A stay at the Brafferton Inn may be the most pleasant way to get a full sense of Gettysburg’s historicalrichness. The 10-room stone house built in 1786, the first residence in town, faces a mid-l9th-century street and has an adjacent six-room pre—CivilWar clapboard addition. On the first day of the battle, a bullet shattered an upstairs window. It lodged in the mantel and is still there today. During the war, services were held here while the church was being used as a hospital. Andjust down the street is the house where Lincoln completed his Gettysburg Address.
In 1993 Jane and Sam Back purchased the inn, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Sam has a master’s degree in history and was in-terested in the Civil War, and Jane worked in the admissions office of a boarding school in Connecticut. Both were ready for a midlife change.
The inn has high ceilings, oversize doors, and odd nooks, turns, steps up and steps down that will constantly surprise you. It glows with Colonial colors. In the living room is the original fireplace and an 18th-century grandfather clock bracketed by portraits of Sam’s ancestors dat-ing from before the Civil War. Here you’ll also find a pre—Revolutionary War mirror hanging over an 18th-century lowboy. Guests breakfast in the dining room encircled by a folksy mural on four walls that depicts the area’s historic buildings.
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