Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 6, 1993 TAG: 9308060194
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press
DATELINE: SHARPSBURG, MD. LENGTH: Medium
Gordon Dammann believes the western Maryland battlefield is the most logical place to build a museum to display his collection of 2,000 to 3,000 medical artifacts used during the war.
"When they do re-enactments, there is a great fascination about the medical aspect of the Civil War, but there is no one place people can go to see authentic materials," said Dammann, who has been working since the mid-1980s to find a home for his Civil War medical collection.
A group, working to find a location for the museum, favors a site at Antietam but is also considering offers in Fredericksburg and Richmond, Va., and Galena, Ill., Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's hometown before the Civil War.
Virginia Tech professor James Robertson Jr. is among several well-known Civil War authors and historians on the group's 10-member board. Other board members include Edwin Bearss, chief historian for the National Park Service; Shelby Foote, an author and historian who worked on a recent Civil War series aired on public television; and historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author James McPherson of Princeton University.
The Lena, Ill., dentist and his supporters would like to see the museum housed at Antietam in the Piper House near the battlefield visitor's center. The Piper barn was used as a field hospital during the battle, Sept. 17, 1862. "It could tell the story on the medical corps of the Union and Confederate armies that has not been told," Dammann said.
The house currently is a bed-and-breakfast operation, but the tenant wants out of the lease with the National Park Service.
The park service, however, is worried that traffic and cars parked at the Piper House will detract from the historical setting of the battlefield.
"I think the medical museum is a wonderful thing. I think it will be very popular - it will draw people on its own. It doesn't need close proximity to the visitor's center," said Susan Moore, acting superintendent of the battlefield.
She said the park service is considering other properties, including the Pry House, once the headquarters for Union Gen. George B. McClellan, which is more than a mile away from the visitor's center.
The museum group, however, is getting impatient about setting up the collection and is considering other sites off the battlefield in nearby Sharpsburg or Frederick, according to John E. Olson of New Market, who is president of a nonprofit group called the National Museum for Civil War Medicine.
"There aren't that many Civil War museums - there are a lot of displays," Olson said. "At Fort Sam Houston, the U.S. Army has a museum focused on medicine in the military, but it covers multiple wars. This would be devoted solely to Civil War medicine and to our knowledge, there aren't any others."
Antietam remains the group's top choice of sites.
Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was nearly killed by a bullet that whizzed by her as she was caring for the wounded at Antietam, said Ted Alexander, a historian at Antietam National Battlefield near Sharpsburg.
It was at the 1862 battle that Jonathan Letterman, medical director for the Army of the Potomac, refined field hospital and evacuation procedures using horse-drawn ambulance wagons - methods that are still used today, Dammann said.
"There were 3,000 causalities at the battle along Bull Run in Manassas, Va., and some of them laid on the battlefield for five days," Dammann said. "At Antietam, they had everybody at a place of treatment within 24 hours."
Dammann has spent thousands of dollars during the past 22 years acquiring items for his collection.
He has an amputation kit with 70 instruments ranging from a nickel-plated saw to a scalpel to a tourniquet. Some of the instruments inside the mahogany box labeled "U.S.A. Hospital Department," have ebony and ivory handles.
Dammann also has a flag that flew atop a hospital in City Point, Va., that was the main depot for Grant's army when he swept through Richmond and Petersburg, Va. When it was new, it was bright yellow with a green "H" in the middle.
Eight years ago, he purchased a 9-foot tall wheat-colored tent used by surgeon John Wiley of the 6th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry. He bought it for an undisclosed price from Wiley's descendants in New Jersey.
"The field hospital tents were quite large and I don't know if any survived the war or not," he said.
by CNB