Introduction by Barbara Houston
Original narratives recounting the experiences of local citizens during the Confederate occupation of Carlisle in late June and early July of 1863 are always of interest to staff and patrons at CCHS. Our much-used collection of contemporary accounts, particularly those that describe the shelling of the town, is a perennial favorite of students writing history essays, reporters setting up Civil War-related stories, and history buffs in general. It includes such well-known works as J.W. Sullivan's "Boyhood Memories of the Civil War 1861-'65," military memoirs and regimental histories pertaining to the action around Carlisle, and the personal accounts provided by numerous local letter-writers and diarists.
Recently, local Civil War-era narratives of a different sort have come to the attention of staff in the library. These deal with incidents related to the aftermath of the war; specifically, the excitement, curiosity, and extreme danger posed by the unexploded mortar shells that were apparently kept as souvenirs in the years following the war.
The first of the two accounts which follow was written in 1907 by Frank Wetzel of Carlisle, and concerns events that transpired during the war in his boyhood neighborhood, near Carlisle Barracks. It also provides a hair-raising tale of the subsequent (mis)handling, several years later, by a group of young boys and a Civil War veteran who should have known better, of a live shell found by the writer's father following the Confederate occupation in July of 1863.
Because 19th century maps, particularly local ones depicting small towns, were often meticulously labeled with the names of individual householders and business owners, and because Wetzel is a descriptive and engaging narrator, it is possible to follow the action he describes literally block by block, and in some cases nearly house by house.
The second account consists of a small article which appeared in the May 15, 1868 issue of the Carlisle Herald. Entitled ''A Narrow Escape," it describes a near-catastrophe at the home of William Bentz on South Hanover Street, in which a shell kept as a memento winds up in the family cook stove. The article concludes with these words of wisdom to readers, indicating that incidents of this type were perhaps not unfamiliar:
"Those of our readers who have in their possession any of these Lee billets will apply the moral of this occurrence- which, we submit is not to experiment with them in hot coal stoves- they won't burn."
Wetzel Narrative
This Shell was thrown from one of the guns of Fitzhugh Lee on the evening of 1" July 1863, in his attack on Carlisle. It failed to explode.
It was found by George Wetzel, my father, either upon his premises, Corner of Penn and Bedford Streets, or near by, and was buried in the ground for a number of months, and then placed in a rainwater hogshead for many more months with a view of so dampening the powder that it might be opened with safety.
Several years after this it was concluded that the powder would not explode, and a civil war veteran, who lost the four fingers of his left hand at the battle of Antietum, William Fenical, a workman in the wagon-maker shop of my father on North Bedford Street, now occupied by the bakery shop of C. C. Failor, screwed the shell in this vise, and with a wrench took out the screw through which the fuse passed and emptied the powder out on a heap on his work bench, on the right hand side of the front door of the shop. On the bench and by his side was several inquisitive boys, among them myself and my cousin Robert Smiley. Fenical was smoking a pipe, and with a view of testing the powder, put a pinch of it in his pipe; it exploded and blew the fire out into the pint or more of powder emptied from the shell - the whole exploded and blew Smiley off the bench, burning the eyebrows and hands of Smiley and myself and the moustache and eyebrows of Fenical- at the same time badly scaring the entire party. The shell has been carefully preserved ever since. It is a constant reminder of the perils of that eventful day and night.
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