Framed portraits, letters, and other memorabilia of the children of Civil War soldiers.
J. Howard Wert Gettysburg Collection TM
During the Battle of Gettysburg, 22-year-old local resident J. Howard Wert served as a scout for Major General George G. Meade, guiding Union troops to strategic positions on the field and seeing for himself the terrible carnage and destruction the battle wrought. “No words can portray the awful picture of desolation, devastation, and death present,” Wert wrote after walking over the battlefield two days after the fighting had ended. “Across the field was the debris of battle, broken muskets, soiled bayonets, shattered ammunition chests, blood defiled clothing, trodden cartridge boxes and splintered swords…. Everywhere death, and death in its most abhorrent forms!”
Before the engagement was over and for years after it ended, Wert collected relics of the struggle. He gathered some directly from the battlefield—like these photos of children, mementos that soldiers had carried into the fight—while others were donated to him by veterans of the battle. By the time of his death in 1920, Wert had assembled thousands of Gettysburg artifacts.
