Post by Gordon Lee on Sept 17, 2013 13:47:40 GMT -5
Greetings Fellow SB Boarders
.
As some of you may know, I use to spend a lot of time on usenet and MySpace blogging about old-time folklore and ghost stories. I tried to limit my ramblings to true and documented facts, in general and in specifics. I spent a lot of time researching before posting my blogs.
.
Today happens to be the anniversary of a tragic day in American history. I just so happened to write a blog that concerns this event. With your indulgence, I post it here.
.
.
Lemonade Well
.
What does a wise man do when life hands him a lemon? And just exactly how far does one go to make lemonade? Daniel Wise faced this situation when he found his little homestead and small cabin smack dab in the middle of a battle field between two armies intent in utterly destroying each other.
.
Daniel Wise, a very simple and uneducated man, was up there in age. He held no lofty expectations. His darling wife (and the main motivational force in his life) died several years ago. His grown sons and daughters left the nest years before. His primary function now consisted of seeing just how much work he could get out of performing. For income he did a tad bit of farming on his tiny homestead. He occasionally, but only when in the mood, created and sold a little pottery. Every once in a while he provided overnight shelter to a passing traveler in his rickety old one-room cabin for a slight fee. His farming skills were minimal. He created excellent pottery and his wares were much sought after by neighbors and town folk. But pottery work was just too labor intensive for his nature. A weary traveler would only take refuge in the little cabin only if the weather became incredibility inclement and only if there was absolutely no place else left to stay. In short, old Mr. Wise was very proficient at doing nothing.
.
His little four-acre homestead was nestled in a quiet, pretty little valley area called Fox’s Gap in the Appalachian Blue Ridge Mountains. The Daniel Wise cabin sat at the intersection of the Hagerstown Pike and a little connector lane just a mile and one half Northeast from Sharpsburg. The local people used this lane, officially known as the “Old Sharpsburg Road”, as a shortcut between Boonsboro and Sharpsburg. Used so often the lane itself became deeply rutted, thus the local people called it “the sunken road”. On the morning of September 18, 1862 this sunken little patch of road contained dead men left over from the battle of the day before. There were so many dead men lying in this lane (over 3,000 bodies, some piled three or four deep) that it was thereafter known as “Bloody Lane”.
.
Now, what we have here is the aftermath of what is the “Battle of Antietam” [pronounced An-tee-tum]. As far as American Civil War battles go, it was fairly unexceptional in regards to the final outcome of the war. But it IS chronicled as THE bloodiest day in the American Civil War. The rebel army, in an effort to draw the invading Federal Army out of Virginia and away from its threatened capitol of Richmond, offensively marched into Maryland. Greatly outnumbered, the Confederate troops hastily retreated after the fighting. The Federal troops took off after them, but only up to a point. History tells us that Union Generals made a big mistake by allowing Lee’s gray coats to slip back across the Potomac River, thus stretching out the war, carnage, and the making of more ghosts for another three years.
.
The few Union soldiers remaining after the battle buried their cohorts in makeshift graves. They had no time to bury the dead Rebels. They were in a hurry to catch up with their army chasing Lee and his men back to Virginia. They offered the civilian populace one dollar a head to bury the confederate soldiers.
.
Old man Wise was astounded that his dilapidated little cabin, which was rickety enough before the battle, was still standing. It was full of holes from cannon balls and musket fire. Even more astounding, when he looked out upon his tiny little garden, he found fifty-eight dead rebels.
.
Daniel learned about the dollar a head burial fee and his mind started working over time. He thought to himself, “I’m going to make a heap of money!” He reckoned that this was going to be easy money since he didn’t have the inclination to work too hard anyway.
.
Then he realized that would be an awful lot of holes for an old man to dig.
.
Daniel sat there a spell on his front door pondering an easier way to plant these dead men. Meanwhile the early morning sun relentlessly beat down on him and the dead. Already the soldiers began to bloat and decompose. If only his water well hadn’t dried up over the summer. He sure would like to sip some cool water while deciding what to do with these putrid corpses.
