JENNIE'S HOUSE TELLS POIGNANT OF WARTIME TRAGEDY.

Byline: Susanne Hopkins Daily News Travel Editor

As the fire from thousands of thundering guns outside turned the sky smoky and gray that warm morning of July 3, 1863, Jennie Wade worked the dough for biscuits for the Union soldiers, pressing and patting it on the dough table in the small kitchen of her sister's home on Baltimore Street.

In the next room, her sister, Georgia McClellan, lay on a walnut bedstead near the cradle where her 5-day-old son slept. Jennie, her mother and younger brother had come for the occasion of the birth from their home on Breckenridge Street some blocks away in the small southern Pennsylvania farm town of Gettysburg.

It should have been a joyous time, but in the plowed Pennsylvania fields and orchards surrounding Gettysburg, a fierce battle had raged for three days between 75,000 Confederate soldiers and 97,000 Union fighters. Already, thousands of men on both sides had been wounded or killed.

And while it first seemed safer at Georgia's home, an artillery shell had crashed through the roof of the house the previous day and created a cavernous hole in an upstairs wall. And this morning before 8 a.m., an errant bullet had flown through the window and struck the bedpost where Jennie's sister lay, falling near the woman's head. Now, in case her sister or the baby should cry out, Jennie left the door open between the kitchen and the parlor.

But the next bullet was not meant for her sister. Instead, it blasted through the closed outside door, through the parallel open kitchen door and into Jennie's back as she leaned over the dough table.

Mary Virginia (Jennie) Wade was the only civilian casualty of the Battle of Gettysburg. She was 20.

You can see those bullet holes - and nearly 200 others - today, 133 years after that fateful Civil War battle that turned the tide of the war. And while a tour of Gettysburg Battlefield is moving and awe-inspiring, it is a visit to this small brick house that for me, at least, personalizes the tragedy of this war.

The tour begins in the kitchen where Jenny fell. The figure of a Union soldier stands in the corner and, in one of those marvels of animation, tells Jennie's story. The soldier represents one of the men near the house that morning; he points out the dough table at which Jennie labored and the bullet holes in the two doors. Then, armed with an information sheet, I'm on my own.

I go into the parlor, a small room with windows on two sides (all the windows on this, the north side of the house, would be shot out before July 3 ended). The old bedstead with its telltale bullet holes is here; the clock on the mantel was here in Jennie's day and on the wall next to it, there's Jennie's portrait. It's a picture of a pretty young woman full of face, with frank, clear eyes and a luxurious coronet of dark hair.

It's a picture that haunts me as I move along on my tour, up steep, narrow stairs to the second floor. A pile of bricks sits on the floor in front of the hole made by the artillery shell blast; through that hole, Union soldiers carried Jennie's body and herded Georgia McClellan, her baby, Jennie's mother, brother and a neighbor boy to safety.

This being a double house (the south side was occupied by a Mrs. McClain), the small group could make their way through the hole, downstairs on the south side of the house and outside into the cellar. Except for Mrs. Wade, who returned to the kitchen to finish making the biscuits for the infantrymen, the mourners would remain here until July 4, when Jennie's body was lowered into a temporary grave in the garden. (There is a monument to her now at Evergreen Cemetery in Gettysburg, where she was permanently interred.)

I follow the path of the mourners; down in the cellar, there is a shrouded figure lying on a pallet. Seated on an old wooden bench, I hear the rest of the story.

Jennie was engaged to be married to Johnston (Jack) Skelly, who was serving with Union forces in Virginia when he was wounded several days before the Battle of Gettysburg. Skelly sent a message to Jennie via a childhood friend, Wesley Culp, who was returning to Gettysburg. Just days before the Battle of Gettysburg began, Culp told his sister he had a message for Skelly's fiance. His sister offered to deliver it to Jennie, but Culp declined. He wanted to deliver it himself.

He never did; he was killed on the first day of the battle, his musket found but his remains never identified. His message went untold - and unknown, for Skelly himself died nine days after Jennie.

On Location

Not all is tragic at the Jennie Wade House. Take the legend surrounding the bullet hole in the kitchen door. Poke your ring finger through the hole and, if you're single, you'll be married within a year, the legend says.

Skeptics can take note of the letter posted above the bullet hole. Written by a woman who was passing through with a group of Girl Scouts on their way to Washington, D.C., it tells how she placed her finger through the hole and, within a year, married a long-lost love who suddenly surfaced. The legend continues ...

The Jennie Wade House is at 28 Baltimore St. Tours run continuously from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily from May to September, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily the rest of the year. Admission is $5.25 adults, $4.75 seniors and $3.25 children age 5-11 and includes entrance into Olde Town, a small, adjacent complex of vignettes representing life during the Battle of Gettysburg. There is a carpenter who, instead of making shingles and wooden spoons, now makes coffins; children in an old general store, who have walked past the dead and wounded and dodged live shells to get there; and a newspaper publisher printing the latest disastrous news, among other scenes.

Information: [phone].

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--Color) The battle of Gettysburg came too close to this brick house, where Jennie Wade was killed by a stray bullet in July 1863.

(2--Color) Bullet holes pockmark the bed where Jennie Wade's sister rested after childbirth.

(3) Jennie Wade's body was taken to the cellar via this hole in the wall created by an errant artillery shell.

Susanne Hopkins/Daily News

Box: On Location (See Text)