Today was a day of battlefield tours. I was on “The Citizens’ War: Sharpsburg and Shepherdstown During the 1862 Maryland Campaign” with Professor Jim Broomall of Shepherd University. We began with some classroom time discussing the effects of war on the civilian population and what the civilians of Shepherdstown and Sharpsburg had to deal with during the battle of Antietam and in its aftermath.
We then embarked on a short walking tour of Shepherdstown, featuring buildings used as hospitals. Shepherdstown buildings were hospitals solely, as far as we know, for confederate soldiers.
Even a church rectory was used as a hospital for wounded confederate soldiers.
Next we went to Ferry Hill Plantation, which overlooks the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. It was the home of Henry Kyd Douglas, who joined the confederate army and was an aide to Stonewall Jackson. We visited this site to get an idea of how some civilians in the area lived.
The National Park Service operates the site. It’s officially closed right now, but we were able to get inside. It’s not ready for visitors yet because subsequent owners modified it, even turning it into a restaurant at one point, and needs to be rehabilitated back to its Civil War-era condition.
Our last stop was the Pry House, which was Major General George B. McClellan’s headquarters during the battle of Antietam. The National Civil War Medical Museum operates the site. The Army of the Potomac used the barn at the site as a hospital for wounded United States soldiers.
This was a pretty good tour. I learned a lot and it was very well done and well organized.
Student of the American Civil War 
American Battlefield Trust now has a campaign to accumulate money to purchase properties used during the battle of Shepherdstown. 150 acres near the location of AP Hill’s troops during the early part of the 1862 battle