Old Frederick Road
A Short Night’s Rest
Late in June 1863, the Union Army of the Potomac pursued Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia as it invaded the North for the second time in as many years. On Sunday, June 28, Union Gen. Oliver O. Howard's XI Corps broke camp in the Middletown Valley, crossed the Catoctin Mountain, and bivouacked late in the day at Worman's Mill, two miles beyond Frederick at the junction of the Emmitsburg Turnpike. The men got a short night's rest, and they began marching north in the rain at 4 a.m. the next morning. The corps marched on the Old Frederick Road, paralleling the route of I Corps a mile west and that of the III and XII Corps and commanding Gen. George G. Meade to the east. Residents of the village of Graceham stood along the Old Frederick Road and greeted the marching men in blue at the road junction just north of here. Eighteen miles after breaking camp, the corps bivouacked in Emmitsburg.
After the Battle of Gettysburg, the Union V Corps and Meade traveled the Old Frederick Road as Lee retreated to Virginia. On July 5, Meade made his headquarters in Creagerstown for the night and sent a dispatch to Washington. He wrote that he would be in Frederick the next evening and asked that reinforcements "be thrown to Harper's Ferry by rail as soon as possible.... It is of importance to get possession of South Mountain passes and Maryland Heights." Despite Meade's efforts, however, Lee escaped.
Marker is on Old Frederick Road, on the right when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
