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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
ANTIUP_090201_009.JPG: The building in the middle with the black roof and red walls is the Pry House which was McClellan's headquarters.
ANTIUP_090201_024.JPG: Atop the mountain, to the left of the tree-cut, is the Washington Monument.
ANTIUP_090201_039.JPG: You can see the Antietam National Cemetery in the distance, where the big US flag is to the left of the city cemetery.
ANTIUP_090201_200.JPG: Dunkard Church:
"Let us here today, in the spirit of the brethren who built it more than a century ago, rededicate this building to the advancement of peace among nations... to the brotherhood of all mankind." -- from address delivered by J. Millard Tawes, Governor of Maryland, September 2, 1962. Reconstruction of the historic DUNKARD CHURCH was made possible in 1961 by a special appropriation of funds by the State of Maryland.
ANTIUP_090201_227.JPG: From http://www.ohranger.com/antietam/sights-see
The Dunker Church
The Battle of Antietam, fought September 17, 1862, was one of the bloodiest battles in the history of this nation. Yet, one of the most noted landmarks on this great field of combat is a house of worship associated with peace and love. Indeed, the Dunker Church ranks as perhaps one of the most famous churches in American military history. This historic structure began as a humble country house of worship constructed by local Dunker farmers in 1852. It was Mr. Samuel Mumma, owner of the nearby farm that bears his name, that donated land in 1851 for the Dunkers to build their church. During its early history the congregation consisted of about half a dozen-farm families from the local area.
During The Battle:
On the eve of the Battle of Antietam, the members of the Dunker congregation, as well as their neighbors in the surrounding community, received a portent of things to come. That Sunday, September 14, 1862, the sound of cannons booming at the Battle of South Mountain seven miles to the east was plainly heard as the Dunkers attended church. By September 16 Confederate infantry and artillery was being positioned around the church in anticipation of the battle that was fought the next day.
During the battle of Antietam the church was the focal point of a number of Union attacks against the Confederate left flank. Most after action reports by commanders of both sides, including Union General Hooker and Confederate Stonewall Jackson, make references to the church.
At battles end the Confederates used the church as a temporary medical aid station. A sketch by well known Civil War artist Alfred Waud depicts a truce between the opposing sides being held in front of the church on September 18, in order to exchange wounded and bury the dead. At least one account states that after the battle the Union Army used the Dunker Church as an embalming station. One tradition persists that Lincoln may have visited the site during his visit to the Army of the Potomac in October 1862.
As for the old church, it was heavily battle scarred with hundreds of marks from bullets in its white washed walls. Likewise artillery had rendered serious damage to the roof and walls. By 1864 the Church was repaired, rededicated and regular services were held there until the turn of the century.
After the War:
The congregation built a new church in the town of Sharpsburg. Souvenir hunters took bricks from the walls of the church and a lack of adequate maintenance weakened the old structure. In 1921 a violent storm swept through the area flattening the church.
The land and church ruins were put up for sale and purchased by Sharpsburg resident Elmer G. Boyer. He salvaged most of the undamaged material of the building and in turn sold the property. The new property owner built a home on the foundation of the old church and in the 1930's operated a gas station and souvenir shop on the site. This structure was removed in 1951 when the property was purchased by the Washington County Historical Society. They in turn donated the site, then just a foundation, to the National Park Service. The Church was restored for the 100th Anniversary of the Battle in 1962 on the original foundation with as much original materials as possible and now stands as a beacon of peace on the battlefield.
The Dunker Church Today:
A visit to the Dunker Church today is like a step back into time. Take a seat inside and contemplate the sacrifice of the people of 1862. Note the simplicity of the church with its plain windows, crude wooden benches on which you may have sat for hours during the services in bygone years, and the simple table at the front where the elders of the church would have read from the old Bible.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (MD -- Antietam Natl Battlefield -- Upper Bridge (Woods, Cornfield, Dunker Church, Mumma)) directly related to this one:
[Display ALL photos on one page]:
2009 photos: Equipment this year: I mostly used the Fuji S100fs. I've also got a Nikon D90 and a newer Fuji -- the S200EHX -- both of which are nice but I still prefer the flexibility of the Fuji.
Trips this year:
Niagara Falls, NY,
New York City,
Civil War Trust conferences in Gettysburg, PA and Springfield, IL, and
my 4th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Los Angeles, Yosemite, Death Valley, Kings Canyon, Joshua Tree, etc).
Ego strokes: I had a picture of a Lincoln-Obama cupcake sculpture published in Civil War Times and WUSA-9, the local CBS affiliate, ran a quick piece on me. A picture that I took at the annual Abraham Lincoln Symposium appeared in the National Archives' "Prologue" magazine. I became a volunteer with the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Number of photos taken this year: 417,000.
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