Pennypacker Mills hosts its annual Civil War Reunion

By EVELYN SHORT
Night Editor
TheReporterOnline.com

PERKIOMEN — At the age of 20, Samuel A. Pennypacker heard the rebels were going to raid Pennsylvania, so he went to Gettysburg to join the fight. It was the summer of 1863, forty years before he would become governor of Pennsylvania.

This weekend, history enthusiasts camped in tents that were sprawled about the grounds of his former home, Pennypacker Mills, for its annual Civil War Reunion.

"There were over 140 Pennypackers who served in the Civil War on both sides, from nurse to private to general," said Katharine Schweriner, interpreter and receptionist for the historic site. "So it's really a reunion in honor of the Pennypacker family."

The campers representing civilians and military personnel set up on Thursday night and welcomed students on a field trip on Friday. The event opened to the public on Saturday and Sunday with a lantern tour of the camp site Saturday night.

Shots rang out over the hillside on Sunday as Civil War enactors in period uniforms shot at each other on a designated battlefield, but they failed to impress two local 11-year-olds.

"It was good, but they didn't die at the right time," said Nathaniel Davis of Abington. "They would fire and then half a minute later they would fall over."

His friend, Aajay Gauthier, 11, who is interested in history, thought the performance was good but should have reflected that the Confederates lost the war.

"I thought more Confederates should have fallen," he said. "There was only one Union guy left in the end and like 30 Confederates left."

Nathaniel's dad Marc Davis, pointed out that the sides were taking turns each day with winning and losing.

"They don't really recreate any particular battle," Schweriner said. "This is not a Civil War battle site. But we couldn't have a battle with only one side."

The local Philadelphia chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, J.E.B. Stuart Camp 1506, was represented at the event. Its table of books and literature was adjacent to the sellers tents.

"This is a group of people who had ancestors in the Confederate army or the Confederate government," said Perkasie resident Bob Farmer, who is a color sergeant and sergeant in arms with the group. "My ancestors fought both for the north and for the south in the state of Tennessee."

The group's Lt. Cmdr, Dan Ellenburg of Schwenksville, was originally from South Carolina.

"I have over 20 ancestors who fought for the south," said Ellenburg, who moved north 11 years ago. "I married a really nice, sweet Yankee girl."

Ellenburg discovered that he has earlier northern roots.

"My ancestors in the 1700s, long before the Civil War, were from here in Montgomery County. They were Quakers," Ellenburg said.

He discovered a few years ago that he is living just a few miles away from his seventh great grandfather's house, the Morgan Log house in Towamencin that belonged to Edward Morgan.

Farmer also has ties to the family. On his mother's side, a few great aunts ago was Daniel Boone's wife, Rebecca Bryan. Boone is a descendant of the Morgans.

Whether someone fought on the side of the north or the south, they are still part of the ancestry of Americans today.

"All of the southern war veterans are official U.S. war veterans," Ellenburg said.

The information about the Confederate soldiers is part of the National Archives, just as the records of the Union soldiers are stored there, he said.

Because history is usually written by the winners of the wars, the Sons of Confederate Veterans serves to honor the veterans and to give voice to their side in history.

"The south wasn't a bunch of demons that the media makes us out to be," Ellenburg said. "They were invaded. They were defending their homes. They didn't come into the north until Gettysburg."

Farmer added that the south never wanted to take over the north.

"They seceded and wanted to be separate," Farmer said.

The view that the Confederates were traitors or rebels was a narrow Northern point of view, according to the Sons of Confederate Veterans literature.

The citizens in the south wanted to preserve liberty and freedom by resigning from a government that they felt was increasingly abusing the Constitution. They wanted to form their own government that they felt would be truer to the original Constitution, the literature states.

"After the war it was very difficult for them in a lot of ways," Ella Aderman, administrator at Pennypacker Mills, said, referring to the Confederates. "They had no idea what the reconstruction of the country would mean to them. Some of them lost their physical properties."

She said that in many ways Americans are all still figuring out how to work together as a country.

"It's important to the freedoms we still have," she said. "That's why we do this event, so people don't forget."

Pennypacker Mills is off Route 73 in Perkiomen Township. For more information call (610) 287-9349 or visit www.historic-sites.montcopa. org.