Rebel soldier to girl: ‘I have a daughter at home’
Mary C. Fisher cared for the wounded after the Battle of Gettysburg and at the U.S. Army General Hospital in York. She later wrote about her heroic duties in the Philadelphia Times. Here is a clip of her work from the York County Heritage Trust files.
York County’s historian Jim Rudisill reminded me of a Mary C. Fisher story that I did not include in a York Sunday News column on the noted 19th-century nurse.
After Mary’s death in 1913, her family kept stories alive about the great days that Mary and her husband/county Judge Robert witnessed the rebel occupation of York in late-June 1863.
Daughter, Mary, a youngster at the time, recalled how a rebel officer picked her up as he rode through York and said: …
“I have a little daughter at home with eyes just as blue as yours.”
Rudisill remembers meeting Mary, then an elderly woman.
It goes to show that not that many years separate us today from Civil War times.
