On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln headed on horseback through the streets of Gettysburg to deliver his most famous speech. He rode past the impressive gatehouse at the Evergreen Cemetery to the newly dug graves of Union soldiers that lay beyond it. The gatehouse was the home of a German immigrant family that had endured the battle and spearheaded the first burials after it ended.
That gatehouse is still there at 799 Baltimore Pike, and inside it is a statue of a woman who was there when the two armies arrived on July 1, 1863, saw them fight, buried the dead, and was there when Lincoln arrived.
Elizabeth Thorn and her husband Peter were immigrants who had been building a life in Gettysburg in the decade before the Civil War began. When the deadliest battle in American history erupted in their community, Peter was off in the Union Army. Elizabeth was left to care for her children and her elderly parents, and, of course, for the cemetery itself.
Peter Thorn enlisted in the Union army in 1862. He was the superintendent of the cemetery and part of his compensation was being allowed to live in the gatehouse. He had cleared the Evergreen grounds and dug the graves for the dead of Gettysburg. Now that he was gone, these tasks fell to the wife he left behind. When the battle was fought from July 1-3, 1863, Elizabeth was five months pregnant.2
Elizabeth had grown up near the Rhine River. Her family, the Mosers moved to Gettysburg in 1854, when the borough was in the throes of anti-immigrant activity. The local newspaper, the Star and Banner, denounced immigrants as too reliant on public welfare and unable or unwilling to support themselves. It also questioned the cultural values of immigrants who were often either Catholics or atheistic socialists. Even though only 10% of Gettysburg’s population was foreign-born, hostility towards immigrants was building.3
Elizabeth moved to America at a time when immigrant women were the focus of many stereotypes. Irish women, for example, were seen as sexually licentious. Since many of them worked outside of the home, they were also seen as breaking the American rules of gender segregation in which a woman’s proper place was in the home. German women, on the other hand, were seen as masculine and crude. They were thought to be below average in intelligence. “Stupid” was a common description applied to German immigrant women.4
In 1855, the anti-immigrant Know Nothings staged a large rally in Gettysburg followed by a torchlight parade. Men carried banners emblazoned with slogans demanding that “Americans Must Rule America.” We do not know if Elizabeth or Peter Thorn were ever targeted by the Know Nothings, but they were living in a place where at least some of their neighbors regarded them as unwelcome invaders.5
On June 26, 1863, a real invasion began. Confederate cavalry, moving through Gettysburg arrived at Elizabeth Thorn’s gatehouse home and demanded that she feed them. They bragged of having killed a Union militiaman nearby, but they promised her that they would not rape her “like the yankeys did to their ladies,” she later wrote. This mention of rape may have only heightened her fear as a woman alone with enemy soldiers.6
The Confederates moved off soon, but on July 1 fighting broke out on the ridges west of Thorn’s home. A staff officer for Union General O.O. Howard stopped at her house and asked if there was a man there who could guide him along the unfamiliar roads so that he could speed the Union reinforcements marching to confront the Confederates. Elizabeth volunteered, but the officer told her he could not accept her help because the roads ahead were under fire. She insisted that the men were all off in the army and that she was the only one who could help. As she accompanied the officer onto the approaches to the battle, the soldiers seeing her let up a cheer at her courage.7
The Union XI Corps, made up mostly of German soldiers, moved past the gatehouse on their way to disaster at Barlow’s Knoll. When they had to retreat, they pulled back to her home which stood on the hill rise known to everyone who studies the Civil War as Cemetery Hill. While the defeated Germans fortified their position that night, Elizabeth cooked dinner for the XI Corps’ commander, O.O. Howard, and his German general Carl Schurz.8
I went into the cemetery through the Baltimore Pike Gatehouse where Elizabeth lived.
On July 2, the Thorns were evacuated from the gatehouse. Cemetery Hill was a major focus of fighting that day and the Thorn’s home was just a few hundred yards from the place where Pickett’s Charge crested on July 3. The Thorn’s were not allowed to return until the Confederates retreated after the battle.9
When Elizabeth and her three small sons returned on July 7, their home and the once serene cemetery were transformed. The air stank from the decay of dead men and animals rotting on a piece of land that was one of the most fought over in American history. Seventeen men were dead in her garden and 34 horses were lying on her lawn. Her food was all eaten by the soldiers and the floors and furniture in her home were covered in the blood of wounded men brought into the house for treatment.10
Even though she was five months pregnant, Elizabeth began digging graves almost immediately. She and her elderly father personally buried at least one hundred of the Union dead. She later wrote that the exertion damaged her health and she believed that it contributed to the death as a teen of the baby still in her womb in July 1863.11
Two windows from the Gatehouse have been covered over.
After passing through the Gatehouse, it looks like a normal cemetery.
But I looked back towards the gate and saw a pregnant woman with a shovel in her hands digging graves.
She looked tired, wiping away sweat on that hot July in 1863 day.
Peter Thorn returned home to Elizabeth after his military service ended. When he died in 1907, a local historian wrote to praise the Thorns as model immigrants who, he said, were “good American citizens”, unlike the undesirable Italian, Jewish and Polish immigrants then being “vomited upon our shores,” in his words. The Thorns had once been part of a scorned German immigrant minority. Half-a-century later, they were being used to disparage the next wave of immigrants.12
On November 16, 2002 the “Gettysburg Women’s Memorial” was dedicated featuring Elizabeth Thorn. She was sculpted by Ron Tunison.
All color photos taken by Pat Young.
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Sources:
Note: Text adapted from my article for Immigrants’ Civil War.
1. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History by Margaret Creighton published by Basic Books (2005) Kindle Loc. 700-730; The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows by Gabor Boritt published by Simon & Schuster.(2006); Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Garry Wills published by Simon and Schuster (1992); Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words by Douglas Wilson published by Knopf (2006).
2. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History by Margaret Creighton published by Basic Books (2005) Kindle Loc. 700-730
3. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History by Margaret Creighton published by Basic Books (2005) Kindle Loc. 706-730
4. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History by Margaret Creighton published by Basic Books (2005) Kindle Loc. 713-730
5. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History by Margaret Creighton published by Basic Books (2005) Kindle Loc. 713-730
6. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History by Margaret Creighton published by Basic Books (2005) Kindle Loc. 1365
7. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History by Margaret Creighton published by Basic Books (2005) Kindle Loc. 1590-1600, 1960-2000.
8. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History by Margaret Creighton published by Basic Books (2005) Kindle Loc. 1590-1600
9. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History by Margaret Creighton published by Basic Books (2005) Kindle Loc. 2460-2500
10. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History by Margaret Creighton published by Basic Books (2005) Kindle Loc. 2545-2550
11. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History by Margaret Creighton published by Basic Books (2005) Kindle Loc. 2460-2500
12. The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History by Margaret Creighton published by Basic Books (2005) Kindle Loc. 3085
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