Military History | Mumma Farm, Antietam — Buildings Were Not Stores

The buildings were already burning when the brigade walked through them.

Brigadier General Roswell S. Ripley wrote his report four days later, from a camp on Opequon Creek, in the passive voice: "During this while, a set of farm buildings in our front were set on fire to prevent them being made use of by the enemy." He named no officer and no farm. A Union report in the same volume, from the 3rd Maryland Infantry, records re-forming beside a burning farm house on that ground and gives another reason: a "commissary store-house of the enemy, who had, before leaving, set fire to the same and thrown his salt in the well."

The farm belonged to Samuel Mumma. At Antietam, or Sharpsburg in the other army's usage, everything of his burned except the stone springhouse.

Then came the paperwork. A board of survey rode out from 1 October 1862 to appraise "damages accruing to certain property in this vicinity by troops in the service of the United States." Mumma entered $150.00 for "Land damaged by traveling & Buriel," and later claimed $7,472 for the buildings, the stock and crops taken, and land turned into a cemetery. That claim was still before the Court of Claims in 1888.

Congress had set the limits in advance. The Act of 4 July 1864 barred that court from any claim "growing out of the destruction or appropriation of, or damage to, property by the army or navy … engaged in the suppression of the rebellion." What it did authorise was payment for quartermasters' stores taken from "loyal citizens in states not in rebellion." Buildings were not stores. Most of the neighbouring claims were resubmitted in the 1870s with the property damage left out.

The Mummas rebuilt the next year. Their house stands on Mumma Lane, closed to visitors, in use as a park education centre; the springhouse that came through the fire is still on the Park Service's building list.

📸 Cover: the rebuilt Mumma farmstead, Antietam National Battlefield — barn at left, house at right (Acroterion, 2022, CC BY-SA 4.0). Second image: the house, east front (Acroterion, 2012, CC BY-SA 4.0).