Attention Gettysburg Experts

[MRB1863]

Have been curious about this...
...in front of the Reynolds fatal wounding marker at Herbst Woods is a geometric arrangement of small rocks secluded in the grass. They are obviously not a natural pattern. Here are a few photos:

...is this rectangular shape an outline of an older marker or monument??? Is it perhaps the actual site where John F. Reynolds had been struck?

Neither seem to match the location of this supposed marker...

 

[pmuskett]

This is where the old road used to run. This would take you right in front of the monument. This is the 1898 Gettysburg Commission map. 

 

[MRB1863]

I would be surprised if that formation is wide enough for a roadbed. But that is very interesting.

 

[pmuskett]

I would be surprised if that formation is wide enough for a roadbed. But that is very interesting.

Didn't need much room I don't think for a carriage.

 

[pmuskett]

Just to the left of the road in the shadows, you can make out the Reynold's monument and the mound it is on. It is hard to see.

Phil

 

[Scott F]

Reynolds' orderly Charles Veil marked the spot in 1864. He cut an "R" into a large white oak tree and an adjacent sapling. The smaller tree became known as the Reynolds tree because a sign was placed on it. It fell in the 1980s and a Minnie ball was found in its trunk. The larger tree fell sometime before the monument was placed. Rosengarten from Reynolds' staff wrote this in 1878,
"His horse bore him to a little clump of trees, where a cairn (pile) of stones, and a rude mark upon the bark, now almost overgrown, still tells the fatal spot." As you can see from the Mumper photograph of the large oak, there are stones at the bottom of it. Right about where your mystery stones are located.

 

[MRB1863]

Thanks all for your input. If you have time on a trip to Gettysburg, walk in front of the mound and see the parallel stone lines...they are easy to spot.

 

[MRB1863]

So, when was the wooden sign taken or rotted down??? I had been thinking the wooden sign to be further away from the mound...but...

 

[Scott F]

So, when was the wooden sign taken or rotted down??? I had been thinking the wooden sign to be further away from the mound...but...

The sign lasted until about the early 1900s. Not sure exactly when it was taken down, and by whom, but it last appeared in a photograph, that I know of anyway, in 1903.

 

[Poorlaggedman]

Before there was a monument in that spot there may have been a cairn of stones there as well, I'm pretty sure I read of at least one veteran referring to one. Some of those stones could linger in the area in addition to any stones used in the road work.

 

[Scott F]

Before there was a monument in that spot there may have been a cairn of stones there as well, I'm pretty sure I read of at least one veteran referring to one. Some of those stones could linger in the area in addition to any stones used in the road work.

Yes, Rosengarten from Reynolds' staff wrote that in 1878. I quoted it above.

 

[Gettysburg Guide #154]

It is great to see these photos of Herbst Woods without all the undergrowth. We guides often try to explain to visitors that livestock grazing in the woods in the 19th Century eat away all that undergrowth.

 

[Peter r]

Thanks all for your input. If you have time on a trip to Gettysburg, walk in front of the mound and see the parallel stone lines...they are easy to spot.

 

[Peter r]

Looks like a base of a former unit monument ,or earlier marker for Reynolds like you suggest ( being no definite known spot ) .