Aftermath of Battle
Hospitals and Graves
After the cavalry engagement here on June 29, 1863, Westminster’s citizens cared for dozens of wounded of both sides. Besides the human toll, shattered and broken cannons, gun carriages, and caissons lined both sides of Court Street to Main Street after the Battle of Gettysburg, awaiting repair in Northern foundries and arsenals.
The Union Meeting House atop a mound in Westminster Cemetery became a makeshift hospital. There, military and civilian physicians, assisted by townspeople, treated the wounded. The building was razed in 1891; an iron urn marks the site.
The dead from the cavalry engagement were interred in the cemetery on July 1, but families and friends of the 1st Delaware cavalrymen later removed their remains to Delaware. The two dead Confederate officers, Lt. Pierre Gibson, Co. D, 4th Virginia Cavalry, and Lt. John W. Murray, Co. E, were reburied in the churchyard of the Ascension Episcopal Church. Gibson’s remains were removed to Culpeper, Virginia, in 1867.
Col. Paul J. Revere, 20th Massachusetts Infantry, grandson of his famous Revolutionary War namesake, fell wounded at Gettysburg on July 2. Brought to the City Hotel at Main and Court Streets to await family members, Revere died on July 4 before they arrived.
Marker can be reached from North Court Street.
Courtesy hmdb.org
