Conference smurf::civil_war

    RE .0:
    
    	(A suggestion, Dave:  a better title for your note would have been
    "Gettysburg", which would give other readers searching the file a clue
    to your main subject.)
    
    	My last visit to Gettysburg was (too long ago!) in about 1967, and
    I don't remember if I walked Little Round Top or not.  I _vividly_
    remember standing on Cemetary Ridge looking out over the ground
    Pickett's men covered, and wondering how on earth they did it.
    
    	I _think_ the site of the cavalry battle is preserved, but of
    course it is some distance from the rest of the field - unless you are
    thinking of Farnsworth's battle?
    
    MikeR
    

    
     There's a marker for the 20th Maine at the site where they
    battled on/for Big Round Top. It's not that far off of the park road.
    
    
    Re the Stuart and Custer Cavalry battle, I think that took place
    further away (perhaps outside the park itself ?)
    
    
    Bob

    
      Went to Gettysburg in April.  You have to keep an eye out for the
    20th Maine marker.  It is set off to the left flank of the Little
    Round Top summit and is off the road in the woods.  Loved every minute
    of the visit. See Devil's Den and the Wheatfield when you are in the
    vicinity of the round tops.
    
    -rick

    Hope this won't create another note,when I answered the other guys I
    inadvertently created new notes, how far in is the marker it's not 3mi
    is it? 
    						Dave of NJ
    

    
     If I recall, the 20th Maine marker wasn't more than 30 yds or so off
    the road ???
    
    
     Bob

    Dave,  First time replying to a Note, so hopefully it is readable.  
    In regards to your original question around a marker or such to
    determine the area of the Stuart/Custer fight, I don't believe there is
    one.  The action was quite a ways off (to the northeast, I believe).  I
    have been to Gettysburg often, including the tours, and have never seen
    anything to steer people to that portion of the conflict.
    Chuck

    ONe of the best things to do when you get to Gettysburg is to pay the
    $4 or $5 and go to the top of the observation tower just outside of the
    park.  The elevation (over 400ft I believe) gives a great panarama and
    shows the distance relationships between the various points of action.
    
    The marker for the 20th ME is indeed off the "back side" of Little
    Roundtop below the summit.  The top of LRT has a memorial/tower and a
    nice statue of Gen. Warren, the man who first recognized the value of
    that site to the Union and rushed reinforcements into the area, just
    beating a Georgia regiment (I think) to the punch.
    
    During my visit we brought along our bikes and toured the area much
    easier and more thoroughly.  
    
    Devil's Den is a nasty place and it is very easy to visualize muskets
    and rifles poking around corners and bayonets thrusting into cracks in
    the rocks.  The fighting must have been incredible intense.
    
    It is a very sobering place.
    
    Marv
    

    If somebody served in Co. E of the 20th Maine from 29 August 1862 to 4
    June 1865, how can I find out if he was at Gettysburg?
    
    He had been wounded in the hip at the Wilderness 5 May 1864, but his
    pension record does not indicate that he was an invalid from that
    point.
    

    Since Gettysburg was fought 1-3 July 1863, being wounded at the
    Wilderness a year later wouldn't bear on that.  He was almost surely at
    Gettysburg unless he was home on leave.
    
    The US Park Service is installing computer terminals at the major
    battlefields, and these terminals, when the system is finished and the
    databases completed, will allow you to find out who was where when. 
    That's not much help now, though, I know.

    	I lucked out a couple of years ago. Some distant kin of my
    	wife live in Carlisle, PA. Back in October of 1991, we had
    	a family reunion. Of course, a couple of us drove to Gettysburg
    	and scoped out the territory. Very pretty, too, with the leaves
    	changing, etc.
    
    	Scott

    
        Question on the Gettysburg Memorial;7 On television recently, 
        they discussed the burial of the bodies after the battle. They
        mentioned that there was a distinction made between soldiers
        from the North and South. The bodies were buried after the 
        battle, then dug up and re-interred some time later, and this
        was done on a state by state basis, but it was implied that
        this was only done for northern soldiers. Were southern soldiers
        buried at this site, or was there a separate burial site. This
        leads to the question; was the memorial originally intended as
        a monument to northern soldiers only?

    The battlefield after the fighting was done, was a mess. The dead were
    hastily and poorly buried where they lay, or in trenches, mostly
    separated into Union/Confederate. In the days immediately following the
    battle, friends and relatives roamed the fields, digging up graves,
    desparately trying to locate loved ones. They left a lot of new graves
    open. Hundreds of bodies were shipped home. Land was purchased for a
    cemetarty on Cemetary Hill, next to the Evergreen Cemetary, and in Oct,
    a contract was let to move the union dead to the new site. The contract
    paid $1.59 per body for removal, and another $1.59 for reburial in the
    new cemetary, in coffins supplied by the union army. When Lincoln gave
    his address there, the work was only about 1/3 done. More than a fourth
    of these are marked "unknown". About 3,564 were reburied in this way,
    and others lie in the evergreen cemetary, and others were shipped home. 
    
    The confederate dead were moved to somewhere in the South in 1870. 
    I believe that I once read where they are now, but I can't recall. 	
    
    This is from GETTYSBURG, c 1981 by Eastern Acorn Press, a collection of
    articles and Maps. Info from articles by Robert D Hoffsommer, and Dr.
    Harry J. PFanz. 
    
    Later, 
    
    Robert