The Shrivers

Each Gettysburg family had a story after July 1863. One saga belongs to George and Hettie Shriver and their daughters, Sadie and Mollie. When the war reached Gettysburg, George was fighting elsewhere. As the noise of gunfire crescendoed, Hettie decided it would be best to flee to her parents' farm. She could not have known that she and the girls were jumping into a worse predicament. Her parents' house sits just east of Big Round Top and Little Round Top, the site of some of the battle's heaviest fighting. Hettie Shriver and her daughters came home to find their world upended. Many homes and buildings were ruined. Bodies waited to be rolled into shallow, hastily dug graves. Thousands of dead horses were burned, and the smell of decay hung in the July air. Neighbors told Hettie that Confederates had set up a sharpshooters nest in her garret, and that at least two sharpshooters had been killed in her home.