09/28/2026
Interesting history about the Mumma family and house here on the battlefield.
For 44 years, the Mumma family believed Union artillery burned their home — until the Confederate who really did it wrote to ask what became of them.
On the morning of September 17, 1862, James F. Clark of the 3rd North Carolina stood in Gen. Roswell Ripley's brigade line near the Dunker Church. The brick Mumma farmhouse stood in their front, and Ripley feared Union sharpshooters would occupy it. He ordered it burned — the only deliberate destruction of civilian property at Antietam.
In 1906, Clark — then living in New Bern, North Carolina — wrote to the postmaster of Sharpsburg. He had carried the memory for 44 years and wanted, in his words, to "write up the particulars of the event truthfully":
"A volunteer call was made as to who would go and do it. Five or six privates from Company A volunteered and I took charge of them, being at that time, Sergeant Major of the Regiment. After firing [burning] the house we all got back to our lines, myself being the only one hurt."
Wounded carrying orders afterward, Clark was bandaged at a field hospital by a stranger who haunted him ever since: "Then a woman, young and beautiful and blackhaired, helped to bandage my arm. I have often wondered if she was any of the family and where they went when caught between the lines of battle."
The reply came three days later — from Samuel Mumma Jr., the postmaster himself, who had been a young man when the farm burned:
"My father was told that the family had better get away, so we left on Monday afternoon the 15th, took nothing with us as they were cannonading then and we were afraid that there would be a battle at once. Some clothing was gotten together and the silverware was packed in a basket ready to take, but in our haste to get away, all was left behind."
And here is what the family had believed all those years: "that morning the house and barn were burned but we were told that General Richardson's Battery (a Union General) had shelled the house and barn and burned them." For 44 years, they blamed the wrong army.
They rebuilt in the spring of 1863 — "had just moved in a few weeks before the army went to Gettysburg" — and lost $8,000 to $10,000 in crops, fencing, and property, "never recompensed as the Government claimed it was damaged by being right in the heart of the battle."
Mumma even solved Clark's mystery of the black-haired woman: "the hospital you spoke of must have been at the home of one Harry Reel... He had a daughter with black hair. She is now dead and the rest of the family have moved west."
He closed with no bitterness: "As to your burning our house, we know that in doing so, you were carrying out orders." He tucked souvenir postcards of the battlefield into the envelope to help Clark with his writing.
Sources: Letters of James F. Clark (March 19, 1906) and Samuel Mumma Jr. (March 22, 1906). Reproduced and obtained from the National Park Service
Photo: James Clark, Colorized.
