By Andrew Dalton, President & CEO of Gettysburg History
Covered in blood, she baked bread for the wounded until her stove was “shattered into fragments.”
26-year-old Josephine Miller lived along the Emmitsburg Road south of Gettysburg at the time of the battle. On July 2, 1863, Union General Joseph B. Carr observed that she was “busily engaged in baking bread. He informed her that a great battle was inevitable, and advised her to seek a place of safety at once. She said she had a batch of bread baking in the oven and would remain until it was done and then leave. When her bread was baked it was given to our soldiers, and devoured so eagerly that she concluded to remain and bake another batch. And so she continued to the end of the battle, baking and giving her bread to all who came.”
As the fighting intensified, wounded Union soldiers poured into the home and Josephine continued to bake bread and treat their wounds until she was literally covered in blood. During the chaos, an artillery shell crashed into the home, exploded, and “shattered into fragments the cookstove in the kitchen.” Miraculously, Josephine survived the battle unscathed.
In 1886, 50-year-old Josephine (then living at Troy, Ohio), returned to meet some of the Union veterans she had cared for. Standing beside the very same stove she used in 1863, Josephine posed for this photograph and was “decorated…with a score of army badges” by the grateful old soldiers.
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To learn more about how ordinary citizens went above and beyond during and after the Battle of Gettysburg, visit Gettysburg Beyond the Battle Museum in-person at 625 Biglerville Road.
