Top 10 People Gettysburg

When armies commanded by George Meade and Robert E. Lee clashed on those first three days in July, some Gettysburg townspeople took refuge in their cellars. All around them thundered a battle so great that the North American continent has yet to see an equal.

This beautiful monument of Major General George Gordon Meade on his horse, "Old Baldy", stands proudly on Cemetery Ridge overlooking the fields he worked so hard to defend. On June 28th, just three days prior to Day 1 of the Battle of Gettysburg, General Meade was notified that he would now command the Army of the Potomac.

By blindly relying on poor intelligence and saying far too little to his generals, Lee may have sealed the Rebels' fate. The afternoon of July 3, 1863, near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, promised to be hot. A town resident with a scientific bent would record a high temperature of 87 degrees for this day.

George Pickett is glorified in books and movies, even in futility; George Pickett's place in Civil War history is forever entrenched. "Pickett's charge" the saying that is one of the most recalled statements of the war, was in homage to General Pickett and his courage at Gettysburg.

Mary Virginia "Jennie" Wade was a 20-year-old resident of Gettysburg engaged to be married to Corp. Johnston H. Skelly of the 87th Pennsylvania. She worked as a seamstress with her mother in their home on Breckenridge Street. To make ends meet, they also took care of a 6-year-old boarder named Isaac.

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EARLY LIFEOften unnoticed by Gettysburg students is that there is some debate as to when Sickles was actually born. The consensus among biographers is that he was born in New York City on 20 October 1819. But numerous contemporary sources actually have his birth year ranging from 1819 to 1825.

Of all the tactical errors made in the Civil War, this one was a doozy. George Washington Shriver was 23 when he paid $290 for a lot on south Baltimore Hill in Gettysburg in the spring of 1860. He planned to build a new home for his family there.

The Battle of Gettysburg. What came to be known as Longstreet's Countermarch would serve as one of the many controversies swirling about the Battle of Gettysburg. Those who sought to lay blame for their defeat at Gettysburg at General Longstreet's boots pointed to what they saw as his slowness during this march.