A Journey Through Westport: The Wornall House Museum

The Wornall House is located on stop ten of the self-guided driving tour of the Battle of Westport in Missouri. It is the original house of John Wornall and his family. John Wornall did own 4 slaves and had two hired hands as well. Their home was basically taken from them by both Union and Confederate troops for use as a field hospital during the battle. It is now a restored museum and is one of only two remaining original buildings used in the battle.

During the tour of the Wornall House museum, our guide, Margueritte Millken, went in detail about how the home was actually used during the war. The main living room was the primary place they performed operations on the soldiers. Mainly amputations were done in this room because they had few alternative ways to deal with most injuries at that time and during war. An interesting fact is that they had nowhere to discard the amputated limbs, so they simply tossed them out the living room window into a horse’s trailer carriage to get rid of them. The bodies of anyone who did not survive a surgery, got sick and died, or obtained any number of fatal injuries or wounds were stacked one on top of the other in the formal dining room of the home.