One of the great joys of a history tour is the opportunity to experience the unexpected. This is true for both the well-traveled history buff and the curious novice.
As historian Kyle Sinisi shares in the following article, anyone joining us on the Civil War: This Hallowed Ground Tour will enjoy some unexpected but interesting stops along the way, including the Brickyard at the intersection of Stevens Street and Hazel Alley. This little-known gem of Gettysburg is not only the site of a forgotten battle, but it is the genesis of a heart-rending story known as “The Children of the Battlefield.”
Discovering a Little-Known Gem of Gettysburg Battlefield
By Kyle S. Sinisi
On July 1, 1863, John Kuhn owned a five-acre lot adjacent to what is now the intersection of Stevens Street and Hazel Alley in Gettysburg. The lot was on the northern fringe of Gettysburg, and Kuhn had turned it into a thriving brickwork complete with kilns and a pug mill. By 3:30 PM that afternoon, Kuhn’s brickwork was the scene of a coalescing last-ditch attempt by Charles Coster’s brigade to hold the Union line against a flood of newly arrived Confederates.
Coster’s stand at the Brickyard on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg has been largely forgotten and is one of the little-known gems we visit on the Civil War: This Hallowed Ground Tour.
Coster’s Stand
For the Union, Charles Coster’s brigade from O.O. Howard’s Eleventh Corps formed a line generally facing north. For the Confederacy, two brigades of Jubal Early’s division approached from both the north and northeast. Outnumbered by more than 3 to 1, Coster’s brigade stood ready to receive the Confederate onslaught. Their stand would hopefully buy time for the scattered troops of the Union’s First and Eleventh Corps to create a new defensive line anchored on Culps and Cemetery Hills.
The stand of Coster’s brigade was brief. The Yankees fired no more than nine rounds per man before Early’s charging Confederates overwhelmed both of Coster’s flanks. Hand-to-hand combat raged among the brick kilns. By the time Coster ordered a general retreat twenty minutes later, a Union battery of artillery on the left of the line had fired 128 rounds toward Early’s Confederates. However, the order to retreat was much too late as it could not be understood amid the chaos of battle. The line was shattered, and panicked Union soldiers fled through Gettysburg to the south.
This brief action at Kuhn’s Brickyard produced a frightful cost. When the counting was done, Coster’s brigade had suffered a total of 570 men killed, wounded, or captured. The 154th New York alone had lost 77 percent of its total force, which was among the highest casualty rates of any regiment in the Civil War. Confederate losses, while light, still numbered about 200 soldiers.
One of Gettysburg’s Most Interesting Sites
Dramatic stories involving the Lutheran Seminary, McPherson’s Ridge, the Railroad Cut, Barlow’s Knoll, and the death of John Reynolds all have diminished the Brickyard in our historical memory. And yet, there is much that makes the site of Coster’s Stand among Gettysburg’s most interesting.
The National Park Service now maintains a small lot in the old brickyard. It is no more than ¾ of an acre. In that property are the usual Civil War monuments, including one to the 154th New York and another to the 27th Pennsylvania. But there is also something that is unique to any Civil War battlefield.
On July 1, 1988, and in time for the 125th anniversary of the battle, artists Mark Dunkleman and Johan Bjurman unveiled an 880 square foot mural of the battle at the Brickyard. For Dunkleman, especially, the project was a labor of love that had started in 1970 and only grew stronger when the owner of an adjacent property constructed a small warehouse along a portion of the battle line. Dunkleman wanted to mask that wall with a mural that faithfully depicted the stand of Coster’s brigade from a ground-level perspective. It was, and remains, an astonishing way to interpret a battle.
But there is one other compelling thing that draws us to the Brickyard. Following Robert E. Lee’s retreat from Gettysburg, the body of a dead Union soldier was spotted in the Coster battle area. There was no document on his body to identify him. However, the soldier still clutched in his hand an ambrotype image of three small children.
A Philadelphia doctor, John F. Bourns, who came to Gettysburg to help care for the wounded, noticed the image in a local tavern and thought it might be a way to identify the soldier. Bourns took the image back to Philadelphia and had it published in the newspapers. Within a month, the children were identified as Frank, Fred, and Alice Humiston. Their mother, Philinda, could now rest more easily, knowing that her husband Sergeant Amos Humiston of the 154th New York had been found.
The heart-rending story of what then became known as “The Children of the Battlefield” had one final postscript. Dr. Bourns efforts on behalf of Gettysburg’s dead continued after the war when he helped found an orphan’s home for the children of those killed in the battle. The orphanage would be on Cemetery Hill, and Philinda Humiston and her children would be among the first residents of the home.
