Why Gen. John Reynolds was grumpy after the Battle at Antietam [The Scribbler]

Gen. John Fulton Reynolds, Lancaster native and rising officer in the Union Army during the Civil War, was not present at the pivotal Battle of Antietam, Maryland, on Sept. 17, 1862.

His absence, apparently, made him grumpy.

Jake Wynn, a "public historian'' who lives in Frederick, Maryland, recently found a curious anecdote among the papers of Gilliard Dock, a Harrisburg businessman during the war. Wynn discusses the anecdote in a new online post, referred by Scribbler reader Lew Jury.

In September 1862, Dock was living in Harrisburg with his family. As Confederate forces threatened to invade Pennsylvania, Dock joined an emergency militia.

Dock's company, stationed on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, saw no action but "heard distinctly the dull roar'' of the fighting at Antietam.

A few days after the battle, Dock encountered Reynolds, who was commanding all of the militia units defending southern Pennsylvania. This assignment apparently displeased Reynolds because he had missed the main show at Antietam.

Dock's colonel had ordered him to obtain water at a nearby farmhouse, but Reynolds intercepted him, asking " 'where in hell' I was going," Dock recounted. When Dock told him his orders from his colonel, the general replied, "Well, I am General Reynolds, God Damn you, and I order you back to your company.''

Dock complied.

A Confederate sharpshooter killed Reynolds the next summer at the Battle of Gettysburg.

'Spooky Nook' redux

When it comes to the origin of unusual place names, there may be no end.

In a 2013 column, the Scribbler provided three possible origins for the name Spooky Nook, a road that runs through the Hempfields.

One reader said the name came from the old plank "Spuk Haus'' at the corner of Spooky Nook and Shenck roads in East Hempfield Township. He said the fellow who lived in that house raised sheep. The sheep would bleat at night. Some people thought they were ghosts.

A second source said a tree outside the greenhouse across Spooky Nook Road from the "Spuk Haus'' made "an eerie sound'' when its branches screeched against the glass.

The third source said a firefighter on a passing train saw a reflection in the windows of the Spuk Haus and remarked to the engineer, "That's a spooky place.''

Take your pick.

Or choose Alternative Number 4, newly arrived.

Jacob M. Conley, who lives in Columbia, grew up in the Old Order River Brethren Church. When he was about 20 years old — nearly six decades ago — Conley drove a car for an aging bishop, Jacob L. Horst, of Elizabethtown.

"I don't remember how we got on the subject,'' Conley relates, "but I vividly remember him telling me where the name 'Spooky Nook' originates from.''

Horst told Conley the farmer who owned the field that contained the corner between the railroad tracks and the present Spooky Nook Road kept a pile of posts in the field next to the road, on the Landisville side of the tracks.

East Hempfield School No. 18, a one-room public school, stood about a half mile south of the post pile. After school, some boys ran ahead and hid behind the posts. When the girls walked by, the boys jumped out from their "nook'' and "spooked'' them.

"That's how the corner got its name,'' Conley asserts.

So now you know the true origin of the name "Spooky Nook" — that is, until the next true story comes along.