History & local legend
The Rose Farm at Gettysburg was home to John and Elizabeth Rose and their seven children. During the July 1863 battle, its stone house served as a field hospital, and rows of soldiers’ graves spread across the property afterward.
One early story concerns a farmhand walking home after dark only weeks after the fighting. Near the graves, he saw a strange glowing shape. Folklorist Troy Taylor traced the account to material collected by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.
Another tradition comes from inside the farmhouse. A Rose daughter was said to have seen blood flowing down the walls during the period when soldiers’ remains were being exhumed. Gettysburg writer Mark Nesbitt preserved that account through material associated with local physician J. W. C. O’Neil.
