. 20 field trip was made in
comfort on a Dawson bus ably piloted by Gilbert Steuer.
Halfway there, Don Jagger and John Bochnowski provided
deep background on the battle and the armies’
commanders. But Bobbi Steele reminded all of the human
cost of war with her discussion of the Daniel Lady
Farm, which was used as a field hospital during the
fighting and afterward.
Licensed battlefield guide Jim
Martin met the group at the national park’s
visitors center and the bus headed north of town to Oak
Hill. The wind
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whipped hair and nipped at noses
as we gathered in the shadow of the Eternal Light Peace
Memorial. Sunbeams sparkled through orange, brown and
red leaves.
“Everywhere we walk on the
battlefield could be a grave,” Jim said, for
historians are sure not all bodies, particularly those
of Confederates, were recovered. Discovery of a
skeleton in the ’90s bolsters that belief.
Jim started the tour on Oak Hill
because it overlooks much of the ground contested on
July 1, 1863. Even though neither Robert E. Lee nor
George Meade wanted to fight at Gettysburg, it was
“a natural concentration point.” Their
subordinates took the decision from their hands as Army
of Potomac Gen. John Buford’s cavalry stalled
C.S.A. Gen. Harry Heth’s 3rd Corps division long
enough for Union infantry to get on line.
Once Jim had set the stage for the
opening action, the group moved on to Herr’s and
then McPherson’s Ridge. Just as the fighting on
July 1 shifted from south of Chambersburg Pike north,
the group walked to the railroad
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cut where Jim described how
Confederates using the steep cut were trapped.
After lunch at the picnic area on
Warfield Ridge, the group tracked what happened on the
Union’s right as the Confederate 2nd Corps began
arriving on the battlefield. As one division pressed
forward from Oak Hill another hit the 11th Corps as it
tried to stretch the line from the 1st Crops north
around the town.
A stop at Blocher, now known as
Barlow Knoll, helped explain why the 11th broke. Jim
also led us to a little-visited site in town, Coster
Avenue, where three Union regiments were trapped in an
alley. The site is marked by a mural on a machine shop,
commissioned in the 1970s by the owner.
Before ending the tour on East
Cemetery Hill, the group stopped at the Daniel Lady
Farm, where members Bobbi Steele and June Warrington
are active in restoration efforts.
Under darkening skies we headed
home, but already began discussing returning to
Gettysburg’s sacred fields in 2008 for Day 2.
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The Union cavalry and then the 1st Corps
fought a classic delaying action from Herr’s Ridge back
to McPherson’s Ridge.
Right: The group ate bagged lunches at the
picnic area on Warfield Ridge, off Confederate Avenue.
BelowL Before heading back to Dover, the
group stopped at the Daniel Lady Farm.
At the end of the day a handful of members
walked with Jim Martin to Cemetery Hill while most of the group
visited the National Park Service’s book store.