Battlefield Orchards

The peach orchard at Gettysburg.

In a few weeks I will be taking students on an eleven day biennial Civil War tour of eastern theater battlefields and sites.  We visit Gettysburg, Antietam, Harper’s Ferry, and a whole host of sites in Virginia.  While orchards have been the focus of my research for the last decade or so, I have been teaching courses on the Civil War and leading tours to eastern battlefields for the last fifteen.  I have decided to use this trip as an opportunity to gather information on a subject at the intersection of these interests–orchards on Civil War battlefields.  Of course, most students of the Civil War are familiar with the infamous peach orchards of Gettysburg and Shiloh, but orchards were ubiquitous on the mid 19th century American landscape, soldiers waged war in the midst of them, and filled their bellies with their fruit in season.  I have a few resources to get me started.  Bradley Gottfried’s excellent Maps of Gettysburg, Maps of Antietam, and Maps of First Bull Run mark the locations of orchards on those battlefields.  Susan Dolan’s Fruitful Legacy: A Historic Context of Orchards in the United States contains information on orchards on many national parks.  But this seems like a perfect subject to crowd source.  Have you stumbled across restored orchards on visits to Civil War battlefields? Do you have any information to share about battlefield orchards that are now gone?  Even references to soldiers’ memoirs, letters, and diaries which discuss orchards on the battlefield, or those they may have raided during marches across the countryside are encouraged.  I will share anything I find during my upcoming tour on this blog.

This map from Gottfried’s Maps of Gettysburg indicates locations of woods, fields, and orchards.