Picnic at Letterman hospital

A photograph of patients lined up behind Dr. Henry Janes and Rev. Gordon Winslow, seated together at the left, was probably taken on the occasion of the picnic. 

In September 1863, Confederate Lieutenant Sanford Branch of the 8th Georgia Infantry was still bedridden at Camp Letterman from wounds received on July 2nd.  He wrote to his mother that “Tomorrow will be a grand gala day here, there is to be a grand picnic. preparasions have been going on for a week or more. Strange idea is it not to have a picnic among the dieing and the dead.”[i]

Anna Holstein, Matron in Chief at the hospital,  provides a good account of the event, which was also reported in the local newspaper.  Holstein described how “In September, while the hospital was still crowded with patients, a festival was given for their amusement. ” The surgeons and “their ladies,” Christian Commission, friends in Philadelphia and ladies of the town all participated in arrangements, with committees appointed for different wards so that none would be neglected.  The streets and tents were decorated with evergreen arches and patriotic designs, bands played, a dinner was served, and in the evening “an entertainment of negro minstrels, the performers being all white soldiers in the hospitals,” was deemed the crowning pleasure of the day. [ii] 

[i] Muriel Phillips Joslyn, Charlotte’s Boys: Civil War Letter of the Branch Family of Savannah. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 2010, p 175.

[ii] Anna Morris Ellis Holstein. Three Years in Field Hospitals of the Army of the Potomac. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Co., 1867,  p. 50; Adams Sentinel, September 22, 1863 p.2