A fiftieth reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg was held in June-July 1913. Lumberman Ely from the De Smet “Little House” books was there. July 2nd of the battle, Mr. Ely had been shot in the right chest, the ball passing through his body and exiting near his backbone. After the battle, he was carried to a field hospital, where he lay for four days before being seen. One doctor ran a handkerchief through the hole in Mr. Ely’s body before declaring that he couldn’t survive. Obviously he did.

Mr. Ely was moved aside, and later sent to a hospital in Philadelphia. His mother came from Minnesota to attend to his wound. Most remarkable was the fact that Mr. Ely recovered enough to return to the fighting by the end of the year.

Mr. Ely’s wound bothered him for many years. It opened once, and he removed a piece of India rubber. He remembered that his rolled-up rubber blanket had been slung over his shoulder during the battle, and obviously a piece had entered his body when he was shot. Twice, his wound opened and he removed pieces of bone.

Mr. Ely was almost seventy years old at the time of the Gettysburg reunion, but he traveled to Pennsylvania with other South Dakota soldiers in the luxury of a train of steel Pullman cars, said to be “one of the handsomest trains to enter Gettysburg.”

Of his trip, all Mr. Ely said was that it was “a pleasure.” He didn’t mention the reunion camp covering 280 acres, the 173 field kitchens, the 50,000 attendees, or the 32 bubbling ice water fountains. He didn’t mention that the temperature was often 100 degrees, or that almost 10,000 men were treated by the medical staff during the event. He didn’t mention that he was issued a cot and bedding, or that he bunked with seven other men in a tent.

You can read about the Gettysburg Reunion in Lt. Col. Lewis E. Beitler’s Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg: Report of the Pennsylvania Commission (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: William Stanley Ray, State Printer, 1914).

Mr. Ely died in De Smet in August 1916.

The Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg has been on my mind because I recently watched (for the eleventy-seventh time) Ken Burns’ excellent documentary: The Civil War. What made me think of Mr. Ely and his Gettysburg reunion attendance was images from the reunion shown in the documentary. Mr. Ely might have been in that footage I saw!