Existing comment:
First Day at Chancellorsville
Absalom McGee House
"They tore up five of our sheets and about 12 dresses and undergarments into strips for bandage."
-- Harriet McGee
Union Surgeon John Shaw Billings moved his field hospital to the relative safety of Absalom McGee's house, which stood on this rise. McGee's family took shelter in the cellar as Union wounded filled the rest of the house. The medical team tore down McGee's stair rail to better reach the upper rooms, and removed his doors and used them as operating tables.
Before and after the Battle of Chancellorsville, Absalom McGee's Unionist stance was a burden to his family. He regularly hid in the woods and stealthily slipped into his house at night, but Absalom was still imprisoned by Southerners on three occasions. According to his wife, Frances, "The rebels first took Mr. McGee in the night when I had just given birth to a child. They threatened to kill my husband at the time they took him which so excited me that I came very near dying and my child died in consequence." |