Gettysburg Off the Beaten Path: Ohio Flank Markers

Part of a series.

Gettysburg aficionados often debate the key terrain of the battlefield. Is it Little Round Top, Culp’s Hill, Cemetery Ridge? Cemetery Hill receives less attention from battlefield visitors and “Gettys-buffs”, but it was more important than any hillock or ridge during the battle. Known as Raffensberger’s Hill by locals, it served as the lynchpin of the Union fishhook line. Whoever controlled it also controlled the three roads that intersect below it: the Emmitsburg Road, the Taneytown Road, and the Baltimore Pike.

Perhaps that’s why some of the bloodiest fighting of the battle occurred on its slopes on the night of July 2. Thousands of Confederate soldiers stormed East Cemetery Hill at dusk, breaking the Union line and engaging in fierce hand-to-hand combat. However, as the eastern slope came under fire, an equally bloody fight took place on North Cemetery Hill.[1] Two regiments, the 25th and 107th Ohio, held this line against the Confederate onslaught. Two small monuments to these regiments mark their service here, but due to the town’s encroachment on the north end of the hill, these markers are seldom visited.

The 25th and 107th Ohio marched into Gettysburg on July 1 with the rest of Brig. Gen. Adelbert Ames’s brigade of the Union XI Corps. They deployed on Barlow’s Knoll in the midafternoon and made a brave stand until forced to retire. After retreating through the town, they rallied with the rest of the XI Corps on Cemetery Hill that evening.

Throughout the following day, both regiments participated in heavy skirmishing on the southern outskirts of Gettysburg. The 25th Ohio had cycled through four commanding officers the day before and numbered only about 60 men fit for duty. It lost an additional 14 men on the skirmish line that day. The 107th fared no better. Its commanding officer, Col. Seraphim Meyer, was wounded during the retreat, so Capt. John Lutz of Company E assumed command. Throughout much of the day on July 2, the Ohioans picked off Rebel sharpshooters posted in the buildings and sheltered themselves behind a rail fence from the Confederates who returned fire.[2]

The skirmishing escalated throughout the day until dusk, when 3,500 Confederates of Gen. Harry T. Hays and Col. Issac Avery’s brigades stepped off in their assault. As Avery’s men wheeled to meet Col. Leopold von Gilsa’s brigade on East Cemetery Hill, Hays’s Louisiana Tigers directly engaged the Ohioans of Ames’s brigade. The skirmishers of the 25th Ohio withdrew to the main line, with the 107th Ohio on its left and the 17th Connecticut on its right. However, at the last moment Gen. Ames gave the order to shift the Connecticut men further to the right, on the other side of the 75th Ohio. “Just before the attack was made, the Seventeenth was thrown to the extreme right of the line, and the space at the wall where they had been was left unoccupied, excepting by a few of the Twenty-fifth Ohio Volunteers,” Col. Andrew L. Harris of the 75th Ohio wrote in his report.[3] The Ohioans nonetheless held their ground, but their position was precarious.

“At about 7 p.m. the enemy appeared in force,” wrote Col. Lutz of the 107th. “We fought them, retiring at the same time behind a stone wall and in front of a battery, at which the enemy made a desperate charge upon us [. . . .]”[4] That battery belonged to Capt. Michael Wiedrich, a German immigrant and capable artillery officer, who ordered his New Yorkers to steadily fire case shot over the attackers. “The moment they came within range of our rifleman and artillery,” one of Wiedrich’s men said of the Louisiana Tigers, “they tasted of that death which they so often had made others to feel.”[5]

The 25th and 107th Ohio formed a salient with their fellow Buckeyes of the 75th. This position was vulnerable, since it could be assaulted from two sides. The sheer pressure of the Confederate attack eventually forced the Ohioans to abandon their tenuous position, but not their grasp on Cemetery Hill. “The enemy attacked the regiment in front and on the flank and rear at nearly the same time, having come through the space which had been vacated by the removal of the Seventeenth Connecticut Volunteers,” Col. Harris wrote.[6]

As they retreated behind the safety of Wiedrich’s guns, the 25th and 107th Ohio fought alongside the New Yorkers in a fierce, hand-to-hand struggle with the Louisianans. “The smoke of the battle was so thick that with the increasing darkness it became difficult to distinguish friend from foe,” remembered the 25th Ohio’s regimental historian.[7] Handspikes, rammers, fence posts, and musket butts became weapons as the XI Corps clung desperately to the battlefield’s key terrain. During the brawl, 1st Lt. Peter Young of the 107th Ohio sprang forward and wrested the flag of the 8th Louisiana from its color bearer. He limped back to the safety of his men, having been wounded in the left arm and lung—but survived to tell the tale. Eventually the Ohioans succeeded in pushing the Louisiana Tigers back with the help of fresh reinforcements from Col. Samuel Carroll’s II Corps brigade. Cemetery Hill remained under Union control.

A sprinkling of monuments on East Cemetery Hill commemorates the ghastly fighting that took place there. But two small markers stand separately from this cluster, near the Cemetery Hill water tower. They mark the positions of the 107th and 25th Ohio during the evening of July 2.

The 25th and 75th Ohio consolidated later in the war, so veterans of both regiments erected a single monument on Cemetery Hill in 1887, along with a monument on Barlow’s Knoll that commemorated the unit’s actions on the first day of the battle. The 107th Ohio also dedicated a monument on Barlow’s Knoll that year, but some veterans returned to Cemetery Hill to place flank markers where they had so tenaciously fought in defense of Gettysburg’s key terrain. This part of the battlefield is largely residential now, but the American Battlefield Trust made a key purchase that preserves part of the Ohioans’ position on July 2.

To Reach the Ohio Flank Markers

From the town square.

– Drive south on Baltimore Street.
– Make a slight right onto Steinwehr Avenue (US-15).
– Follow Steinwehr Avenue (US-15) until you reach Cyclorama Drive.
– Turn left onto Cyclorama Drive, and park in the Soldiers’ National Cemetery parking lot.
– Exit your vehicle and cross the Taneytown Road into the National Cemetery.- Walk past the rostrum and follow the path as it curves to the left, past the Soldiers’ National Monument.
– Follow the path as it curves left again past the Gen. John Reynolds statue.
– When you reach Baltimore Street, turn left and follow the sidewalk until you reach the Gettysburg Tour Center.
– Cross Baltimore Street and walk down the sidewalk to the Jennie Wade house.
– Make a 90 degree turn to the right and walk across the parking lot to the blue water towers.
– You will find the Ohio flank markers along the north side of the water tower fence.

[1] Edwin B. Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command, (New York: Scribner’s, 1968), 435.

[2] Edward C. Culp, The 25th Vet. Vol. Infantry in the War for the Union, (Topeka, Kansas: Geo. W. Crane & Co., Printers and Binders, 1885), 78.

[3] The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1896), Series 1, vol 27, Part 1.

[4] The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1896), Series 1, vol 27, Part 1.

[5] Cyrus Kingsbury Remington, A Record of Battery I, First N.Y. Light Artillery Vols, Otherwise Known As Wiedrich’s Battery, During the War of the Rebellion, 1869-’65, (Buffalo, NY: Press of the Courier Company, 1891), 103.

[6] The War of the Rebellion, Series 1, vol 27, Part 1.

[7] Culp, The 25th Vet. Vol. Infantry in the War for the Union, 79.