After a decade of commendable service, however, the Homestead met a sorry end. The matron, Rosa J. Carmichael, was convicted in 1876 of aggravated assault on one of the orphans. And succeeding months brought forth other shocking allegations. Rumors spread that the children were cruelly treated and that little or no teaching was going on.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in America's Civil War magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

When Mrs. Carmichael, who continued at the school despite her conviction, snubbed the local Grand Army of the Republic post by not allowing the orphans to participate in Memorial Day exercises in 1877, the veterans assumed the offensive. After investigating activities at the Homestead, the post leveled charges at both the matron and Dr. Bourns, who was attacked for his distant and autocratic authority over the institution.

Following an investigation of Bourns by the Homestead's board of directors, he and Mrs. Carmichael were sued for mismanagement, waste of property, violation of trust, and other charges. With the situation deteriorating, the Gettysburg Star and Sentinel editorialized in June 1877 that 'The general conviction in this community is that the Homestead has outlived its usefulness and that the sooner it is closed the better.' By the end of the year, courts placed the institution in receivership, homes were found for the remaining nine orphans, and the Homestead closed its doors.

The Humistons' three years at the orphanage had come before serious problems arose, but according to family lore, it had not been a happy place for them. When, in October 1869, Philinda Humiston married a Massachusetts minister named Asa Barnes, their descendants recalled, she and the children gladly left Gettysburg.

All three of Amos's children attended Lawrence Academy in Groton, Massachusetts. Frank continued his education at Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. He hung his doctor's shingle in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, where he raised a family and practiced until his death in 1912, a popular and successful physician. Alice never married and was somewhat of a nomad, working at a variety of jobs in New England and New York. She was living with one of Frank's daughters in California in 1933 when she met a tragic death, burned fatally when her dress caught fire from an open flame. Fred raised a family and became a prosperous grain merchant in West Somerville, Massachusetts; he died in 1918. After Asa Barnes died in 1881, Philinda seems to have divided her time between Frank's and Fred's families. She died at Frank's home in Jaffrey in 1913.

The Humistons spent their later lives shunning the spotlight of celebrity, which had shined so brightly on them during the Civil War years. All three grown children and their mother were familiar to the townfolk of Jaffrey, but their storied past was generally unknown until one winter night, when, during the presentation of an illustrated lecture on the Battle of Gettysburg, a lantern slide of the 'Children of the Battlefield' was projected. The stunned audience recognized the children in the photograph to be their beloved doctor and his sister and brother.

In the years since the Civil War, the Humiston story has become a staple of Gettysburg guidebooks and accounts of the battle, and a frequently-told tale in newspapers and magazines. Inspired by the touching saga–much as their ancestors had been more than a century earlier–a group of Gettysburg residents, supported by people from Portville and descendants of members of the 154th New York, dedicated a new monument to Amos Humiston in 1993. Located on North Stratton Street, near the spot where Amos was found, it is the only monument to an individual enlisted man standing today on the battlefield of Gettysburg.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to