The 114th Pennsylvania (Collis'Zouaves) defended the Emmitsburg Road near the Sherfy farm when Barksdale's Mississippians attacked on July 2. The regimental colors were posted just to the south of the house. Sgt. H.H. Snyder, of the color guard, was standing next to Corporal Robert Kenderdine, a Quaker who had enlisted to defend the Union despite his parents opposition. Snyder saw a Mississippian taking aim from the corner of the barn. The southerner fired and the twenty-three year-old Kenderdine fell seriously wounded. Snyder returned fire but missed; the Mississippian fell moments later, “apparently dead.” Kenderdine “was left lying in the road close to where the monument now is,” Captain A. W. Givin recalled. He “called to one of his comrades, but he had gone. Sergeant Snyder answered for him, and bidding him good-bye, retreated with the rest.” The young corporal lay in agony until the morning of July 4, when his comrades returned to the Peach Orchard. Givin saw Kenderdine as he has being carried away on a stretcher and wrote: "He looked badly and was suffering much from his wound. His clothing was torn, and he seemed to have no care taken of him since the battle, near two days before. I asked him if he was wounded badly. He said, “Oh yes; I am very badly wounded.” That was all he said; for they were carrying him off, and I was busy with my awful duties [burying the dead]; but the look he gave me I will never forget, it was so sad." Kenderdine lingered in a field hospital near Little Round Top where, on the morning of July 10th, his father arrived. Passing into and out of delirium, Kenderdine revived sufficiently enough to recognize his father before dying. Kenderdine’s body was transported to his home, where he was buried at the Quaker meetinghouse in Solebury. Givin would eulogize Kenderdine: "Robert was a man who was much liked and respected; very kind and always willing to do a good act; to sacrifice himself for the good of others. I have always looked upon him as an ideal American soldier, brave, intelligent, and a gentleman in word and deed; ready to fight for his country without hope or reward, save the consciousness of having done his duty." Quotes from Givin's speech dedicating the regiment's monument in Pennsylvania at Gettysburg and also from Thaddeus S. Kenderdine, A California Tramp. Thaddeus Kenderdine travelled from Philadelphia to California and back to New York in 1858-59. The book is an account of his adventures, and also includes an account of his brother Robert and the Battle of Gettysburg.
Don't remember where or when I first heard about Robert Kenderdine, but the story stuck with me and I did some internet research of my own to find out more about him.
There are so many examples from the battle that it is hard to pick just one.