Elizabeth Thorn The Angel of Evergreen

When the cannons fell silent over Gettysburg, the town lay in ruins, surrounded by smoke, sorrow and the dead. Into that devastation stepped Elizabeth Thorn, the six-months-pregnant wife of Evergreen Cemetery’s caretaker and one of Gettysburg’s most extraordinary unsung heroines.

With her husband away fighting for the Union, Thorn sheltered her children in the cemetery gatehouse as battle raged across Cemetery Hill. After the armies moved on, she picked up a shovel and helped care for and bury more than 100 fallen soldiers.

This dramatic presentation brings Elizabeth’s courage and angelic grace to life with cinematic intensity:

• Her lonely vigil in the gatehouse as the battle approached

• Her heartbreaking duty among the first makeshift graves

• Her strength as a mother, a caretaker, and a devoted witness to the nation’s darkest hours

• Her lifelong legacy as the quiet guardian and Angel of Evergreen Cemetery

Through vivid storytelling, dramatic narration, and a reverent look at her real experiences, this program reveals Elizabeth Thorn not as a footnote, but as the true Angel of Gettysburg, a woman whose mercy and devotion blessed the sacred ground we walk today. The program begins at 5 p.m. on July 18 and July 25, at the Farnsworth House Inn in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.