Direct from the family is this image of Alma Hummelbaugh Hake as a small girl. It is complete with its brass mat and protector, which show a minor amount of tarnish; it is housed in half of a pressed paper case exhibiting moderate wear. Written in modern pencil in the interior of the case is "Alma / Hummelbaugh / married / To Mr. Hake".

Born into a family with historic Gettysburg roots, Alma died tragically at a young age. Her grandparents were Jacob and Sarah Hummelbaugh, whose home still stands today at the intersection of Taneytown Road & Pleasonton Ave., and is now part of Gettysburg National Military Park. Located just behind the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, it was used as a field hospital by Gen. Hancock's Second Corps and as the headquarters of Gen. Alfred Pleasonton of the Cavalry Corps. More famously, however, it sheltered Confederate Gen. William Barksdale after he was mortally wounded on July 2, 1863. He died in the house that evening.

Jacob and Sarah's son Leander Hummelbaugh, born in 1840, served as a private in the 138th Pennsylvania Infantry from August 1862 until March 25, 1865, when he was discharged for disability after being wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness on May 4, 1864. Leander married Sarah A. Fitzgerald; he and his wife had four children, one of whom was Alma. Born on August 28, 1873, Alma married George H. Hake in January 1902. They settled in Atlantic City, NJ, where George, a former Gettysburg resident, held a position with Bell Telephone Company. George unfortunately contracted typhoid fever and died in September 1902.

Alma, a trained nurse, returned to Gettysburg, and while attending to a woman who had just given birth at a home on East Middle St. in November 1905, was fatally burned in an accidental fire. While filling a coal-oil stove in the patient's bedroom, the oil ignited. Mrs. Hake attempted to remove the stove from the house but in the process her clothes were set alight. Though she died from her injuries, the mother and child were not affected. Alma's obituary from the Adams County Independent reads in part, "Her parents have the deep sympathy of the community in their sad bereavement, but their consolation is that she died while doing her duty thinking only of those left in her care, even forgetting self in the first moments of her suffering and urging her rescuers to go to the aid of the woman her child."

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