Antietam's Pry House To Open As Seasonal Medical Museum Site
By Deborah Fitts
April 2005

SHARPSBURG, Md. - The little-visited Pry House at Antietam National Battlefield will soon become a new seasonal home for the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, with exhibits, lectures and living history programs from April to December every year. Beginning with a "probable opening date" of April 28, according to the museum's director of research Terry Reimer, the museum will fill all four downstairs rooms of the Pry House with displays, a museum store, and an "immersion exhibit" that will employ manikins to show Union Gen. Joseph Hooker being treated by surgeons in the parlor for a wound in the foot.

The Pry House served as headquarters during the battle of Antietam for Union commander George McClellan. It sits off the Shepherdstown Pike, Route 34, about four miles from the park visitor center.

The unusual collaboration between the park and the private medical museum, which is based 20 miles away in Frederick, was hatched a year ago between park superintendent John Howard and George Wunderlich, the museum's executive director. Wunderlich was looking for a satellite site outside Frederick, and Howard was trying to engage the Pry House more fully in the park's programs.

"Since I've been superintendent I've been trying to find a purpose for the house," said Howard. The park poured money into restoring it in the last four or five years, but doesn't have enough to open it to public access, he explained. "Having those people in there with their quality program is going to be a great thing."

The handsome, three-story brick home, built a quarter-century before the war, is the largest historic house on the battlefield. It was added to the park in the early 1970s, but the house is closed to the public and few park visitors make their way there. The isolated, 25-acre property also includes a barn that stood during the battle, Sept. 17, 1862.

Reimer said the fact that the house served as a medical station and the barn as a field hospital made the site "perfect" for the museum's purposes.

"We're all terribly excited about it," she said. "This is right up our alley. This gives us an actual hospital site on an actual battlefield."

The house and barn belonging to wealthy landowner Joseph Pry were pressed into service for 45 days following the battle. The house was reserved for the treatment and care of officers, with a surgery on the first floor and recovery rooms upstairs, while the barn housed wounded enlisted men. Not only was Hooker treated in the Pry House, where he stayed three days, but also Union Gen. Israel Richardson, who died in an upstairs room in November from a bullet wound.

Reimer noted that Jonathan Letterman, the medical director for the Army of the Potomac, visited the Pry House. The museum celebrates Letterman's continuing contributions to today's medical practices for mass casualties, including the concepts of triage, organization of field hospitals and distribution of supplies.

The museum is located at 48 E. Patrick St. in Frederick in a building that served as an embalming station during the war. The site is "wonderful," Reimer said, but there's no room to host reenactors for living-history events. The renovated Pry House is climate-controlled and has an alarm system, and the barn and grounds will offer plenty of opportunity for outdoor programming.

Reimer said the museum is considering hosting reenactor groups and Scouts overnight, and sponsoring a weeklong summer day camp. The Pry site will provide for the staging of tours, such as medical tours of the battlefield, and room for on-site lectures and conferences. The second floor of the house will be used as a conference area and museum office.

The museum's board of directors approved a $25,000 expenditure to get the new site open in April. Meanwhile they're seeking grants to support and add to the Pry Farm site, including interpretive signage outdoors that will address the distant view of the battlefield, the handling of the wounded and the battle's impact on civilian families. Reimer said the Pry House will be manned by two new staffers plus volunteers. The museum currently has nine paid staff and 50 volunteers.

A new sign on Route 34 for the Pry House Field Hospital Museum will help guide visitors. Howard said park staff will also work closely with the museum to coordinate living-history and other programs, and a reworked park pamphlet will highlight Pry House events.

"We'll work to make sure their visitors are our visitors," said Howard. "I have a feeling this it going to be a great thing."

He noted that recent tree-cutting by the park in back of the Pry House now provides a view of the battlefield as McClellan would have seen it, with the Bloody Lane, the Roulette Farm and other significant sites visible in the distance.

The National Museum of Civil War Medicine opened in 1996 and attracts 25,000 to 30,000 visitors annually, according to Reimer. It boasts the largest collection of Civil War medical and surgical instruments anywhere, plus the only known surviving surgeon's tent from the war and an operating table used at Cedar Creek. A research center includes books, documents, journals and letters.

The new Pry House site will open Wednesdays through Saturdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays 11 to 5. The museum asks those interested in volunteering at the site to call (301) 695-1864.

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