English: Located on East Main St. in front of the Resurrection Reformed Church (Iformerly the German Reformed Church).

INSCRIPTION: Union surgeons turned Burkittsville, a quiet rural village of some 200 people, into a hospital complex after the September 14, 1862, Battle of Crampton’s Gap. The building in front of you, the German Reformed Church, was Hospital D.

Twenty-year-old Henrietta Biser gasped when she saw the church pews strewn in the front yard and “a pile of amputated limbs lying just inside the door of the church. Blood was running...over the floor...and things were torn to pieces.” Henry M. Wiener remembered amputations being conducted in the church and “seeing blood on...the walls of the church.” Wounded Union and Confederate soldiers lay on the floor, their seeping blood ruining the carpet, until straw was brought in. When it became soaked, it was pitched outside and replaced with cots.

The red brick St. Paul’s Lutheran Church also served as a hospital, and the Reformed Church parsonage, which stood between the churches, may also have served a medical function. The Henry McDuell farm north of town was Hospital A.

The hospitals operated until January 1863, when the remaining patients were transferred to Frederick. The soldiers who died in Burkittsville were temporarily interred in the town cemetery. The Federals were removed to the Antietam National Cemetery in 1867 and the Confederates to Hagerstown’s Washington

Mournful Tidings from Hospital D Burkittsville, Md. Oct. 22d 1862

Mr. B Exner Dear Sir I take pen in hand to inform you of the Death of your dear son. It is sad for you to hear this news. He was wounded in the left thigh and had it taken off. He lived longer than I expected he would altho he was very strong. He was well taken care of. I stood by his death bed and he wanted me to write to his Father & Mother....I have here in my care a picture of his Dear...Miss Catherine Snyter, Trenton, N.J. and if she wishes for it I will send it to her.... Your son died Oct. 18th 1862 and died very easy just as if he was going to sleep.... I feel sorry to have you and the young lady hear of his death. He had me promise him to write you and I told him I would.

Yours Truly from

W.H. Aubery Hospital Steward Burkittsville Md. Frederick Co. Hospital D.

Source: U.S. National Archives Pension File of Pvt. Charles Exner, Co. C., 1st N.J. Infantry. Confederate Cemetery in the 1870s.

Hospital D stands as a reminder of the misery and destruction the Antietam Campaign brought into the heart of this quiet town.

Erected by Maryland Civil War Trails.