- Joined
- Nov 26, 2015
- Location
- Greensburg, Pa
Not many Gettysburg Visitors take the time to see the Jones Artillery Line cannon and markers along Jones Avenue north of Gettysburg.
Lieutenant Colonel Hilary Jones was the chief of divisional artillery for Jubal Early's Second Corps Division. Jones dueled with six Napoleons of Battery G, 4th United States Artillery on Barlow's Knoll commanded by First Lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson. Poor Bayard Wilkeson was targeted by Jones Artillery and was hit with a shell in his leg. Wilkeson then applied a tourniquet to his leg and shortly after amputated what was left of his leg with his own knife. He soon died at the age of 19.
His father, Sam Wilkeson Jr., a reporter for the New York Times, was on the battlefield, would soon learn with great sorrow of the death of his young son. He would write for his paper, "The ground about me is covered thick with rebel dead, mingled with our own. Thousands of prisoners have been sent to the rear, and yet the conflict still continues.... It is near sunset.... The final results of the action I hope to be able to give you at a later hour.
Who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are immovably fastened upon a central figure of transcendingly absorbing interest -- the dead body of an oldest born, crushed by a shell in a position where a battery should never have been sent, and abandoned to death in a building where surgeons dared not to stay?...
My pen is heavy. Oh, you dead, who at Gettysburg have baptised with your blood the second birth of Freedom in America, how you are to be envied! I rise from a grave whose wet clay I have passionately kissed, and I look up and see Christ spanning this battle-field with his feet and reaching fraternal and lovingly up to heaven. His right hand opens the gates of Paradise -- with his left he beckons to these mutilated, bloody, swollen forms.
I hope this little story motivates people to go visit Jones Avenue. Turn left on 15N after Barlow's Knoll and look for the small Jones Avenue Lane on your right (By the animal hospital and school). Return by 15S and make a left just after the 90 degree right turn and visit the nearby 154 NY Infantry and the mural along Colster Avenue. Nearby at the fire department parking lot is the Amos Humiston marker memorializing his death spot holding a picture of his children.
I enjoyed the visit and note the Birth of Freedom in Sam's writings.
My Photo of an artillery piece in Jones Avenue this last March.
Lieutenant Colonel Hilary Jones was the chief of divisional artillery for Jubal Early's Second Corps Division. Jones dueled with six Napoleons of Battery G, 4th United States Artillery on Barlow's Knoll commanded by First Lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson. Poor Bayard Wilkeson was targeted by Jones Artillery and was hit with a shell in his leg. Wilkeson then applied a tourniquet to his leg and shortly after amputated what was left of his leg with his own knife. He soon died at the age of 19.
His father, Sam Wilkeson Jr., a reporter for the New York Times, was on the battlefield, would soon learn with great sorrow of the death of his young son. He would write for his paper, "The ground about me is covered thick with rebel dead, mingled with our own. Thousands of prisoners have been sent to the rear, and yet the conflict still continues.... It is near sunset.... The final results of the action I hope to be able to give you at a later hour.
Who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are immovably fastened upon a central figure of transcendingly absorbing interest -- the dead body of an oldest born, crushed by a shell in a position where a battery should never have been sent, and abandoned to death in a building where surgeons dared not to stay?...
My pen is heavy. Oh, you dead, who at Gettysburg have baptised with your blood the second birth of Freedom in America, how you are to be envied! I rise from a grave whose wet clay I have passionately kissed, and I look up and see Christ spanning this battle-field with his feet and reaching fraternal and lovingly up to heaven. His right hand opens the gates of Paradise -- with his left he beckons to these mutilated, bloody, swollen forms.
I hope this little story motivates people to go visit Jones Avenue. Turn left on 15N after Barlow's Knoll and look for the small Jones Avenue Lane on your right (By the animal hospital and school). Return by 15S and make a left just after the 90 degree right turn and visit the nearby 154 NY Infantry and the mural along Colster Avenue. Nearby at the fire department parking lot is the Amos Humiston marker memorializing his death spot holding a picture of his children.
I enjoyed the visit and note the Birth of Freedom in Sam's writings.
My Photo of an artillery piece in Jones Avenue this last March.
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