Gettysburg Home Hosted President Night Before Historic Address
When President Abraham Lincoln first arrived in Gettysburg, Pa., it was the day before he was to speak at the dedication of the National Soldiers Cemetery, and his comments hadn’t yet been completed. He needed a placed to stay the night and work. Gettysburg attorney David Wills owned the largest house on the downtown square and he had also been the person to invite the President to speak at the dedication. So in November 1863, it wasn’t surprising that he played host to Abraham Lincoln. Wills Role in the Gettysburg Address It was Wills who convinced the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to purchase 17 acres to become a cemetery for the soldiers killed in the Battle of Gettysburg that had occurred less than five months prior. He planned the cemetery dedication for November 19, 1863, with Edward Everett as the main Read more…
Monkey hunting in Gettysburg
At first, Gettysburg policemen and firemen thought the call they received around 8 p.m. on June 17, 1960, was a crank call. However, more than one person called in to report the same thing. According to the Gettysburg Times, “… residents there insisted there was a monkey swinging through the trees…” Both the Gettysburg Police and Fire Department responded to the call, which took them out to Hillcrest Place, where they discovered that a squirrel monkey was indeed playing in the trees. Squirrel monkeys are small, growing to roughly a foot and weighing less than three pounds. Their fur is short and usually colored black at the shoulders and yellow-orange on their back and legs. A squirrel monkey named Miss Baker had become famous the previous year as one of the first two animals launched into space by the United States Read more…
Drag racing through Gettysburg before there were cars
The horses resembled harnessed dragons. With each breath exhaled through their nostrils, the horses’ breaths turned to vapor resembling smoke from fire-breathing dragons. They pawed at the snow on the street, waiting anxiously. A sleigh with a driver sat behind each horse. The young men in the sleighs grinned at each other and at an unspoken signal, they snapped their whips and the horses leaped forward pulling their respective sleighs behind them. While the sleighs might be typical vehicles of the day, if one driver was Frank Deatrick, then he would ride in a streamlined speedster that would draw as many appreciative glances as a Ferrari would today on the roads of Gettysburg. Deatrick’s sleigh, though costly, was fast and designed for racing. “Suddenly there was the thud of rapidly galloping horses hoofs, and homes empties along York and Chambersburg Read more…
Rejected four times, Menchey becomes a decorated veteran
Before Francis J. Menchey could fight for his country amid the islands of the Pacific Ocean during World War II, he first had the win the battles against the draft boards at home that didn’t want him to fight. When Menchey graduated from Gettysburg High School in 1943, the U.S. had been at war with the Axis Powers for about 18 months. Like many Americans, the young man wanted to do his part to help his country. Shortly before his graduation, he traveled to Baltimore to try and enlist in the U.S. Navy. The U.S. Navy rejected him because the physician at the enlistment center said Menchey had a hernia. That was news to Menchey who felt perfectly fine and had never had any indication that he had a hernia. “Returning to Gettysburg, Menchey consulted his family physician who declared Read more…
Saving the Marine Corps
This is a short excerpt from The Last to Fall: The 1922 Marine March, Battles, & Deaths of U.S. Marines at Gettysburg. The Marines had fought valiantly in World War I like in the Battle of Belleau Wood in France. After the deadly fighting there to drive the entrenched German troops from Belleau Wood, Army General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force, said, “The deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and his rifle.” However, that didn’t stop Pershing and others from wanting to disband the Marine Corps after the war had been won. “Right after World War I, when John A. Lejeune was appointed commandant of the Marine Corps, there was a push by General Pershing and President Wilson to have the Marine Corps abolished,” said Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Williams, executive director of the United Read more…
Find out how the Marines would have fought the Battle of Gettysburg
The Last to Fall: The 1922 March, Battles, & Deaths of U.S. Marines at Gettysburg is now available for sale online and at stores. Thomas Williams, executive director of the U.S. Marine Corps Historical Company, said, “Every American is familiar with the iconic battle fought in Gettysburg during the American Civil War, some are even aware that two Marine officers and the ‘Presidents Own’ Marine Band accompanied President Abraham Lincoln to Gettysburg in November 1863 to dedicate the National Cemetery there. However, few people are aware that 59 years later the US Marines would “reenact” the battle. “In 1922, General Smedley Butler would march over 5,000 Marines from MCB Quantico, Virginia to the hallowed fields of Gettysburg. Conducted as a training exercise, but more importantly to raise public opinion and awareness, the Marines would travel to the National Battlefield and Read more…
Excerpt from "The Last to Fall"
Here is the preface from my upcoming book, “The Last to Fall: The 1922 Marine March, Battles, & Deaths at Gettysburg.” It is due out in early April. Confederate M1917 tanks lumber across the fields, moving on the Union position behind a stone wall on Cemetery Ridge in Gettysburg, Pa. The Union soldiers fire machine guns not so much at the massive metal vehicles approaching them, but at the Confederate soldiers using the tanks as cover in order to make their way across the open ground. In the face of an unstoppable weapon, the Union soldiers begin falling back. Hearing loud buzzing sounds from above, the Confederates stare upward as Union DeHavilland DH-4B biplanes fly out of the clouds. The airplanes level off safely out of range of the Confederate rifle fire. Then the explosions commence as the bombs rain Read more…
New museum remembering Battle of Monterey Pass in Blue Ridge Summit
As the Confederate Army retreated from Gettysburg, Pa., on July 4, 1863, they encountered Union troops in the area of Blue Ridge Summit, Pa., and a two-day battle ensued in the middle of a thunderstorm that eventually spilled over the Mason-Dixon Line into Maryland. “It is the only battle fought on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line,” said John Miller, director of the Monterey Pass Battlefield Museum in Blue Ridge Summit. While lots of books, movies and stories have focused on the importance of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, little light has been shined on how the Confederate Army made its retreat south from the battlefield through enemy troops with weary men. The Battle of Monterey Pass involved about 4,500 men with 1,300 of them winding up as Union prisoners and 43 soldiers being killed, wounded or missing. Major Charles Read more…
The "Last to Fall" is now available for pre-order
It can be said that the last deaths at the Battle of Gettysburg were two marines who fell from the sky in an airplane in 1922. Confused? Are you starting to type a comment to tell me that the Battle of Gettysburg was fought in 1863 and there weren’t any marines there? You would be right on both counts. However, during the first week of July 1922, nearly a quarter of the U.S. Marine Corps re-enacted Pickett’s Charge in a historical way and also using modern equipment, such as tanks and airplanes. Think about that for a second. There’s a whole sub-genre of science fiction based on alternative history. One of the standards of the genre is Harry Turtledove’s “Guns of the South.” In it, time travelers give the Confederacy Uzis to use in their Civil War battles. That is Read more…
Moby Dick and Gettysburg
I was doing some research for my local history column in the Gettysburg Times last week and stumbled on this poem. It had nothing to do with my topic. I wasn’t writing about the Battle of Gettysburg and I’m not a big fan of poetry. What caught my attention is who wrote the poem. Herman Melville. For those who don’t know he’s the man who wrote Moby Dick. Given Melville’s sea-faring background, I didn’t picture him in relation to the Civil War. Melville didn’t fight in the war, but it influenced him as it must have anyone alive at that time. The poem is his version of Pickett’s Charge, the Confederate Army’s last-ditch effort to win the Battle of Gettysburg. So here’s the poem. Gettysburg O Pride of the days in prime of the months Now trebled in great Read more…
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