Union Bridge - Reynolds’ Last Journey
Gettysburg Campaign
Union Gen. John E. Reynolds was killed at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863 while directing his command along the Chambersburg Turnpike in the early fighting. His body was carried to a house in town. Orderlies searched for a coffin but found only a too short marble-cutters box. One end was knocked out and the body laid in, and an ambulance carried it to Union Bridge, where the Western Maryland Railroad shops were established in 1862. At undertaker John Forney’s shop at 15 West Broadway, John Hollenberger, a pattern maker for the railroad built a coffin. The remains were packed in ice and placed aboard a train bound through Westminster to Baltimore, then routed to Philadelphia and finally Lancaster, Reynolds' home town.
At Westminster, the main supply depot for the Union army at Gettysburg, the car carrying Reynolds’ body stalled in the heavy military traffic. Gen. Herman Haupt, a fellow Pennsylvanian and chief of U. S. military railroads, arranged for the car to pass through to Baltimore unimpeded. Reynolds was interred in Lancaster Cemetery on July 4.
After the battle, thousands of wounded soldiers followed Reynolds’ route through Union Bridge to Baltimore on the Western Maryland Railroad. Railroad timetables to this day still identify the tracks just southeast of the station as the “Hospital Tracks” of July 1863.
Marker is on Main Street, on the left when traveling north.
Courtesy hmdb.org
