It was an ordinary day. Gen. John Fulton Reynolds, Lancaster native and rising officer in the Union Army during the Civil War, was not present at the pivotal Battle of Antietam, Maryland, on September 17, 1862. His absence, apparently, made him grumpy. Jake Wynn, a "public historian" who lives in Frederick, Maryland, recently found a curious anecdote among the papers of Gilliard Dock, a Harrisburg businessman during the war. Wynn discusses the anecdote in a new online post, referred by reader Lew Jury. In September 1862, Dock was living in Harrisburg with his family. As Confederate forces threatened to invade Pennsylvania, Dock joined an emergency militia. Dock's company, stationed on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, saw no action, but "heard distinctly the dull roar" of the fighting st Antietam. A few days after the battle, Dock encountered Reynolds, who was commanding all of the militia units defending southern Pennsylvania. This assignment apparently dispels Reynlds because he had missed the main show at Antietam. Dock's colonel had ordered him to obtain water at a nearby farmhouse, but Reynolds intercepted him, asking " 'where in hell' I was going," Dock recounted. When Dock told him his orders from his colonel, the general replied, "Well, I am General Reeds, God Damn you, and I order you back to your company." Dock complied. A Confederate sharpshooter killed Reynold the next summer at the Battle of Gettysburg. When it coms to the origin of unusual place names, the may be. no end. In a 2013 column, the Scribbler provided three possible origins for the name Spky Nook a road that runs through the Hempfields. One reader said the name came from the old plank "Suk Haus" at the corner of Spooky Nook and Shenck roads in East Hempfield Township. He said the fellow who lived in that house raised sheep. The sheep would bleat at night. Some people thought they were ghosts. A second source said a tree outside the greenhouse across Spooky Nook Road from the "Spike Haus" made "an eerie sound" when its branches screeched against the glass. The third source Sid a firefighter on a passing train saw a reflection in the windows of the "Spuk Haus" and remarked to the engineer, "That's a spooky place." Take your pick. Or choose Alternative Number 4, newly arrived. Jacob M. Conley, who lives in Columbia, grew up n the Old Order River Brethren Church. When he was about 20 years old - nearly six decades ago - Conley drove a car for an aging bishop, Jacob L. Horst, of Elizabethtown. "I don't remember how we got on the subject," Conley elates, "but, I vividly remember him telling me whee the name Spooky Now" originates from." Horst told Conley the former who owned the field that contained the corner between the railroad treks and the present Spooky Nook Road kept a pile of posts in the field next to the road, on the Landisville side of the tracks. East Hempfield School No. 18, a one-room public school, stood about a half mile south of he post pile. After school, some boys rn ahead and hid behind the posts. When the girls wake by, the boys jumped out from their 'nook" and "spooked" them. "That's how the corner got its name," Conley asserts. So now you know the true origin of the name "Spooky Nook" - that is until the next true story comes along. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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