Hill Country Living – March 1993 (Kerrville Texas)

A Mooney aircraft brought Gettysburg, Pa. resident Barbara Schutt to a new way of life in the Texas Hill Country

By LINDA BYRNE

Times Lifestyle Editor

A three-day battle in 1863 proved to be the basis of a delightful 22-year career for Kerrville resident Barbara Schutt.

Schutt, who moved to Kerrville three years ago, is now retired after serving as a battlefield guide at the Gettysburg National Military Park. The U.S. Department of the Interior oversees operations there.

Licensed in 1968, Schutt has the distinction of being the first female guide at the battlefield since the guides program was established in 1915.

“Basically, you have to interpret the battle of Gettysburg. Of course, it’s to your benefit to know more about the Civil War than just that battle.” Schutt said of a guide’s duties.

Schutt passed both a written and verbal exam in order to become a guide. She recalled that the final portion, the verbal exam, was interrupted by an emergency in the park. She didn’t know she’d passed until the test administrator told another ranger of her achievement.

Although Schutt’s family has lived in Gettysburg for more than 200 years, Schutt feels some empathy for the South and made sure visitors to the battlefield understood the facts that led to the Civil War.

“So many people would come with the impression that slavery was the main reason for the Civil War. Slavery was part of the economy of the South, but the main reason was state’s rights,” she noted.

“I had to make sure that visitors knew that the South had been winning up until Gettysburg, and that the morale of the North was very low,” she added. Another common misconception was that Gettysburg was the war’s final battle; it wasn’t. The war didn’t end until 1865.

Schutt, like other Civil War buffs, accords a high degree of respect to Gen. Robert E. Lee, who she says, was “a true Southern gentleman.” She points to the Battle of Chancellorsville, in May of 1863 (two months before Gettysburg) as typical of Gen. Lee’s military savvy.

“The North was led by Gen. Joe Hooker, and he liked to drink. He had a brilliant battle plan, but they took the bottle away from him and he lost his nerve. And Gen. Lee — the brilliant Robert E. Lee –divided his army in front of the Union army and emerged victorious,” she said.

But Gen. Lee’s victory was a bittersweet one because Stonewall Jackson was accidentally shot by his own men in the same battle. But that battle pales in comparison to Gettysburg, which claimed the lives of 51,000 men. “That’s more casualties than we had in World War I or World War II. Vietnam had about as many but that was over a period of many years,” Schutt noted.

U.S. government figures show that the Union had 97,000 men at Gettysburg while the Rebel army is estimated at 75,000.

That’s a very large contingent for what Schutt reminds us was an accidental battle to begin with.

“Lee and the Confederates’ destination was Harrisburg, 30 miles north of Gettysburg. From there, he hoped to strike out in all directions and then at the end take what he’d always wanted: Washington D.C.

“On June 30, 1863, the Confederates go into town to get supplies, and spot some Union troops. The rumor for years has been that they came into the town of Gettysburg to get shoes, but there was no shoe or boot factory in Gettysburg. Of course they needed shoes, they had walked from Virginia, but they needed supplies of all kinds.

“All the men go back to their units and tell everybody to get to Gettysburg quickly, that there’s a battle going on. So the battle was an accident,” she explained.

The Battle of Gettysburg pitted Gen. Lee against Gen. George G. Meade. Even today, Schutt can tick off the generals who led the brave troops at Gettysburg.

“The whole war was a war of generals,” she said. Schutt notes with a degree of sadness that all these men of the U.S. Military Academy were graduates of the U.S. Military at West Point where they were friends, and had fought together in the Mexican War from 1846 to 1848. The Civil War pitted these men against each other.

The competence of the generals was about even on both sides, Schutt believes, but politicians interfered with the Union army. The South didn’t have that problem but ultimately had biggers ones.

“I always told visitors to the hattlefield that the South was missing 3 m’s — money, manpower and material,” Schutt said.

She weaves colorful anecdotes into her historical recollections, much as she did for visitors to the battlefield.

There’s the famous “Jeb” Stuart, who led the South’s cavalry. He arrived late at Gettysburg because been partying at the Shriver Homestead, the ancestors of Sargent Shriver.

Abner Doubleday, later to become the father of baseball, was at Gettysburg, as was an “X-rated character named Daniel E. Sickles.”

Schutt explained that Sickles, a Congressman, was the exception to the North’s cadre of professionally valuable trained generals.

“Sickles lost a leg at Gettysburg. And after the amputation, he said he wanted the leg back. He sent it to the Army Medical Building and the bone is still on display today at the Walter Reed Museum at Walter Reed Medical Center. Sickles lived 51 years after the battle and fought desperately for the preservation of the Gettysburg battlefield.

“He was the first man acquitted on a charge of temporary insanity in the United States,” Schutt continued. “He murdered Phillip Barton Key, son of Francis Scott Key, in Lafayette Square right near the White House. Of course, Key was having an affair with Sickles’ wife.”

Another name from history who was present during the battle at Gettysburg was George Armstrong Custer, who served in the cavalry under Alfred Pleasanton.

As one of 150 battlefield guides, Schutt had the job of making these historical figures come alive for the thousands of visitors who tour the battlefield every year. Among them were congressmen and senators, schoolchildren and West Point cadets.

“Gettysburg was a classic military battle and it is still part of the training for students at West Point,” Schutt pointed out.

“What I liked best about my job was the types of tours I would give. If I I could make the battlefield come to life for fourth, fifth and sixth graders, I felt I had done my job well,” she said.

“I would take out any and all kinds of -deaf groups, blind groups, walking clubs, people on horseback, chartered buses, motorcyles — whatever they came with, I’d go,” she said.

Although the Interior Department had initially been hesitant to hire a woman guide because it was felt a woman couldn’t identify with war and the military, Schutt notes that a woman’s “people skills” can prove in such a job. “I had more patience with the groups and with children and frankly, some of the male guides didn’t,” she recalled.

Although Schutt was reluctant to sever her ties to this historic place (Ike and Mamie Eisenhower bought the farm that Barbara’s husband’s family had owned during the Civil War), Schutt and her husband decided they wanted a complete change of scene.

Her husband owned a Mooney airplane and discovered Kerrville.

Schutt herself thought she wanted to move to New Mexico, but when she saw Kerrville she fell in love with the area and is happily situated in a home filled with memorabilia of the Gettysburg years.

She now works at the Camp Verde General Store, where, she notes, “I still get to talk about Robert E. Lee.”

Lee was in charge of the camp in the late 1850s and spent many nights there, and the store has a likeness of the Confederate general near a Confederate flag.

And that’s all Schutt needs to make her feel at home in the Texas Hill Country.