Save Historic Antietam Foundation

10/09/2026

NEW PODCAST DROPS! — Award-winning historian Cory M. Pfarr joins co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks for a conversation about the U.S. Signal Service at Antietam. Plus, Pfarr dishes on James Longstreet’s role in the battle — and that carpet-slippers story.

LISTEN: https://antietambeyond.transistor.fm/s3/69

Award-winning historian Cory M. Pfarr joins co-hosts Tom McMillan and John Banks for a conversation about the U.S. Signal Service at Antietam. Plus, Pfarr dishes on James Longstreet’s role in the b...

10/04/2026

Our good friends at Antietam Institute donated to SHAF the money raised from their very popular Summer Lecture Series. SHAF thanks the Institute and all who supported the series for their generosity and support!

09/29/2026

NEW PODCAST DROPS! Dr. Mike Nickerson — president of the Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association — discusses important recent preservation news about the West Virginia battlefield. Plus, "Dr. Mike" weighs in on the battle (Sept. 19-20, 1862) — the final engagement of the Maryland Campaign — and confirms a cannonball story.

Join Tom McMillan and John Banks for regular podcasts about Antietam, the Maryland Campaign and the Civil War — the most compelling period in American history.

+ LISTEN: https://antietambeyond.transistor.fm/s3/68
+ SUBSCRIBE: https://antietambeyond.transistor.fm/subscribe

09/27/2026

Due to the weather forecast we will not meet at the Grove Farm. We will still meet for the annual meeting at 101 West Main St. At 2:30pm.

09/24/2026

"WASHBURN’S BODY HAS NOT COME UP YET” — In late September and early October 1862, Connecticut wounded from the Battle of Antietam returned home. So did some of the dead.

On Oct. 5, 1862, Emily Bauer of Berlin, Conn., wrote a letter to her husband, Jacob, a German immigrant and private in the 16th Connecticut. He escaped physical injury during the battle.

“Mr. [Jacob] Eaton was wounded at the battle of Antietam and the ball is in his leg yet," she noted about the private. "[Private] William Pratt was also wounded in that battle, I believe pretty severely in the hip. [Sgt.] Edward Parmalee's remains were carried here from Hartford on the one o'clock train and buried up town where his mother was buried. [Sgt. Wadsworth] Washburn's body has not come up yet.”

Added Emily: "This is a dreadful war. I hope and pray it may cease soon."

In 2016, I purchased this letter and others of the Bauers at a Connecticut flea market.

READ MORE on my friend William Griffing’s Spared & Shared site: https://jacobbauer16thconnecticut.wordpress.com

09/17/2026

ANTIETAM STORY: “GOOD BYE IF SO IT MUST BE” — Amid the roar of artillery, thunderclap of thousands of muskets and cries of battle, four seriously wounded United States Army soldiers dashed off notes as they lay incapacitated during the Battle of Antietam. Each man suffered wounds within a short distance of each other that Wednesday morning, Sept. 17, 1862. None of them survived.

READ MORE: https://john-banks.blogspot.com/2016/08/notes-from-antietam-battlefield-good.html

08/21/2026

NEW PODCAST DROPS! — Travel with us on the National Road, an important Civil War artery, with the author of … The National Road, historian Brady Crytzer. Link in the comments.

08/09/2026

As many of you are aware, this weekend the 12th annual Emerging Civil War Symposium took place at Stevenson Ridge in Fredericksburg, Va..
At this event I had the distinct honor of receiving the 2026 Emerging Civil War award for Service in Civil War Public History.  I was proud and humbled to receive this recognition, largely for my work with the Carman manuscript and papers. There are many good people who aided my work with the Carman papers, and I am immensely grateful to them.
 Many of these people are members of SHAF, and I think it impossible to draw hard lines between my work on Carman and the good people and work of Save Historic Antietam Foundation.

07/30/2026

NEW PODCAST DROPS! — Historian and author George Franks joins co-hosts John Banks and Tom McMillan for a freewheeling discussion about the Battle of Falling Waters (Md.) — the final engagement of the Gettysburg Campaign. Franks lives in the historic Donnelly House, the battlefield's most significant surviving landmark.

+ LISTEN: https://antietambeyond.transistor.fm/s3/66
+ SUBSCRIBE: https://antietambeyond.transistor.fm/subscribe

The podcast is brought to you by the Antietam Institute and Civil War Trails.

07/27/2026

Read about the latest news from the Save Historic Antietam Foundation below:

https://shaf.org/shaf-annual-meeting-and-activity-updates-for-2026/