Gettysburg, PA
photos by Christina and Tim Miller
We went to Gettysburg Sept 4-7, 2008. We had an awesome time! We drove the whole way up there without stopping (13+ hours) and part of it was through Hurricane Gustav as it made it's way through the midwest. The rain was awful! However, it cleared up on the far edge of Ohio. We got there around midnight (their time) and checked into a really nice room at the Chambersburg Super 8.
Friday we took our bikes to the battlefield and drove some, biked some. Tim was especially interested in the locations of the 45th New York during the battle, because his great-great-great grandfather, Louis Gerber, a German immigrant, was in that unit in that battle. Tim is standing next to the 45th's monument below. We met some nice reenactors from New Jersey setting up by Spangler's Spring. (Their photos below.) We went into town for lunch, and then back out to the park that evening...more biking...it was beautiful! The weather was perfect and not too many visitors and we were able to take a bunch of pix. We ran into a guy from Germany who asked us "if we saw our President"...I thought he meant "ever". I kind of looked at Tim and was prepared to answer, "it's a big country...the average person doesn't see the President..." and then he said President Bush was at the Gettysburg Visitor Center "about an hour ago"...Secret Service, Black Cars, the works. I can't believe we missed it!
That night, we went to the Cashtown Inn for dinner. Wow. The food was melt-in-your mouth good. Our waiter, Brian, was great and a good source of information on the Inn. I got a few pix of the place, and a photo of Tim with a photo of his favorite ghost hunters, the guys from TAPS who investigated the Cashtown Inn Dec of '07. Tim brought the CD of the show, from home, of that episode and we watched it at the hotel after dinner.
Sunday, before we left, we went to The Victorian Photography Studio, 76 Steinwehr Ave., Gettysburg, and had our photo done. This place is strictly civil war era...they don't do the saloon pix, etc. This was the coolest thing!! The photographer, Del, was awesome! They got us dressed up in period clothing, and then he explained everything involved (and we watched it before our eyes) of the whole wet plate process. He had an antique camera, and we had to hold perfectly still (I actually had a metal brace behind me holding my head still) and he took the lens cover off, counted the appropriate amount of seconds, then put it back on. Then he put it in some kind of liquid to make a negative image, then put it in another chemical/liquid to make the picture appear before our eyes. Then it had to be dried and varnished. He even let us look thru the camera to see what he sees. It was a very cool, very interesting, very worthwhile experience. We talked with him and his wife and between the four of us were debating why the people in the civil war pix still look different. He was using same camera, same process, same clothing...we decided maybe we didn't look "hungry or sad" enough. We were too healthy. I wasn't really happy at how plump I looked, but I had clothes underneath and it is what it is.
We went to Antietam on our way home on Sunday. I didn't realize Maryland was so beautiful. I bought a booklet on the photography of Alexander Gardner and his work at Antietam. "Antietam was the first battle to depict the grim and bloody truth of civil war through the lens" of this photographer. I went thru the park and took my own photos of the same locations as he did. At one point Tim and I got into a disagreement about where the photographer had been standing. I thought I was going to have to knock him out. I finally made him give me my booklet, I took my shot, and...I was right.
Our Antietam Photos
Across from "The Cornfield" Auto Tour Stop 4 (Tim reproduced this photo...he had to hold the camera thru the fence). We are parked right on the other side, to the right of this photo.
The sunken road..."Confederate dead in a ditch on the right wing used as a rifle pit." It was here that Gen. Robert Rodes' brigade of Alabama soldiers made their defense of the lane...so, I assume these are Alabama soldiers.
Burnside Bridge
After the battle at the Burnside Bridge location, over 4,000 bodies were buried on the field where they fell. Some of those graves were along the stone wall in this image. Later, the Union bodies were reinterred to the National Cemetery, Confederates to three local cemeteries. (I am more zoomed in than the original photo because there is a bench right in front of Tim and I didn't want it in the photo.)
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