.
Of course, it finally dawned on him, why dig 58 holes in the ground when one big hole had already been dug? And the water well was worthless anyway, it being dried up and all. Plus, that no account water well sat right there in the corner of his ruined and bloody garden. He wouldn’t have to lug these dead boys off very far. So that’s what he did. He dragged all 58 of the carcasses over to the well, toppled them down the hole, and shoveled a bit of dirt on top of them. And, he collected his fifty-eight dollars.
.
The Federal authorities did not have a problem with his method of burial. Anything, they figured, was better than a typhoid epidemic. But his friends and neighbors, most of them true-blue loyal Unionists, deemed it blasphemy, if not right out damn poor taste. “These poor men were rebels, our enemy, but you just don’t go and stuff their bodies down a well,” they told old Daniel Wise. Old Daniel Wise didn’t care. Besides, he got their carcasses out of his garden with minimal trouble and got paid a passel of money to boot.
.
The devastation to his garden and fields meant no crops this year. No crops meant no income. Even with hundreds of newspaper people and government people and just plain nosy people converging on the area to see the aftermath of the great slaughter, not a one of them wanted to spend a night in his ramshackle little abode. Not even that Mr. Alexander Gardner feller, working so hard to capture images on little glass plates, wished to stay overnight. Why, wasn’t his house right smack dab in the middle of the gruesome details? He could work all day ‘taking pictures’, bed down in the house and get up early with the morning sun and begin again and not have to waste time riding into town. And, with all the excitement, who could concentrate making any pottery? Nope, earning cash this year is out of the question. But the fifty-eight dollars he collected by depositing those fellows down the well was more than he was going to earn anyway. Yes, life is going very well for Mr. Wise and his well.
.
Life was going well until early one autumn evening while Daniel sat resting on his front door step after a long tiring day of doing nothing. He puffed away on his pipe and felt just as pleased with himself as he could be when movement caught his eye from down the lane. It appeared that somebody was approaching his cabin. “Great, I’m going to have company and have someone to talk and visit a spell,” he said to himself.
.
He stood to greet the traveler. But even in the dim light he could tell that something was wrong. Daniel could see that as the stranger neared that he was wearing some sort of uniform … a rebel uniform … a dirty, ratty, blood covered rebel uniform. Not only that, but also the man’s feet did not touch the ground, he seemed to float right on through thin air.
.
Although his blood pumped through his heart a gazillion miles per hour and thoughts raced through his head faster than a race horse could gallop, poor old Daniel Wise stood frozen stiff in fear. He couldn’t move a muscle.
.
“Mr. Wise,” spoke the apparition, “I am one of the soldiers that you tossed down your well and I’m not happy at all about it. You see, sir, you stuffed me down head first and it is mighty uncomfortable. I’d be eternally grateful, Mr. Wise, if you’d sit me right side up.” With that the soldier disappeared.
.
Now old man Wise, up to this point in his life, never believed in ghosts. He wasn’t quite sure that he believed in them now. After all, wasn’t he just sitting there on his door step after a long tiring day on the verge of nodding off? Surely, what he just experienced was a crazy dream. “Floating, talking dead men,” he thought to himself, “of course it was just a crazy dream.”
.
Scratching his head, he went on inside his cabin and prepared for bed. He crawled up the ladder to his loft and plopped down on his old pile of straw ticking and went to sleep.
.
A storm brewed up during the night. The wind howled, the lightning flashed, and the thunder clapped. One can only imagine what thoughts raced through the mind of old man Daniel Wise while he laid up in his loft. What is known, however, is that he got up, went outside to his well, in the pouring rain, and dug up thirteen bodies. He reburied these thirteen men in a neat and tidy row right there in his garden. The others remained in the defunct well with a new layer of dirt tossed upon them.
.
Was it the 13th man from the top that was stuck in the well upside down? We’ll never know. Daniel Wise was discovered the next morning, sitting on his door step, with a shovel in one hand and a half smoked pipe in the other. He died during the night of a heart attack.
