Kretzer Homestead

During the Battle of Antietam the cellar of the Kretzer Homestead house served as a place of refuge for local residents who remained in Sharpsburg.

In 1842 John Kretzer purchased the stone house and surrounding property that was located on Main Street in Sharpsburg. The house dates to the late-eighteenth century.

During the Battle of Antietam, many Sharpsburg residents who did not leave town prior to the conflict sought shelter in the basement of the Kretzer house. The basement was fed by a spring, was subdivided into three rooms and its thick stone walls offered protection from shelling. A woodcut engraving, which originally appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, depicts an exploding shell shattering a basement window while terrified citizens cower below. Later on the day of the battle, six Confederates soldiers entered the house and joined the citizens in the basement, explaining that they were tired of fighting.

John Kretzer died in 1901, and in 1939 his executor sold the house. Currently the house is a private residence that is again owned by a descendant of the Kretzer family.