Tillie Pierce: Teen Eyewitness to the Battle of Gettysburg
Chapter 1 The Shrivers and the Pierces TILLIE PIERCE LIVED ON BALTIMORE STREET ONLY THREE BLOCKS FROM THE DIAMOND Next door George and Hettie Shriver and their two little girls made a home A narrow open space lay between the Shriver house and the Pierce house The two buildings were very similar Both were two story redbrick townhouses with wood shingled roofs On the main floor in each house were two large rooms a parlor for guests and a sitting room where the family members spent most of their time together All the bedrooms were on the second floor Both houses had an attic or garret Windows on the ends of each house allowed the residents to peek into each other's garret Each property had a small backyard that faced the South Mountain to the west The two families would become dramatically entwined in July 1863
THE SHRIVERS HENRIETTA HETTIE WEIKERT WAS ONE OF JACOB AND SARAH WEIKERT'S THIRTEEN THIRTEEN CHILDREN They lived on a large farm on Taneytown Road 3 miles 4 8 kilometers south of Gettysburg George Washington Shriver also grew up on his family's farm only 2 miles 3 2 km from Hettie's farm On January 23 1855 when they were both eighteen years old George and Hettie were married The couple moved into the farmhouse south of Gettysburg that George had inherited when he was sixteen Their daughter Sarah Sadie was born in November 1855 and two years later Mary Mollie joined them George decided that he wanted to move his family off the farm and build a house and a business in Gettysburg not far from the Diamond He started construction early in 1860
Gettysburg was a growing town It had three newspapers a telegraph office a railroad and many businesses and shops George's idea was to build a saloon and a bowling alley just the kind of recreational activities the men of Gettysburg would enjoy He called it Shriver's Saloon Ten Pin Alley The saloon was built in the basement of his house its entrance in the back through the backyard The two lane bowling alley was built in the backyard to0 The main part of the house was reserved for the family Way at the back of the yard was the outhouse Indoor plumbing was not available in Gettysburg at the time It was a long walk to the outhouse in the winter but during hot summers the smell of the outhouse seldom reached the house A chamber pot one in each bedroom was used inside the house to avoid the trek to the outhouse at night It was the job of a younger child to empty the pot into the outhouse each morning George and Hettie rented a house across the street while their home was being constructed Over the months George kept the workers on track and Hettie chose wallpaper furnishings and kitchen goods for the house Finally in late 1860 the Shrivers moved into their beautiful new home A Shoe for Good Luck One of the traditions among the German population of Gettysburg was to place a child's shoe in a wall for luck as a house was being built The shoe usually belonged to the youngest child in the family The Shrivers did this They placed one small shoe probably Mollie's below under the floorboards in the attic How do we know this Modern owners of the home found the shoe when they restored the house in 1996
In March and April 1861 Hettie and the girls got to work on a garden This should have been a happy peaceful time for George and his family But alarming news about growing tension between the Southern and Northern states concerned George and Hettie Many people in the South believed that their states should have more power than the federal government to make decisions that affected their way of life Nothing divided the country more than the issue of slavery Northern states had outlawed slavery in the late 1700s but it remained essential to the plantation or farming economy of the South Even before Abraham Lincoln was elected president in November 1860 Southerners feared that he and his political party would force the South to outlaw slavery too As soon as Lincoln was elected Southern states began to secede or separate from the United States In February 1861 these states formed a new country the Confederate States of America which quickly grew to eleven states On April 12 1861 the Confederate army bombarded a federal Union fort Fort Sumter in Charleston South Carolina The Union troops there surrendered and the Civil War began President Abraham Lincoln issued the Declaration of War on April 15 1861 calling for seventy five thousand troops and appealing to all loyal citizens to favor facilitate and aid this effort to maintain the honor the integrity and the existence of our National Union Pennsylvania was a Northern state and twenty five year old George Shriver at first wanted to enlist in the Union army right away But he decided to stay home until the saloon
