By Lauren Letizia
“War on the Doorstep: Civilians of Gettysburg”
By late June of 1863, alarms warning of
approaching Confederate forces were nothing new for the 2,400
residents of Gettysburg. Living just ten miles from the Mason-Dixon
line, small-scale raids, kidnappings of freed-people, and rumors of
an imminent clash between the two great armies had long plagued the
borough and its surrounding community. Nevertheless, none of these
events could prepare Gettysburgians for the ferocious 3-day fight
between 165,000 soldiers in early July of that year that would
transform the lives and lands of Gettysburg’s civilians forever.
However, these civilians’ experiences were not monolithic; while
some were defined by tragedy and blight, others included remarkable
episodes of perseverance, successful pragmatism, and creative
profiteering. This new blog series profiles the lives of diverse
Gettysburgians who were forced to confront the war at their very
doorsteps, each on their own terms, whose stories speak to the
kaleidoscope of experiences of civilians struggling to survive, and
thrive, along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border during the Civil War.
When Nicholas and George Codori emigrated to Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania from Hottviller, France on 20th June 1828, they could
not have foreseen the epic battle that would reshape both the
physical and historical landscape of their new hometown.
The Codoris’ sprawling tracts of land and multiple houses would
become some of the most significant locales during the Battle of
Gettysburg, with one of the family farms playing host to over 500
buried Confederate dead, the most of any farm in the area. Although,
like most Gettysburg civilians, the Codoris’ livelihoods were
dramatically altered during and after the infamous clash, their
story is, in many ways, one of mixed struggle and ironic success as
a result of the bloody battle that transformed their town forever.
Like many European immigrants of the 19th and 20th centuries, the
Codori brothers viewed American land ownership as the key to
personal opportunity and family fortune. Inspired by the promises of
a free labor society that championed hard work and the ownership of
one’s own labor as the foundation for successful, stable, and moral
living, twenty-two-year-old George and nineteen-year-old Nicholas
hoped to become successful, independent, and contributing members of
their local community. The U.S. Census lists their occupations as
butchers. Nicholas became an apprentice with local butcher, Anthony
Kuntz and eventually started his own business behind his home on
York Street. Interestingly, his was the former house of Gettysburg
founder, James Gettys. During the aftermath of the battle, the York
Street house would be used as a temporary church for the displaced
congregation of the Catholic church, St. Francis Xavier, which
served as a hospital for wounded and dying soldiers.
Image of Nicholas Codori (Find A Grave)
Ambition defined Nicholas Codori’s life. In 1835, he married
Elizabeth Martin, with whom he had two sons, George and Simon.
Distrustful of banks, Nicholas continually invested his life savings
into new land and farm properties. In 1854, he purchased
approximately 273 acres of land along the Emmitsburg Rd., just
outside the borough, and proceeded to build a brick house on the
property between 1854 and 1863, leasing the farmhouse to tenants. In
1861, he purchased an additional 66 acres across the Emmitsburg
Road. During the battle, Nicholas’s niece, Catherine Codori Staub,
and her husband, John Staub, were renting the farmhouse. John was
serving in the 165th Pennsylvania at the time, so an extremely
pregnant Catherine, her children, and her parents were alone in the
house. Codori family history states that Catherine hid in the
basement; however, there are no records or diaries to indicate this
as fact. Other rumors suggest she fled to Carlisle, but this is
unlikely given the advanced state of her pregnancy; she gave birth
to twin girls on July 8, 1863. (A more likely explanation states
that the Staubs may have owned their own farm behind the Sherfy
property, giving Catherine and her family another place to wait out
the violence).
However, according to an officer in General George Stanndard’s
Vermont Brigade there were occupants in the Codori farmhouse on the
eve of the battle. The officer writes that, when his brigade stopped
at the farm, an old man ran out of the house, opened the gate, and
(rather comically) begged the soldiers to “move around his wheat
field and not pass through it.” This man may have been Catherine’s
father, Anthony Codori, as there is no record of Nicholas’s and his
family’s movements during the three days of fighting.
During the Civil War, George’s family would suffer the worst of the
Codoris. In 1829, George had married a fellow French immigrant,
Regina Wallenberger. They had made their home on West Middle Street
and began a family, raising two daughters, Suzanne and Cecelia, and
a son, Nicholas. Apparently eager to go to war to defend his
family’s adopted nation and the ideals of Union and free labor that
defined the northern war effort, Nicholas enlisted in Company E of
the 2nd Pennsylvania on April 20, 1861. Discharged after his 90-day
enlistment expired, it is unknown why he chose not to immediately
re-enlist. In 1864, perhaps fearful of the draft or due to
community pressures, he finally renewed his enlistment with the
210th PA, but deserted twelve days later. Perhaps the divergence
between romantic notions of warfare and the realities of soldier
life was simply too much for young Nicholas.
