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Daniel F. Klingel Farm House-Restored

There is an ID tablet in front of the white picket fence,marking the house. The fifteen acre Klingle Farm is south of town on the east side of Emmitsburg Road. It was in the center of the Confederate attacks on July 2nd and 3rd. Barn was built in 1870 and hence post-dates the battle. The house was built in 1850.

 

The Union soldiers taking shelter in the log structure knocked the chinking from between some of the logs. This allowed their weapons to stick through the walls and they discharged them while still being sheltered. Eventually, David Klingel filed a claim with the government for all the damage and losses he incurred as a result of the battle-everything from losses of hay, corn, oats and crops, to fences and orchards destroyed, food stores taken, bedding and linens, pots and pans and clothing carried off-including a silk shawl, seven dresses, and one black cloth cape.

 

After the battle, the homeowner, Daniel Klingel, returned home on the 4th after a long trip where he was conducted from picket to picket through the area where the Army of the Potomac still faced Confederate troops. He returned to a scene of devastation, with nearly all his possesions gone or destroyed, including his shoemaking tools and leathers, his two cows and a calf. (He found part of one cow on the Trostle farm; the other cow and calf, miraculously alive, turned up a month later about two miles away.) There were bullet holes in the house, and powder marks where soldiers had fired from inside the house. Most of his crops were destroyed and all his fences missing. After the war Daniel filed an $880 claim for damages to his farm, but after long deliberation it was denied in 1881.

 

The farm was also covered by the dead. Bodies lay all around the house. Two were just inside the gate, and two others under the porch where they must have crawled for shelter before dying of their wounds. One shattered tree in Klingle's orchard concealed four dead soldiers huddled around a cooking pan with food still in it.

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Uploaded on February 1, 2012
Taken on January 29, 2012