Question: The house seen in this photo stands yet today. However, the car is no longer in the driveway. This image was taken in 1919. The home was the residence of a prominent village business owner and civic leader. It was within walking distance of his place of business. Can you locate this site? Do you know whose home it was?
Last week’s answer: Last week’s photo was taken July 3, 1888, on the field of the Battle of Gettysburg. Thirteen of the men in the photo (those whose name is followed by “B”) had been at that same spot on July 3, 1863, 25 years earlier. They were members of Battery B, 1st NY Light Artillery.
Battery B had helped defend the Union position against Pickett’s Charge. Four of those in the photo had been wounded in that battle: Robert F. Thorn, Dewitt M. Perine, Capt. Albert S. Sheldon and John M. Scoville. Walter Bogan had “fired the last gun.” The Battery B veterans, along with other CNY veterans, families and friends, had traveled to Gettysburg for the dedication of the monument commemorating their participation in the pivotal battle of the Civil War.
More than 30,000 people assembled at Gettysburg July 1 to 3, 1888, to honor the tragic losses of July 1 to 3, 1863, and to celebrate the union of the United States. Battery B’s memorial was one of 188 that were dedicated at Gettysburg that day.
Rev. William M. Beauchamp, rector of Baldwinsville’s Grace Church, was the speaker at the dedication. Designed by Frederick & Field of Quincy, Mass., the granite monument is inscribed “Battery B, 1st New York Light Artillery, Artillery Brigade, 2d Corps.”
Most of those in the photo had traveled to Gettysburg by train. The DL & W ran a special train from Syracuse to Gettysburg. Round trip fare was $8 and was good for 10 days. For an additional $5 an excursion to Washington, D.C. could be added to the trip. Those veterans leaving from Baldwinsville wore “beautiful buttonhole bouquets” presented to them while lined up at the village train station.
Battery B was mustered into the Union army under B’Villian Capt. Rufus D. Pettit on Aug. 31, 1861. Before being mustered out on June 18, 1865, Battery B had participated in 78 days of battle from the Siege of Yorktown to the Battle of the Appomattox Courthouse.
At the midpoint of its four-year tenure, the battery engaged in the Battle of Gettysburg. More than 170,000 troops struggled in that battle alone. Union soldiers outnumbered the Confederates, 97,000 to 75,000. Strategy, topography and determination would be the deciding factors.
On July 2, 1863, Battery B entered the battlefield with 114 men and four 10-pounder Parrott Rifles. That day it lost one man. Eight were wounded and 13 horses were killed or disabled.
The following day humidity was high and the thermometer hit 87 degrees. The battery was positioned on Cemetery Ridge, directly in the path of Pickett’s Charge. Three of their four cannons were disabled before the charge began. That day, 10 of their number were killed or mortally wounded and 16 others were wounded.
The three-day engagement at Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle of the war. Some 51,000 men were killed or wounded. Overall, more than 620,000 men died in the Civil War, more than any other war in American history.
Upon his return to Baldwinsville, Rev. Beauchamp wrote a lengthy account of the event for the July 12, 1888, issue of the Gazette and Farmers’ Journal.
In it Beauchamp noted: “Altogether it was a novel as well as a grand occasion. Dedications of monuments, laying of cornerstones, reunions, regiments and Grand Army posts marching to their quarters, Confederates and Union men, Southern generals and Northern generals, shows, excursions, picnics, war relics and weak lemonade, crippled men looking for the spot where they had lost an arm or a leg, guides explaining, veterans comparing notes, of these and other things men took their choice.”
A few of our readers correctly identified the photo. The first was Betsy Barbour, though Jim Williams also had it right, as did Cindy Porpilia, who sent in photos of her own of the memorial from her visit on the 150th anniversary of the battle.
Contact Editor Sarah Hall at [email protected] or leave a message at 434-8889 ext. 310 with your guess by 5 p.m. Friday (please leave the information in the message; we are not generally able to return calls regarding History Mystery responses). If you are the first person to correctly identify an element in the photo, your name and guess will appear in next week’s Messenger, along with another History Mystery feature. History Mystery is a joint project of the Museum at the Shacksboro Schoolhouse and the Baldwinsville Public Library.
