The floors of the Daniel Lady Farm's 1820 stone farmhouse still bear bloodstains from the Civil War. (Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association)

Strip malls and subdivisions dot the Pennsylvania landscape just east of Gettysburg National Park, but a 145-acre farm that was part of the battlefield will remain a farm.

Thanks to a federal grant, a conservation easement will be placed on Daniel Lady Farm, which the nonprofit Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association bought in 1999. The association, along with the Land Conservancy of Adams County and the Civil War Preservation Trust, announced on Nov. 18 that the federal Farm and Ranchland Protection Program had awarded a matching grant of $180,000, enabling the association to pay off the rest of its $295,000 mortgage.

"What we have protected may very well be the last large tract of farmland involved in the Battle of Gettysburg that is not slated for residential or commercial development," Kathi Schue, president of the Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association, said in a statement. "In the next couple of years, much of the woodlands and fields that you see surrounding the farm will be sprouting homes and stores. But … the Lady Farm will remain as it you see it now, a living memorial to the sacrifice and bravery that occurred here and a reminder of the rural Gettysburg atmosphere as it was."

The land includes two buildings—a stone house built in 1820 that still has bloodstained floorboards and an 1842 Swisser-style barn that served as a Confederate hospital after the 1863 battle. The association has already started restoring both buildings.

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