Episode 29: Civil War Tails with Rebecca Brown

Crummy Little Podcast

Summer vacations are upon us, and that means it’s road trip season! Growing up in Pennsylvania, I’ve been to Gettysburg more times than I can count. But I’m going to have to make a return trip to check out Civil War Tails, a diorama museum that depicts Civil War battlefield scenes with little cats as the soldiers. Rebecca Brown, who runs the museum and builds the dioramas with her twin sister Ruth, was kind enough to join this Crummy Little Podcast.

One thing was very clear from our conversation: Rebecca takes the history very seriously, updating the dioramas as new information about troop movements and placements comes to light. We had, unfortunately, stopped recording when I mentioned to her my own family’s history at Gettysburg, in the person of Brigadier General Alexander Schimmelfennig. Rebecca not only knew the story of Schimmelfennig evading capture in a shed (our running family joke holds that it was a chicken coop; Rebecca mentioned that it was probably a pig sty), but she also knew about his brigade’s run-in with Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville, Virginia. If Gen. Schimmelfennig ever gets immortalized as a cat, the Crummy Little Podcast may have to go on location.

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Extras:

• You can find more details about the Civil War Tails diorama museum at their website, civilwartails.com.
• Check out this Washington Post story featuring the museum. That’s how I learned about them.