The Codori Farm (George Neat via Flickr)
During the Battle of Gettysburg, while George’s daughter, Suzanne
and her husband hid in his brother Nicholas’s basement on York
Street, George fell victim to marauding Confederates and was one of
eight Gettysburg citizens to be captured and imprisoned by the
Confederate Army. There is no definitive record of why 57-year-old
George was arrested, but the family claims he was detained by
suspicious southern cavalry as he was returning home from a business
trip to Baltimore, perhaps wearing his son’s old Union soldier’s
jacket. Conversely, Annie McSherry, the great great-granddaughter of
George, states that he and part of his family had fled to the Culp
Farm on July 1 and had returned home on the 4th to find a wounded
Confederate soldier hiding in their home. McSherry claims that
George helped the soldier return to the lines and that George may
had been detained while doing so. Whatever the circumstances, George
was transported to a prison in Richmond, Virginia and then moved to
Salisbury Prison in North Carolina. The Codoris anxiously awaited
his return, baffled by how Confederates could justify his continued
incarceration following the Gettysburg Campaign. Sadly, George did
not return home until March 1865 and severely weakened by his time
in southern prisons, he died of pneumonia just days later. Regina
soon followed, passing away a few months after. The George Codori
family story speaks to the myriad unexpected tragedies that upended
the lives of numerous families living along the
Pennsylvania-Maryland border during the Gettysburg Campaign.
Luckily for Nicholas Codori, fortune once again favored ambition and
boldness. In 1865, Nicholas purchased a large tract of land across
the Emmitsburg Road from Nicholas’s farmhouse which had belonged to
William Bliss. Capitalizing on the damages the Bliss land and
burned-out house and barn sustained during the battle, Codori
purchased the property from a despondent and financially desperate
Bliss. Three years later, in 1868, Codori decided to further profit
from the prime location of the farmland east of the Emmitsburg Road,
where hundreds of Confederate soldiers had been buried in shallow
graves. When this was discovered, he sold the land to Southern
organizations that were commissioned to repatriate Confederate
remains. He bought this portion back in 1872 after the soldiers’
bodies were removed and sent back to the South. Nicholas continued
to prosper from his rampant purchase and sale of local farmlands
until 1878, when he sustained mortal injuries from a mowing accident
on one of his farms. While driving a horse-drawn mower, Codori fell
into the sharp blades of the mower after his horse became spooked
and suddenly jerked its body. Nicholas lay alone amidst the mowing
with a partially severed leg for approximately 30 minutes, until
help finally arrived. He survived for a few days afterwards before
succumbing to his wound on July 11, 1878. In one of the great
ironies of his life, the cherished land that had long sustained his
family’s fortunes, and which had enabled his family to endure and
thrive in the wake of the cataclysmic battle fought around them, had
fatally failed him.
Despite Nicholas’s tragic death, the Codori family fortunes
continued to prosper. By 1880, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR)
had purchased significant ownership of the Gettysburg Battlefield
Memorial Association. The combined GAR-GBMA began to encourage
widespread erection of monuments and memorials on pivotal pieces of
the battlefield. Well-aware of the enormous historical value of the
family’s sprawling farm and sensing a financial boon for the Codori
family, Nicholas’s son, Simon started selling large portions of his
family’s land to veterans’ groups, stating that wished to
memorialize their soldiers’ sacrifices. Codori land now claims
monuments to the 106th and 26th PA, the death sites of Colonel
Willard of the 126th NY and Colonel Ward of the 15th MA, as well as
the site of General Winfield Scott Hancock’s famed wounding. Due to
Simon’s foresight, Codori land was no longer solely of monetary
value, but of pivotal commemorative value. The Codori family’s
wartime experiences were defined by a kaleidoscope of emotions and
fortunes—confusion, fear, chaos, tragedy, grief, and loss—but also
opportunity, ironic success, and growth. However, in the end, it was
Nicholas Codori’s antebellum foresight about the importance of land
ownership, his unwavering belief in the power of free labor ideals
and practices to secure upward mobility and financial security, and
his family’s opportunism that enabled the Codoris to ride out the
storm of civil war on the Pennsylvania border—and to emerge,
largely, better for it. His land and various properties became
battlefields, hideouts, havens, churches, burial grounds, and
memorial landscapes. Throughout this constant repurposing and shifts
in meaning, the Codori properties played an integral role not only
in the family’s fortunes, but also in the history and memory of the
Gettysburg landscape as we know it.