Citizen Meets Soldier

PLEASE NOTE: As of 7/16, all outdoor activities have been canceled due to impending weather. Any reenactors still able to attend are welcome at the historic house and grist mill. Visitors may still attend during regular admission hours (12-4) and experience Civil War focused programming as part of tours of the house and mill. Tickets may be purchased in the gift shop.

“Citizen Meets Soldier” is a living history of 1863 in Carroll County, Maryland. Join the Union Mills Homestead to commemorate the events of the hot summer of 1863. Walk in the footsteps of the citizens of Carroll County, Maryland, who were divided in their loyalties, and the Union and Confederate soldiers who camped along Big Pipe Creek at Union Mills in the days surrounding the Battle of Gettysburg. This event will celebrate and commemorate the chaos and excitement of the Civil War in Carroll County, Maryland.

In the days surrounding Lee’s Second Invasion of the North, small towns in Carroll County — including Union Mills — saw the movement of both U.S. and Confederate Armies, supply wagons, injured soldiers, and an important skirmish occurred in nearby Westminster. There, U.S. Cavalry charged headfirst into Confederate Cavalry under the command of Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart. But for a few hours, a battle may well have occurred at Union Mills, as it lay dead center in the Union Army’s defensive line along Big Pipe Creek and Union Mills served as the site of overnight encampments by both Stuart’s Confederate Cavalry and Sykes’ Fifth Corps of the U.S. Army. Stuart’s Cavalry pulled out of Union Mills just hours before the Union Army arrived!