A Yankee Girl at Antietam

Abstract

Roxana Delfield, wearing a dress of blue-checked gingham, stout leather shoes and white stockings, and a broad-rimmed hat of rough straw, ran down the narrow path that led from her Grandmother Miller’s farm to the highway leading to the little village of Antietam, Maryland. The path curved about a rocky ledge, skirted a group of small cedar trees and reached a stone wall where there was an opening just wide enough for one person to squeeze through. Roxy thought it was a fortunate thing that all the people at her Grandmother Miller’s were thin enough to get through this opening, all except Dulcie, the negro cook, who declared her weight “up’ards ob two hunderd pounds.” Dulcie, however, seldom left the farm, and when she did was obliged to take the longer way by the road.