Why Do You Visit Gettysburg?

This new campaign is called "150 reasons to Visit
the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center in 2013" and we need your help!

Please join in and add your reason(s) to this campaign. You will have the chance to be featured in this nation-wide advertising campaign used in national and regional print publications.

Your reasons can be inspiring, humorous or unexpected and you can submit as many as you like. Each reason should be one short sentence in length and include your name and how to reach you if your reason is selected.

Please submit your reason(s) on our Gettysblog and to Brooke Diaz, Communications Coordinator by email at bdiaz@gettysburgfoundation.org. You may also mail your reason to Brooke at 1195 Baltimore Pike, Gettysburg, PA 17325.

We hope you will be a part of this exciting campaign and share with the world why you love the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center.  

Last month, members of the Gettysburg Foundation's staff had the pleasure of meeting Betty Folkenroth Weikert. Mrs. Weikert's family occupied and owned the Sherfy House from 1927-1967 and she was kind enough to share what she remembered most about living in this historic house.

Following a tour of her previous home, she shared the following observations:

• There used to be a smokehouse on the property where her family butchered animals and canned peaches from the historic Peach Orchard. There were also apple and cherry orchards close by that the family picked from as well.
• There used to be a huge tree next to the house with a cannonball from the Civil War lodged in the stump.
• She milked the cows on her property every morning before her 2-mile walk to school. The family also had Black Angus cattle, chickens and pigs. They had one horse that pulled the plow until the family finally bought a tractor.
• Her mother used to rent one room which they called the "Tourist Room." Visitors paid $10-$15 per night and the fee included a delicious breakfast in the morning.
• She and her sister had a refreshment stand by the roadside where they sold items from the family farm.
• The English Walnut tree that currently stands in the Sherfy Garden was there when she lived in the home.
• The room where her parents slept had a bloody footprint of a soldier right under their window.

 We were so fortunate to peek through the window of Mrs. Weikert's childhood experience of living in the Sherfy House with her and gain some fresh insight on a post-Civil war Sherfy House experience. *

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