Md. Civil War Museum Gives Severed Arm A Good Look
Long after the guns fell silent at Antietam, the earth yielded up gruesome reminders of the bloodiest day of the American Civil War: bodies, bones, buttons and entire severed limbs – one of which is now the focus of intense study at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.
A Sharpsburg-area farmer is said to have found the human forearm while plowing a field two weeks after the 1862 battle.
Officials at the museum in Frederick, Md., are trying to learn more about the limb in hopes of verifying that it's a relic of the Battle of Antietam and exhibiting the well-preserved specimen during the battle's 150th anniversary in September.
The muddy-looking right forearm, with skin and hand attached, was donated anonymously to the museum earlier this year, said Executive Director George Wunderlich. It had been displayed for several decades at a private museum in Sharpsburg in a glass-topped, pine case with a placard reading, "Human arm found on the Antietam Battlefield."
Though there is little hope of identifying the young man who lost it, Wunderlich said forensic experts may be able to discern his nationality and whether the arm was, as Wunderlich suspects, torn from his body by a bullet or artillery round.
"Being able to put the story of this unknown person before this country is very important to us," Wunderlich said. "His remains will tell a story that will relate us back to his sacrifice. This was what they gave for what they believed. If done properly, it's a very poignant story."
The unidentified farmer who found the limb put it in a barrel of brine, according to Thomas McGrath's 1997 book, "Maryland September: True Stories from the Antietam Campaign." The farmer reportedly gave it to a Boonsboro physician, who is said to have more permanently preserved it with embalming fluid.
The arm eventually ended up in a private museum that was sold in the 1960s to John G. Ray Jr. After Ray died in 2001, his widow had the museum's contents sold at an auction, according to battlefield historian Ted Alexander.
Alexander grew up nearby and remembers seeing the arm on display.
"It was quite an attraction," he said. "It was macabre and something to see as kid."
The arm's owner was probably a small man less than 20 years old, said William Gardner, a former Marshall University forensic medicine instructor who examined it in March.
A Sharpsburg-area farmer is said to have found the human forearm while plowing a field two weeks after the 1862 battle.
Officials at the museum in Frederick, Md., are trying to learn more about the limb in hopes of verifying that it's a relic of the Battle of Antietam and exhibiting the well-preserved specimen during the battle's 150th anniversary in September.
The muddy-looking right forearm, with skin and hand attached, was donated anonymously to the museum earlier this year, said Executive Director George Wunderlich. It had been displayed for several decades at a private museum in Sharpsburg in a glass-topped, pine case with a placard reading, "Human arm found on the Antietam Battlefield."
Though there is little hope of identifying the young man who lost it, Wunderlich said forensic experts may be able to discern his nationality and whether the arm was, as Wunderlich suspects, torn from his body by a bullet or artillery round.
"Being able to put the story of this unknown person before this country is very important to us," Wunderlich said. "His remains will tell a story that will relate us back to his sacrifice. This was what they gave for what they believed. If done properly, it's a very poignant story."
The unidentified farmer who found the limb put it in a barrel of brine, according to Thomas McGrath's 1997 book, "Maryland September: True Stories from the Antietam Campaign." The farmer reportedly gave it to a Boonsboro physician, who is said to have more permanently preserved it with embalming fluid.
The arm eventually ended up in a private museum that was sold in the 1960s to John G. Ray Jr. After Ray died in 2001, his widow had the museum's contents sold at an auction, according to battlefield historian Ted Alexander.
Alexander grew up nearby and remembers seeing the arm on display.
"It was quite an attraction," he said. "It was macabre and something to see as kid."
The arm's owner was probably a small man less than 20 years old, said William Gardner, a former Marshall University forensic medicine instructor who examined it in March.
