crater surprise

after the explosion

after “reconstruction”

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From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in September 1866:

BODY OF A WHITE FEMALE SOLDIER FOUND IN THE CRATER AT PETERSBURG. – The Petersburg Index says that the grave diggers at the crater have unearthed, a short distance in front of that famous place, the body of a white woman dressed in a Federal uniform. The body when found was in an excellent state of preservation. The features, pallid with the hue of death, revealed the delicate caste of her woman’s face, and her hair, though cut short, possessed a glow and softness which alone might have excited a suspicion of her sex. She had been shot through the head. She was carefully placed in one of the new coffins provided for her sterner comrades and taken [?] with them to be buried among them.

You can read more about Women Civil War Soldiers here.

tourist trap?