July 31, 2024

In 1857, a free Black man named Abraham Brian—alternatively spelled as “Brien” in the 1850 census and “Bryan” in the 1860 census but “Brian” on his gravestone—bought twelve acres of property along Cemetery Ridge in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Brian couldn’t have possibly conceived the events that would transpire on his land just six years later and how they captured so much of the upheaval of the times. In fact, some of the biggest ironies of the war took place on his land (more about those in a bit!). Abraham Brian’s Family Born in Maryland in either 1804 or 1807—perhaps to enslaved