This Month's Headlines:
Editors Letter
The dog days of summer are once again upon us in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. We at The Gettysburg Experience magazine hope to help make your last month of summer a memorable one. There are many events going on in August -- be sure to check out our updated Calendar of Events.
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Facts about James Gettys
August is the month to remember the founder of Gettysburg, James Gettys. Here are a few facts about the man who built the town of Gettysburg.
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Actor Stephen Lang Visits Gettysburg
Award-winning and internationally renowned actor Stephen Lang, who is famous among Civil War enthusiasts as the inimitable General George Pickett from the movie Gettysburg, is a frequent visitor to the place that made George Pickett immortal during the summer of 1863. The talented performer, whose most recently starred in the enormously successful Avatar, recently returned to Gettysburg to visit with the public. Mr. Lang visited many venues during the anniversary of the battle to sign copies of his latest venture, providing the narrative of the new Gettysburg Battlefield Auto Tour on CD, based on the tours of Gettysburg icon and Lincoln scholar Dr. Gabor Boritt.
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Johnny Corbin's BBQ
When Scott Snyder opened his outdoor eatery last year near the Gettysburg battlefield, he wanted an old-fashioned name for his old-fashioned restaurant at 885 Taneytown Road. “Corbin means ‘gift of God’,” he said. “And the name John means ‘God first’. So I figured we’d name the place Johnny Corbin’s.”
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His Only Heritage
Gettysburg’s second day of battle was a tumult of acrid smoke, clamoring musketry, and death as the men in blue and gray grappled on the slopes of rocky hills and in the farmers’ fields south of town. After carrying the first day’s battle to victory, General Robert E. Lee decided on a flank attack of George Meade’s Army of the Potomac. Feeling too unsettled to remain in Pennsylvania for long, General Lee knew that he had to attack as the Union army was now in its own territory. With Washington as the coveted prize, and with it the end of war, General Lee planned a Napoleonic maneuver: to hit the flanks of the Union line and roll them up. The result was the bloodiest day of the worst battle of the war.
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The First Shot
It would seem impossible to know, since the Battle of Gettysburg was the battle that no one planned, who fired the first shot of that fight. Still, history has recorded, and accorded, the first shot of the battle to Captain Marcellus Jones of the 8th Illinois Cavalry, one of General John Buford’s soldiers
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Facts about the Seminary
The Lutheran Theological Seminary is a Gettysburg landmark, and has been for over 180 years. Long before soldiers wearing blue and gray struggled in the pivotal battle in 1863, they studied together at this, the first Lutheran seminary in North America. The following are some interesting facts about this historic seminary.
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A Vast Hospital
As shell-shocked residents emerged from their homes after the Battle of Gettysburg, they could barely recognize the once familiar surroundings. “There were many sights too horrible for description,” recalled professor Henry Jacobs. “Dead men lay in the streets from Wednesday till Saturday….Hundreds of dead horses were scattered about…They lay for weeks exposed to the July sun. When the wind blew from the south and west in the evenings, the stench was so overpowering that for a number of evenings all windows had to be closed…The Union dead on the field of the first day’s battle were covered with only a few inches of soil. Portions of the body protruded, as the rain washed away the soil. The Confederate dead on the fields of the second and third days’ fight were mostly buried in long trenches, made in haste and also very superficially covered.”1
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Recipes, Yesterday, & Today >
