Gettysburg's John Burns

(Adams County Historical Society)



Sources are divided as to exactly where Roy Stone was born in the state of New York. Some allege Allegheny County, others claim Plattsburgh. One is near the village of Cuba in the southwestern part of the state, the other near the Vermont border. Stone was born on October 16, 1836, the only son of Ithiel and Sarah Stone. He had an older and a younger sister (another sister died in infancy). Roy’s father was a successful real estate developer, bringing substantial wealth to the family. Roy studied engineering, and graduated from Union College in Schenectady. After graduation he settled in Warren County, Pennsylvania. He joined the local militia, as most men did in the nineteenth century. When war came, he was just 24 years old, and eager to fight.1

Since Warren County was a sparsely populated county, many of those who settled there were woodsmen, farmers, and lumberjacks. At the start of the conflict, Stone learned about Thomas Kane’s regiment of Bucktails who had recently enlisted. He raised a company of men from Warren County and traveled with them to Pittsburgh to fight for the Union. They were turned away – the quota had been filled, and the war was supposed to be of short duration. Stone then enlisted in the First Pennsylvania Rifles, or the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves, a bucktail regiment, and rose to the rank of Major. He fought with distinction during the Peninsular Campaign. In the summer of 1862, Abraham Lincoln sent out a call for more Union troops – and Roy Stone quickly answered the call, raising a regiment from Pennsylvania. He was elected colonel of the 149th Pennsylvania, a unit that was formally registered in Harrisburg in August 1862. Like Thomas Kane’s Bucktails, the 149th Pennsylvania were known as the Second Bucktails, and sported a buck’s tail in their kepis.2

The 149th was sent to the defenses of Washington from the fall of 1862 through the new year. At that time, Roy Stone returned to Pennsylvania on leave and married Mary Marker, a young widow. In February, their colonel was promoted to brigade command. Still holding the rank of Colonel, Roy Stone led his new brigade, featuring all Pennsylvania regiments, in the Battle of Chancellorsville. The new brigade was only slightly involved in the fight.3

Chancellorsville is considered to be Robert E. Lee’s greatest victory. Outnumbered and nearly surrounded by Union troops, Lee nevertheless not only escaped the tightened circle, but crushed the Union flank. Thrilled with the outcome, Lee decided it was time to take the war northward. 

The trek would result in the Battle of Gettysburg.

Joseph Hooker, the commander of the Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville, was replaced just three days before Gettysburg by George Meade. In the oppressive heat and intervals of rain, both Union and Confederate troops made their way into Pennsylvania. Lee had not planned to fight at Gettysburg, but was alerted by a spy that the Union army was close by, so Lee concentrated his forces at the crossroads town. A vigilant Union cavalry commander, Brigadier General John Buford, reported on the Southern forces to General Meade. Meade replied by ordering his army to Gettysburg.

Roy Stone’s brigade consisted of three regiments: the 143rd Pennsylvania, the 149th Pennsylvania, and the 150th Pennsylvania infantries. On the morning of July 1, 1863, a member of the 143rd wrote: “We broke camp and took up the line of march for Gettysburg. We had not passed over more than half the distance when we heard the sound of artillery… It was exceedingly warm, a heavy mist falling at the time, wetting me to the skin; the ground was wet and slippery, making it very hard for the men, loaded as they were with their full equipment.”4 

Orders came for the double quick, as the battle had erupted near the Seminary. Their First Corps commander, General John Reynolds, had been killed in the morning, and the Confederates were overrunning the Union troops holding the ridges west of town.

Colonel Stone and his men reached McPherson’s Ridge west of the Lutheran Seminary, and the colonel quickly deployed his men to the right of the Iron Brigade. Stone noticed a division of men in gray coming from the region of Oak Hill from the north of their position, so he dispatched his former command (the 149th) to the railroad cut. He placed the 150th in the woods near the Iron Brigade’s line, with the 143rd to their right. They had no time to prepare their line, as the Confederates from North Carolina rushed toward them. Stone ordered his men to charge, which successfully repulsed the attack, if only for a short time.5

Already “the air was full of bullets” remembered one combatant. Another wrote that “There was shells flying while we was [sic] forming our line of battle.”6

Colonel Langhorne Wister, the commander of the 150th Pennsylvania, had also been an officer in Thomas Kane’s bucktail regiment. As the brigade prepared for another hit by the men in gray, he noticed an old man walking up to them, carrying a rifle. A drummer boy for the regiment remembered Colonel Wister’s exchange with the man: “As I get back behind the house and look around, an old man is seen approaching our line, through an orchard in the rear. He is dressed in a long blue swallow-tailed coat and high silk hat, and coming up to the colonel he asks, ‘Would you let an old chap like me have a chance to fight in your ranks, Colonel?’”7

Colonel Wister replied, “Can you shoot?” The man answered in the affirmative and patted his pockets where his cartridges were stored.8

The sixty-nine-year-old John Burns took his place in the line.

