Civil War stories on display at Lincoln Highway museum in Unity

The Lincoln Highway Experience museum on Route 30 in Unity has joined forces with a community farther east on the historic highway to provide visitors a glimpse of Civil War-era life “On the Home Front.”

The exhibit, on loan from the Bedford County Historical Society through Jan. 18, features a set of large storyboards and some memorabilia that offer a southern Pennsylvanian perspective on the epochal conflict.

“There are lots of letters on the storyboards from people from the Bedford area,” said Lauren Koker, executive director of the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor, a nonprofit headquartered at the museum that promotes and conserves historical and cultural resources along a 200-mile section of the highway that crosses six counties, including Westmoreland and Bedford. “It hits close to home, how the Civil War affected them.”

The exhibit was created to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, according to Gillian K. Leach, executive director of the Bedford County Historical Society.

“It’s nice to be able to share it,” she said.

The display includes a brick from Libby Prison, which housed Union prisoners in Richmond, Va., and a letter from a Union veteran who fought a second battle, for his pension, after enduring “rebel hell” in another notorious Confederate prison near Andersonville, Ga.

It also sheds light on lesser-known maneuvers in Bedford County that were peripheral to the July 1863 clash of troops in Gettysburg.

Union General Robert H. Milroy mustered forces to cover gaps in local mountains and ridges, guarding against a potential Confederate attack that never came — against the Pennsylvania Railroad in Altoona, Leach said.

Along with the exhibit, Leach’s organization provided copies of two locally-themed historical books that will be for sale in the Lincoln Highway Experience gift shop: “From Winchester to Bloody Run: Border Raids and Skirmishes in Western Pennsylvania During the Gettysburg Campaign,” by Steve Hollingshead and Jeffrey Whetstone; “Grand Army of the Republic: Personal War Sketches of the Members of Lieut. Josiah Baughman Post No. 131, Everett,” edited by Dr. James Biser Whisker.

“On the Home Front” is on display in the Unity museum’s Gantz Gallery, named for the late Fred Gantz of York Springs, a longtime Lincoln Highway enthusiast who donated memorabilia to the museum. The gallery will provide a space for a series of changing exhibits highlighting topics pertaining to the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor.

The exhibit is included in admission to the museum, which includes a souvenir post card and postage stamp and a serving of pie and coffee.

Museum hours through Dec. 31 are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, with the last visitor admitted at 3 p.m. The museum is open Mondays through Fridays January through March.

Visit lhhc.org for more information.