Scott Hanko
Joseph Poffenberger Farm
The Joseph Poffenberger Farm: The night before the battle, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s I Corps camped in and around this house and outbuildings on the northern end of the battlefield. Hooker made his headquarters here and formulated and launched the initial attack at Antietam from this position. The woods in this area, dubbed the North Woods, separated the Poffenberger property from those around it, including the David R. Miller Farm and the adjacent cornfield to the south. At 5:43 a.m. on September 17, Hooker sent his men in their battle lines toward the little white church on the Old Hagerstown Pike, toward the Rebels. Hooker wanted the men of Brig. Gen. John Gibbon’s “black hats,” the men of the Iron Brigade (see "Legendary Combat Units," July 2008 ACG), to move down the Pike and strike into the Southerners. As the lead column on the left set out — the men of Brig. Gen. James B. Ricketts — they approached the cornfield ahead of them and, just at first light, met a thunderous fire by Confederate artillery from ahead. As the battle raged, waves of men set off from the Poffenberger Farm and then retreated to it, while shells struck around the premises. Wounded and dead struggled back to the property, turning the area into an aid station and a makeshift morgue. Nurses tended the wounded here, and you will see a monument to Clara Barton, commemorating her service on the Antietam battlefield. However, a description of the cellar in the house Barton wrote about shows she did not work as a nurse here, but at the Samuel Poffenberger House, to the southeast.
Antietam Battlefield-Sharpsburg Md.
Joseph Poffenberger Farm
The Joseph Poffenberger Farm: The night before the battle, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s I Corps camped in and around this house and outbuildings on the northern end of the battlefield. Hooker made his headquarters here and formulated and launched the initial attack at Antietam from this position. The woods in this area, dubbed the North Woods, separated the Poffenberger property from those around it, including the David R. Miller Farm and the adjacent cornfield to the south. At 5:43 a.m. on September 17, Hooker sent his men in their battle lines toward the little white church on the Old Hagerstown Pike, toward the Rebels. Hooker wanted the men of Brig. Gen. John Gibbon’s “black hats,” the men of the Iron Brigade (see "Legendary Combat Units," July 2008 ACG), to move down the Pike and strike into the Southerners. As the lead column on the left set out — the men of Brig. Gen. James B. Ricketts — they approached the cornfield ahead of them and, just at first light, met a thunderous fire by Confederate artillery from ahead. As the battle raged, waves of men set off from the Poffenberger Farm and then retreated to it, while shells struck around the premises. Wounded and dead struggled back to the property, turning the area into an aid station and a makeshift morgue. Nurses tended the wounded here, and you will see a monument to Clara Barton, commemorating her service on the Antietam battlefield. However, a description of the cellar in the house Barton wrote about shows she did not work as a nurse here, but at the Samuel Poffenberger House, to the southeast.
Antietam Battlefield-Sharpsburg Md.