Just as Mr. Burns joined the 150th Pennsylvania, “the enemy’s shells was [sic] falling in among us thick and fast…we had just given him [Burns] three rousing cheers…[we] were struck by overwhelming numbers of the enemy…Just at this moment verbal orders came to our Colonel Wister like this – ‘Roy Stone is badly wounded and you have to take command of the brigade'…a large body of the enemy, some 2000 strong, were advancing on us.” Colonel Stone was severely injured in the right hip by shrapnel. Crippled by the wound, he was carried behind one of the McPherson buildings.9

The fighting took a heavy toll upon the Union forces on McPherson’s Ridge. Colonel Langhorne Wister, who took control of the brigade, was soon wounded as well. John Burns was shot with seven wounds and, like Colonel Stone, was left on the battlefield as the Confederate forces swept over the ridge.10

Almost all forces, blue and gray, suffered heavy casualties on July 1 at Gettysburg. Stone’s brigade suffered nearly 65% in killed, wounded, or missing. “His whole command was virtually annihilated,” remembered one veteran.11

The Battle of Gettysburg continued for two more days, with the victory finally awarded to the Union. Roy Stone and John Burns survived the fight. Burns had crawled to a nearby house on the morning of July 2. Stone was taken from the field, where his wound was dressed. Still unable to walk due to the severity of his wound, Stone was out for the rest of the year.12

Stone’s Pennsylvania Brigade had signed up for three years with the Union army. When Colonel Stone learned that there was another battle brewing in Virginia, in the spring of 1864, he insisted upon joining his brigade, in spite of the surgeon’s warning. He fought at the Wilderness with his men, but fell from his horse in the fight. The fall opened his Gettysburg wound. Like General Hancock, who also suffered a terrible wound at Gettysburg that reopened in 1864, Roy Stone could no longer fight in the war. He retired, spending the remainder of the war years in Pennsylvania.13

After the war, Stone returned to engineering. He was a driving force behind the building of macadam roads throughout the Eastern portion of the nation. He and his wife became the parents of two children, a daughter, Romaine, in 1867 and a son, Richmond, in 1872. Richmond died at the age of 24, and Romaine married an English baron.14

Roy Stone retired with the rank of brigadier general, and was engaged in the Spanish American war as an engineer. Having spent significant time in Puerto Rico in that later war, Stone worked to make conditions better for that island nation with clean water and better roads. After the war, he resided with his wife in New Jersey, not far from New York City. In his later years, he used his engineering skills to remove barriers from New York Harbor and blew up Hell’s Gate – a narrow strait in the East River between Queens and Manhattan.15

In the early days of August in 1905, Roy Stone became ill. The sixty-eight-year-old veteran succumbed a week later, to what was described as “a complication of diseases” at home, with his wife and daughter by his side. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.16

He was remembered for “gallant services” during the Civil War, and personal bravery at Gettysburg. Wounded during the battle’s first day, he was one of the fallen there, and never fully recovered – the plight of many during those summer days of 1863.17

The McPherson Barn, Gettysburg

(Author photo)

Sources: 149th Pennsylvania File, Gettysburg National Military Park (hereafter GNMP). 150th Pennsylvania File, GNMP. Ancestry.com: Roy Stone Family Tree. Bachelder, John: The Bachelder Papers, Gettysburg: In Their Own Words. Vol. II. Dayton, OH: Morningside Press, 1994. David L. and Audrey J. Ladd, editors. John Burns Personal File, Adams County Historical Society (hereafter ACHS). Dougherty, James, J. Stone’s Brigade and the Fight for the McPherson Farm. Conshohocken, PA: Combined Publishing, 2001. The Jersey City News, Aug. 8, 1905. Kiefer, Harry M. “Recollections of a Drummer Boy”, 150th Pennsylvania File GNMP. Letter, M. Wright to Mary E. Wright, July 6, 1863, 149th Pennsylvania File, GNMP. The Morris County Chronicle, Aug. 8, 1905. The Perth-Amboy Evening News, Aug. 11, 1905. Pfanz, Harry W. Gettysburg: The First Day. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001. The Washington Tribune, October 20, 1898. All historical newspapers accessed through newspapers.com. Roy Stone’s Arlington grave is #953, East Division, West Side.

End Notes: 

1. Stone Family History, ancestry.com. Dougherty, p. 11. 

2. Pfanz, p 194. The Morris County Chronicle, Aug. 8, 1905. Dougherty, p. 11. 

3. The Jersey City News, Aug. 8, 1905. 

4. The Washington Tribune, Oct. 20, 1898. The quote is from Captain James Fulton, 143rd PA. 

5. Pfanz, pp. 194-195. 

6. Dougherty, p. 43. Letter, M. Wright to Mary E. Wright, July 6, 1863, 149th PA File, GNMP. 

7. Kieffer, 150th PA File, GNMP. 

8. Ibid. 

9. Bachelder, p. 833. Dougherty, p. 161. It is not clear when Colonel Stone was taken from the field. 

10. John Burns File, ACHS. 

11. The Morris County Chronicle, Aug. 8, 1905. 

12. John Burns File, ACHS. 

13. Dougherty, p. 162. 

14. Stone Family History, ancestry.com.

15. The Jersey City News, Aug. 8, 1905. 

16. The Jersey City News, Aug. 8, 1905. The Perth-Amboy Evening News, Aug. 11, 1905.



17. The Jersey City News, Aug. 8, 1905.

Author’s Note: The Pennsylvania Brigade (143, 149, 150 Pennsylvania Infantries) continued to fight with the Army of the Potomac through 1864. They were deployed to the defenses of Baltimore early in 1865. They were there instead of Appomattox at the close of the war.