Keedysville

After the Battle of South Mountain ended around nightfall on September 14, 1862, many Confederates marched by here. The next day, Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac arrived, and McClellan established his headquarters here in the German Reformed Church. The army bivouacked in and around Keedysville before it attacked Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia near Sharpsburg on September 17. After the battle, the bloodiest day in American history, Keedysville became one vast Union hospital. Here Capt. Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr., son of the poet and future justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, received treatment for his neck wound. Keedysville hosted Federal troops for several weeks thereafter.