The McPherson Farm Part 1: The Farmhouse

Completing the Trostle farm recently got me interested in making another farm set of an equally (possibly more) famous Gettysburg farm - the McPherson farm from the first day's battle. Arguably one building on this farm, the bank barn, is one of the most recognised structures on the battlefield.

The McPherson farm stood just short of a mile northeast of the Gettysburg town limits on a ridge (that didn't earn the name McPherson's Ridge until after the battle) and is famous because it was the first point of serious Union resistance in the battle, where Buford's cavalry was relieved by the infantry of Reynolds' First Corps. The Chambersburg Turnpike bisected the farm on its long axis and the unfinished railroad cut through the property a hundred yards or more north of the Pike.

In 1863 the farm was owned by Edward McPherson, but he was an absentee landlord, having been elected to Congress in 1858. At the time of the battle the farm was occupied by a tenant farmer John Slentz with his wife Eliza and their three children. With a total area of 95 acres most of the farm was planted in crops - wheat, corn, oats, and grass - while the remainder, about thirty acres, was in woodland, a young orchard for home use and pasture for the animals (Slentz maintained a small stock of dairy cows, pigs, chickens and four farm horses).

Finding sufficient information to be able to make a model that represented the farm as it was in 1863 presented an interesting exercise in research. What makes it difficult to form a picture of how the farm looked in 1863 is that the farmhouse and the wagon house/corn crib burned down in 1895 and there is only one contemporary photograph (below), taken by Matthew Brady within days of the battle. All that remains of the farm today is the barn. 

The photograph presents a view that the Confederates of Archer's Brigade would have had of the farm as they crossed Willoughby Run on the farm's southwestern border. The  barn and wagon house/corn crib are clearly seen on the left and centre (and there are several other later images to give an even clearer view of those buildings), but this is the only contemporary shot of the farm house and details are indistinct and shielded from view by trees. Other views of the farmhouse were taken 20-30 years after the battle when the building had been significantly altered.

Thankfully there is a fabulous study of the farm; "Edward McPherson Farm: Historical Study" by Kathleen H. George, a research historian at the Gettysburg National Military Park, published in 1977. This  rather dry 207 page typed manuscript digs deep into a wealth of obscure information and paints a word picture of the place that is good enough for me to make this model with confidence.

The original farm was established by William Breadon in 1797-98 who built a log barn 50 feet by 17 feet and a log house measuring 20 feet x 17 feet on the site - apparently 17 feet is the maximum width for a single-span log structure before complex internal framing or central supports are required. Breadon couldn't make a go of it and sold up in the early 1800s. Under the new owner the barn was rebuilt as a stone structure that can be seen as the centre of the structure today, to which several wooden lean-tos were added over the years. Around the same time the log house was reconfigured to a kitchen and dining room downstairs, and two bedrooms upstairs while a fieldstone extension measuring  24 feet by 16 feet and "two steps higher" than the log structure, that featured  a living room and three more bedrooms, was added to the northern end aof the house. A large exterior fireplace and chimney was at the rear of the log section and a smaller internal one in the stone section. The county records describe the stone section as having "three windows, five lights",  that typically meant it had three windows across upper floor, with two more and a door below, aligned vertically to the upper windows. Because property taxes were based on the  number of windows, other than the 'five lights' there was unlikely to be more and allows me to conclude that all the windows of the stone section would have been on the one face although I have assumed that there was a door on the opposite side because it created the shortest distance to the privy. 

My sketch of the western face of the farmhouse from Kathleen George's description 

The whole structure, log and stone, was whitewashed. This made it a very difficult model to paint and make it look interesting. 

 

Above and below the bland basic build...

...and below interest is provided by the inclusion of the garden, a couple of small trees and privy.

 

The research for this model turned up two interesting points about the terrain near the farm, both of which I remember had been mentioned in a YouTube video that I watched a year or so ago by one of the Gettysburg Military Park guides. The first was about the woods, specifically the Herbst's Wood (often erroneously called McPherson's Wood and now commonly called Reynolds' Wood), and the McPherson woodlot - a narrow strip that stood north of the railroad cut. Both these woods were purposefully maintained as a wood supply for the respective farms - for firewood and for fencing. The lower branches were trimmed for firewood and any trees that fell naturally were used for fencing. In addition, it was a common farming practice that the farm animals would be grazed in the woods, stripping out the undergrowth. As such these woods, and likely a number of other small farm woods nearby, were not like they are today, with heavy undergrowth, but were more open and grove-like, able to be seen right through. 

A view through the Herbst's Wood from where General Reynolds was killed to the McPherson barn. The worm fence that was the boundary between the Herbst's and McPherson's farms can also be seen.

An almost opposite view to above, looking across the McPherson cornfield, with the Herbst's Wood running left to centre on its boundary. This Matthew Brady image was taken twelve days after the battle.

This 1896 image shows how open the woods were around the time that the land was
acquired by the National Military Park

The second point is that a county ordinance required farmers to fence their boundaries, so fences are important at Gettysburg. I imagine that this was common in many other counties and states. On the McPherson farm there were four types of fence used: post and 5-rail fences ran along the southern edge of the Chambersburg Pike and around the cornfield; Virginia Worm (zigzag) fences ran along the northern side of the Pike, around the fields north of the Pike and on the southern border along Herbst's Wood; post and board fences (5, 6-inch horizontal planks) lined the farm lane, the barn yard and the lane to the quarry; lastly a picket fence surrounded the farm garden.

Work has commenced on the barn and wagon shed/corn crib (with its attached pig pen), but progress will be slow while I work on some more figures.