Isabella Morrison Fogg of Maine wrote a letter November 11, 1862 describing conditions at Keedysville and Smoketown hospitals. see Isabella Morrison Fogg, letter , November 11, 1862
Clarysville Inn and Old National Road Bridge - 1875.
The Clarysville Inn was built in 1805 and was most popular with travellers along the National Road.
During the Civil War it formed the nucleus of a hospital, as conditions in the hospitals in Cumberland in the summer were unbearable. Constructing a hospital in the mountains 1000 feet higher than Cumberland was intended to provide a more hygienic situation. Brigade Surgeon Carpenter reported that the hospitals at Clarysville:
"Combine 80 tents, an oak grove, and two dilapidated cabins, and you have the Smoketown Hospital, perhaps the most well known of all the Antietam hospitals and the longest-lasting."
...John Nelson, As the grain falls
Our great feature is the assistance of Miss Hall... she has two large tents under her charge, and two good cooks to assist her... The number of patients now in the hospital is one hundred and ninety-eight. This number will be increased, with patients from other hospitals, in a few days to about three hundred.
W.R. Mosely, Assistant Medical Inspector, visited Smoketown in November 1862. He found there were 479 patients under treatment, 232 were wounded soldiers, 247 were sick: typhoid fever, dysentery, and diarrhea the most prevalent illnesses. Eleven doctors staffed the hospital, including: B. A. Vanderkieft of the 102 New York Volunteers, Edward Donelly, of the 2 Pennsylvania Reserves, G. W. Metcalf, of the 76th New York Volunteers, Wm. B. Chambers of the 60th New York Volunteers, Wilson Peterson, John Aiken of the 71st Pennsylvania Reserves, W. S.
Caption from negative sleeve: Straw huts erected on Smith's farm, and used as a hospital after the battle of Antietam. Sept. 1862.
Keedysville, Md., vicinity. Smith's barn, used as a hospital after the battle of Antietam.
Title from Civil War photographs, 1861-1865 compiled by Hirst D. Milhollen and Donald H. Mugridge, Washington, D.C. : Library of Congress, 1977. No. 0136