.
.
Note about the Ghost: Local legend claims the soldier promised his beloved that he would think of her while away with the army. The two lovers looked to the heavens and agreed to gaze upon the same star every night. Buried head down in the old well made it even more difficult to keep his promise to gaze at that star, besides being dead.
.
Notes from yours truly, the author: Years following the Battle of Antietam (pronounced An-tee-tum), also called the Battle of Sharpsburg, all known battle field graves were exhumed and moved to cemeteries, including the fifty-eight bodies from the Wise garden and well.
.
That Daniel Wise (aka Weis) used his water well for what was heretofore related was well known (no pun intended) in the community. The word "blasphemy" was used in the Sharpsburg, Boonsboro and Hagerstown newspapers when relaying the information.
.
The Wise cabin was torn down in 1913. The location of the well is approximately 20 feet due West of the southwest intersection of the present day paved Ridge Road and the "Bloody Lane".
.
I've always wanted to use the word "heretofore" in a sentence.
.
Bibliography:
.
Mumma, Wilmer McKendree, _Ghosts of Antietam_, Vanity edition 2000, p 13-15.
.
www.marylandghosts.com/locations/washington.shtml
.
Weeks, Linton; “Be True to Your Ghoul”, Washington Post, October, 20, 2002, p C2, col. 1
.
Additional information:
.
For a good look at the Wise Cabin and to see these sites for fascinating accounts of the battle and the aftermath:
.
www.antietam.com/antietam/little_known_facts/aftermath.html
.
www.civilwarhome.com/antietamprelude.htm
.
brucebouley15.tripod.com/antietam_photos.htm
.
www.carman.net/antietam.htm
.
For a first hand account of “Bloody Lane” visit:
.
webpages.marshall.edu/~nester2/antietam.html
.
An incredible 360 degree modern day view from the sunken road is here:
.
www.jatruck.com/stonewall/ant_pans/antietam11.htm
.
Respectfully,
Gordon Lee
.
As some of you may know, I use to spend a lot of time on usenet and MySpace blogging about old-time folklore and ghost stories. I tried to limit my ramblings to true and documented facts, in general and in specifics. I spent a lot of time researching before posting my blogs.
.
Today happens to be the anniversary of a tragic day in American history. I just so happened to write a blog that concerns this event. With your indulgence, I post it here.
.
.
Lemonade Well
.
What does a wise man do when life hands him a lemon? And just exactly how far does one go to make lemonade? Daniel Wise faced this situation when he found his little homestead and small cabin smack dab in the middle of a battle field between two armies intent in utterly destroying each other.
.
Daniel Wise, a very simple and uneducated man, was up there in age. He held no lofty expectations. His darling wife (and the main motivational force in his life) died several years ago. His grown sons and daughters left the nest years before. His primary function now consisted of seeing just how much work he could get out of performing. For income he did a tad bit of farming on his tiny homestead. He occasionally, but only when in the mood, created and sold a little pottery. Every once in a while he provided overnight shelter to a passing traveler in his rickety old one-room cabin for a slight fee. His farming skills were minimal. He created excellent pottery and his wares were much sought after by neighbors and town folk. But pottery work was just too labor intensive for his nature. A weary traveler would only take refuge in the little cabin only if the weather became incredibility inclement and only if there was absolutely no place else left to stay. In short, old Mr. Wise was very proficient at doing nothing.
.
His little four-acre homestead was nestled in a quiet, pretty little valley area called Fox’s Gap in the Appalachian Blue Ridge Mountains. The Daniel Wise cabin sat at the intersection of the Hagerstown Pike and a little connector lane just a mile and one half Northeast from Sharpsburg. The local people used this lane, officially known as the “Old Sharpsburg Road”, as a shortcut between Boonsboro and Sharpsburg. Used so often the lane itself became deeply rutted, thus the local people called it “the sunken road”. On the morning of September 18, 1862 this sunken little patch of road contained dead men left over from the battle of the day before. There were so many dead men lying in this lane (over 3,000 bodies, some piled three or four deep) that it was thereafter known as “Bloody Lane”.
