Elliott Burial Map of Gettysburg

We can't imagine what it was like to find ourselves in the aftermath of a catastrophic battle like Gettysburg.   Death and destruction were all around.  And the stench.  Approximately 7,000 corpses lay rotting in the Pennsylvania sun following the climactic action on the final day, July 3rd, 1863.  Then came the grisly and monumental task of interring the dead, a lengthy endeavor that horrified all involved.  The residents of the town soon found themselves living in a vast cemetery.  And while the citizens just wanted things to go back to normal and likely had no desire to document the location of the graves, others undertook the challenge.  One of whom was Samuel G. Elliott, a California engineer who surveyed the field during a visit in 1864.  

https://www.loc.gov/item/99447500

  

You can read more about Elliott by clicking [HERE].  He also drafted a map of the Antietam battlefield, which is housed at the New York Public Library.  Click [HERE] for it.  Both of these maps are like toys for researcher nerds who pore over them.  Of course, that's what I have done.  And I want to make a connection with my research on women soldiers and Elliott's map of Gettysburg.  But first, I would like to share a few wonderful videos on this map from Tim Fulmer, a licensed battlefield guide at Gettysburg.

 

 

 

And then this one focuses on graves around the Brian Barn: 

 

Mr. Fulmer rightly points out inconsistencies and cautions viewers about using the maps.  After all, it was nearly a year following the battle when Elliott made his survey.  By that time, the Federal dead had all been reburied in the national cemetery and the animals....well....I don't want to think about it.  They are truly the innocent victims of human-made catastrophes.  

So how could Elliott have known where all of these Federal dead originally were if they weren't there when he visited Gettysburg?  Mr. Fulmer references 1863 newspaper articles of another map documenting the graves that Elliott likely used.   One of these articles appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on July 23rd, 1863, not even two weeks after the battle: 

 

It would be nice if this 1863 map surfaced at some point.  In the meantime, we have Elliott's.  And so while there is cause question the accuracy of his 1864 map, it does have value, especially when comparing it to the current lay of the land.  And I really like how Mr. Fulmer overlays the map with current satellite images of the battlefield.  I am going to attempt to do the same, although my efforts fall well short of Mr. Fulmer's.

I am going to focus on the area of what is commonly known as Pickett's Charge.

 

 

The blocks in the top right of the photo are structures of the Brian property.  And then you see the mass of graves in the middle.  Somewhere among the 698 graves (the blocks of 522 and 176 combined) lay a woman soldier.  Unfortunately, the exact spot is unknown.  You can read a blog post I wrote about her previously by clicking [HERE].   She was documented in a burial report appearing in the Official Records of Brigadier William Hays who had taken over Winfield Scott Hancock's 2nd Corps after he had been wounded.  

  As you can see, his command buried 1,242 Confederates, the 698 denoted above from the partial Elliott map showing casualties from Pickett's charge undoubtedly among them due to the location of the 2nd Corps on Cemetery Ridge.  These graves - or what was left of them - would have still been there when Elliott created his map because the Confederate dead weren't removed from the battlefield until the 1870's. 

Here is a Google Earth image of the area.   The structure in the upper right-hand corner is the Brian barn.

 

Here is a composite I made with the same Google Earth image and an overlay of the Elliott map.

 

And here is the Google Earth image after I overlaid just the graves.

 

 

 

 

 

Mark took the photo above from the position of the Union 2nd Corps just down from the Brian barn overlooking the field of Pickett's charge.  Imagine this field covered with the graves shown in the Elliott map.  

 

When the Confederate dead were removed from the battlefield in the 1870's, most were relocated to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the woman likely among them.