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Brian's Farm


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#1
krag96

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Brian is the now popular name of Abraham Brian, or Bryant, or Brien.  He was a free black man,  twice a widower living outside of Gettysburg along the Emmitsburg Road near Ziegler's Grove on a twelve acre farm he owned.  Just ten miles south in Emmitsburg, Maryland blacks were kept as slaves, here in Pennsylvania there was no slavery and blacks could own land and make their own way.  Mr. Brian grew corn, wheat, and oats on his tiny farm, and tended a small orchard with his two teenage sons.  He couldn't read or write, hence little is known of him and he would have fallen through the cracks of time had his farm not been in the way of the war.  It's known he and most of Gettysburg's black population fled north to avoid capture and enslavement by Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.  What he came back to was his tiny farm bullet riddled, his animals gone, and his crops destroyed.  No less than 60 shallow graves dotted his property. 

 

Brian's Farm had the luck of being on the north flank of the Confederate assault of July 3, ''Pickett's Charge''.  The Union line was ten yards from his front door.  He filed a claim with the government for $1,028.00 in damages after the war, he received $15.00 for hay the army took for horses.  The damage they claimed was done by the Confederate Army, which by then no longer existed. 

 

Brian's Farm the Union line marked by monuments.

 

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Brian's farm just after the battle.

 

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An artist's creation of the fighting at Brian's Farm.

 

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#2
Nikon Shooter

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Enjoyable read, please keep committing it :P



#3
krag96

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Not my proudest piece of photography, but a snapshot of a marker outside the Brian house showing an enlargement of the 1863 photo shown above, a soldier at the corner and a child reclining in front of the small shed.  Of interest is section of the Elliot map imposed on the photo showing the graves of soldiers on or near Brian's Farm.  Each dot, or square represents a soldier's temporary grave.  Union soldiers were dug up later that year with most being  reburied in the National Cemetery just several hundred yards from Brian's Farm.  Confederate dead lay on the field until 1869 when a project to give them proper burial in Virginia was undertaken.  Great care was taken with the disenternment of the Southern dead.  The bones being placed in coffins and transported by rail to Richmond for reburial in Hollywood Cemetery.

 

Elliot identified as many graves as he could, but the National Park Service estimates between 600 and 1,000 ''temporary'' unmarked graves exist on the battlefield to this day.   Every few years nature or construction bares the grave of a soldier who was killed at Gettysburg in July, 1863. 

 

 

 

 

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Brian's barn, taken from the house, a 2nd. Corps monument showing the Union battle line.  The mountains in the distance hold an interesting  story I'll relate later.

 

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