.
Now, what we have here is the aftermath of what is the “Battle of Antietam” [pronounced An-tee-tum]. As far as American Civil War battles go, it was fairly unexceptional in regards to the final outcome of the war. But it IS chronicled as THE bloodiest day in the American Civil War. The rebel army, in an effort to draw the invading Federal Army out of Virginia and away from its threatened capitol of Richmond, offensively marched into Maryland. Greatly outnumbered, the Confederate troops hastily retreated after the fighting. The Federal troops took off after them, but only up to a point. History tells us that Union Generals made a big mistake by allowing Lee’s gray coats to slip back across the Potomac River, thus stretching out the war, carnage, and the making of more ghosts for another three years.
.
The few Union soldiers remaining after the battle buried their cohorts in makeshift graves. They had no time to bury the dead Rebels. They were in a hurry to catch up with their army chasing Lee and his men back to Virginia. They offered the civilian populace one dollar a head to bury the confederate soldiers.
.
Old man Wise was astounded that his dilapidated little cabin, which was rickety enough before the battle, was still standing. It was full of holes from cannon balls and musket fire. Even more astounding, when he looked out upon his tiny little garden, he found fifty-eight dead rebels.
.
Daniel learned about the dollar a head burial fee and his mind started working over time. He thought to himself, “I’m going to make a heap of money!” He reckoned that this was going to be easy money since he didn’t have the inclination to work too hard anyway.
.
Then he realized that would be an awful lot of holes for an old man to dig.
.
Daniel sat there a spell on his front door pondering an easier way to plant these dead men. Meanwhile the early morning sun relentlessly beat down on him and the dead. Already the soldiers began to bloat and decompose. If only his water well hadn’t dried up over the summer. He sure would like to sip some cool water while deciding what to do with these putrid corpses.
.
Of course, it finally dawned on him, why dig 58 holes in the ground when one big hole had already been dug? And the water well was worthless anyway, it being dried up and all. Plus, that no account water well sat right there in the corner of his ruined and bloody garden. He wouldn’t have to lug these dead boys off very far. So that’s what he did. He dragged all 58 of the carcasses over to the well, toppled them down the hole, and shoveled a bit of dirt on top of them. And, he collected his fifty-eight dollars.
.
The Federal authorities did not have a problem with his method of burial. Anything, they figured, was better than a typhoid epidemic. But his friends and neighbors, most of them true-blue loyal Unionists, deemed it blasphemy, if not right out damn poor taste. “These poor men were rebels, our enemy, but you just don’t go and stuff their bodies down a well,” they told old Daniel Wise. Old Daniel Wise didn’t care. Besides, he got their carcasses out of his garden with minimal trouble and got paid a passel of money to boot.
.
The devastation to his garden and fields meant no crops this year. No crops meant no income. Even with hundreds of newspaper people and government people and just plain nosy people converging on the area to see the aftermath of the great slaughter, not a one of them wanted to spend a night in his ramshackle little abode. Not even that Mr. Alexander Gardner feller, working so hard to capture images on little glass plates, wished to stay overnight. Why, wasn’t his house right smack dab in the middle of the gruesome details? He could work all day ‘taking pictures’, bed down in the house and get up early with the morning sun and begin again and not have to waste time riding into town. And, with all the excitement, who could concentrate making any pottery? Nope, earning cash this year is out of the question. But the fifty-eight dollars he collected by depositing those fellows down the well was more than he was going to earn anyway. Yes, life is going very well for Mr. Wise and his well.
.
Life was going well until early one autumn evening while Daniel sat resting on his front door step after a long tiring day of doing nothing. He puffed away on his pipe and felt just as pleased with himself as he could be when movement caught his eye from down the lane. It appeared that somebody was approaching his cabin. “Great, I’m going to have company and have someone to talk and visit a spell,” he said to himself.
