The subtitle of this article is “fuck keyword optimization”.
A chapter of my memoir is dedicated to Gettysburg, but not to the history of it, only to my personal history with the town. However I did spend a couple paragraphs on Ginnie Wade, the only recorded civilian casualty of the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War:
A popular place on these tours is to the Jenny(ie) Wade House which should be called the Ginnie Wade house because her name was Ginnie, but we live in a universe where people named Ginny(ie) will forever be called Jenny because no one listens or, according to my emails, can even read the name Ginny without it being translated to Jenny in their head. Seriously, people will address emails to me as “Jenny” like, who the fuck is Jenny and the email you are sending to literally has my name spelled out in it what are you doing??
Anyway, Ginnie (who was also a seamstress like myself) is the only recorded civilian casualty of the Battle of Gettysburg. She was minding her own business baking bread when the home she was in was shot something like 150 times, one of those bullets piercing through multiple doors in the house before piercing Ginnie’s heart and exiting out through her corset. The house is now an attraction you can visit and look at all the bullet holes. You can also go into the basement where her body was kept and look at a weird dummy under a blanket on a bed, because that’s normal.— Ginny McQueen, Back In The Woods
All of that was very interesting to people with my name. Everything becomes 100 times more interesting when it’s about someone with your name if it isn’t very common. People named, like, John or Mary probably aren’t enamored as much by their namesakes.
Yes, I did just quote my own memoir with a link to where to purchase and read it. Thank you for noticing. And I am extremely bitter about her being called “Jennie”. I’m pretty sure if she does haunt her house in Gettysburg, it’s because she’s angry about people getting her name wrong.
The only surviving autographs of her name that contain her nickname spell it “Ginnie”, likely a diminutive of Virginia. However, she is more commonly known to history as “Jennie”.
— William A. Frassanito, Early Photography at Gettysburg
The basement of the now insultingly named “Jennie Wade House” includes a recreation of where they laid her dead body in the basement. Education!
I really do recommend a trip to Gettysburg if you are in the area and into this type of kitchy stuff and can stand being near a lot of Confederate reinactors who are using it as racism LARP.
