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Virginia Wade, her home, and monument.
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Postcard of Virginia Wade, her home, and monument.

Credit: Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives

The Confederate bullet entered her back beneath the left shoulder blade while she stood baking bread in her sister's kitchen for the Union troops. On July 3, 1863, 20-year-old Virginia "Jennie" Wade became the only civilian killed during the battle of Gettysburg. In another sad twist of fate, as Jennie fell dead, her friend Wesley Culp of the 2nd Virginia, would also die this day. A Gettysburg native and nephew of Henry Culp who owned "Culp's Hill," Wesley Culp moved south before the war and joined the Confederates when war broke out in 1861. When Wesley died near Culp's Hill, he carried a note from Jennie's beau Jack Skelly. On July 3, 1863, while Jennie and Wesley spent their last day on earth, Union private Jack Skelly lay wounded in a Confederate hospital in Winchester, Virginia. Within days, he too would breathe his last

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