.
He stood to greet the traveler. But even in the dim light he could tell that something was wrong. Daniel could see that as the stranger neared that he was wearing some sort of uniform … a rebel uniform … a dirty, ratty, blood covered rebel uniform. Not only that, but also the man’s feet did not touch the ground, he seemed to float right on through thin air.
.
Although his blood pumped through his heart a gazillion miles per hour and thoughts raced through his head faster than a race horse could gallop, poor old Daniel Wise stood frozen stiff in fear. He couldn’t move a muscle.
.
“Mr. Wise,” spoke the apparition, “I am one of the soldiers that you tossed down your well and I’m not happy at all about it. You see, sir, you stuffed me down head first and it is mighty uncomfortable. I’d be eternally grateful, Mr. Wise, if you’d sit me right side up.” With that the soldier disappeared.
.
Now old man Wise, up to this point in his life, never believed in ghosts. He wasn’t quite sure that he believed in them now. After all, wasn’t he just sitting there on his door step after a long tiring day on the verge of nodding off? Surely, what he just experienced was a crazy dream. “Floating, talking dead men,” he thought to himself, “of course it was just a crazy dream.”
.
Scratching his head, he went on inside his cabin and prepared for bed. He crawled up the ladder to his loft and plopped down on his old pile of straw ticking and went to sleep.
.
A storm brewed up during the night. The wind howled, the lightning flashed, and the thunder clapped. One can only imagine what thoughts raced through the mind of old man Daniel Wise while he laid up in his loft. What is known, however, is that he got up, went outside to his well, in the pouring rain, and dug up thirteen bodies. He reburied these thirteen men in a neat and tidy row right there in his garden. The others remained in the defunct well with a new layer of dirt tossed upon them.
.
Was it the 13th man from the top that was stuck in the well upside down? We’ll never know. Daniel Wise was discovered the next morning, sitting on his door step, with a shovel in one hand and a half smoked pipe in the other. He died during the night of a heart attack.
.
.
Note about the Ghost: Local legend claims the soldier promised his beloved that he would think of her while away with the army. The two lovers looked to the heavens and agreed to gaze upon the same star every night. Buried head down in the old well made it even more difficult to keep his promise to gaze at that star, besides being dead.
.
Notes from yours truly, the author: Years following the Battle of Antietam (pronounced An-tee-tum), also called the Battle of Sharpsburg, all known battle field graves were exhumed and moved to cemeteries, including the fifty-eight bodies from the Wise garden and well.
.
That Daniel Wise (aka Weis) used his water well for what was heretofore related was well known (no pun intended) in the community. The word "blasphemy" was used in the Sharpsburg, Boonsboro and Hagerstown newspapers when relaying the information.
.
The Wise cabin was torn down in 1913. The location of the well is approximately 20 feet due West of the southwest intersection of the present day paved Ridge Road and the "Bloody Lane".
.
I've always wanted to use the word "heretofore" in a sentence.
.
Bibliography:
.
Mumma, Wilmer McKendree, _Ghosts of Antietam_, Vanity edition 2000, p 13-15.
.
www.marylandghosts.com/locations/washington.shtml
.
Weeks, Linton; “Be True to Your Ghoul”, Washington Post, October, 20, 2002, p C2, col. 1
.
Additional information:
.
For a good look at the Wise Cabin and to see these sites for fascinating accounts of the battle and the aftermath:
.
www.antietam.com/antietam/little_known_facts/aftermath.html
.
www.civilwarhome.com/antietamprelude.htm
.
brucebouley15.tripod.com/antietam_photos.htm
.
www.carman.net/antietam.htm
.
For a first hand account of “Bloody Lane” visit:
.
webpages.marshall.edu/~nester2/antietam.html
.
An incredible 360 degree modern day view from the sunken road is here:
.
www.jatruck.com/stonewall/ant_pans/antietam11.htm
.
Respectfully,
Gordon Lee
