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In late June of 1863, warnings of approaching Confederate forces were everywhere. In the small town of Gettysburg, its 2,400 residents had long been plagued by rumors of kidnappings, of clashes between the two great armies and of imminent death. In spite of all this, no one was prepared for the ferocious three-day battle between the 165,000 soldiers that would transform the living as well as the lands of Gettysburg forever.

While some residents’ actions were defined by only self-preservation, others reacted with remarkable compassion and bravery. There is no question that in those wretched times, the true characters of the people emerged.

The Battle of Gettysburg would prove to be the bloodiest battle of the entire Civil War, with more than 50,000 casualties. Droves of hungry, bone weary wounded soldiers were everywhere. Like all the folks in the area, the residents of Adams County, Pennsylvania were given orders to evacuate.

Josephine Rogers lived with her relatives in a small farmhouse located south of Gettysburg. On the second day of fighting, as the violence revved up, the terrified family was huddled in their home. Union General J. B. Carr commanded that they leave immediately.

Eighteen-year-old Josephine, however, refused to flee. She couldn’t leave, she told the general, because she had a batch of bread baking in her wood stove. Once they were finished, she promised, she would leave.

Around 1 p.m. on July 2, the soldiers began to move onto the farmhouse fields drawing ever closer to the house. There the exhausted and desperately hungry men began to smell the baking bread. Seeing them in such a pitiful state, Josephine began slicing the bread and handing it out to the soldiers. With the bread soon gone and hungry soldiers wanting more, she decided to mix another batch.

Three hours later, as she continued to bake, the Confederates opened fire, bombarding the troops—as well as Josephine—with shells. Refusing to give in, she persisted. Disregarding the perilous situation, Josephine kneaded, baked and sliced more loaves of bread for the grateful men.

As her flour supply dwindled, some soldiers volunteered to steal from the enemy’s commissary stores. In addition to flour, they brought her raisins, currants and a sheep. Josephine Rogers stayed in her home alone for two days, not only feeding the soldiers, but also caring for the dying and wounded.

On July 3, the artillery duel between the two armies shook the foundations of the farmhouse. The soldiers advanced directly through the farm house fields. There the troops found Josephine laboring tirelessly over her stove baking bread while ignoring the hailstorm of lead flying about her.

When the smoke finally cleared, droves of soldiers lay dead around the house its walls now scarred from bullet and artillery shells. Seventeen bodies were removed from inside the home and the cellar. But, in spite of it all and disregarding the danger to herself, Josephine had never ceased to care for the men, no matter what color uniform they wore.

As the Civil War drew to its gruesome finale, most people never knew about the heroic and altruistic actions of Josephine Rogers. The surviving men, however, whom she had fed and cared for during those three wretched days, never forgot her.

After the war, she was named an honorary member of General Carr’s brigade, the only woman to receive that honor. A monument was dedicated in her name. During the ceremony some of the veterans moved the legendary black stove of which she had baked her now famous bread and set it in front of the monument.

Although the stove has now been lost to history, a plaque remains reminding us of the lives she touched, the bodies she healed and the hunger she quelled as she unflinchingly and repeatedly risked her life for the men whom she so patriotically saved.