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A Second Fight

Warren County’s Co. F, 151st Pennsylvania, faces Confederate onslaught after initial retreat

Library of Congress photo/Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton Above, in an 1863 photo taken after the battle, is the approximate location where the 151st fell back to after its fight on McPherson Ridge. The building was - and still is - the home of the Lutheran Theological Seminary.

The 151st Pennsylvania had been thrown into a gap in the Union line on July 1.

Badly mauled in less than an hour of fighting, regimental commander George McFarland realized his position was untenable.

“Then, finding that I was entirely unsupported, exposed to a rapidly increasing fire in front, and in danger of being surrounded, I ordered the regiment to fall back, which it did in good order, to the temporary breastwork from which it had advanced, the enemy following closely, but cautiously. Here I halted…

The Confederates, however, did not halt.

As the 151st arrived back at the starting point of their initial advance, a renewed attack commenced.

South Carolinians under the brigade command of Abner Perrin poured into the swale the 151st had just traversed.

Dreese writes that the men of the 151st initially inflicted a vicious fire on the advancing Palmettos, shooting down on the men of Perrin’s brigade.

McFarland details the fight back on Seminary Ridge.

“We now quickly checked the advance of the enemy,” he concluded. “In fact, having the advantage of breastworks and woods, our fire was so destructive that the enemy’s lines in front were broken, and his first attempt to flank us greeted with such an accurate oblique fire that it failed. But in a second attempt, made soon after, he gained our left flank, moving in single file and at double-quick.

“There was a gun blaze every minute by the side of my face,” Cooper wrote.

More from McFarland: “Up to this time the officers and men under my command had fought with the determined courage of veterans, and an effect which the enemy himself respected and afterward acknowledged (to me in conversation while a prisoner in their hands). Not a man had left the ranks, even to carry a wounded comrade to the rear. But the regiment had lost terribly, and now did not number one-fourth of what it did two hours earlier in the day.

“The enemy, on the contrary, had increased and was now rapidly forming on my left. All support had left both flanks and were already well to the rear. Hence I ordered the shattered remnants of as brave a regiment as ever entered the field to fall back, and accompanied it a few paces”

McFarland was then wounded “hit by a flank fire in both legs at the same instant, which caused the amputation of my right leg, and so shattered my left that it is now, at the end of eight and a half months, still unhealed and unserviceable.”

A man from Company F – Lyman Wilson, buried at the Thompson Hill Cemetery between Sugar Grove and Lottsville after his death well after the war in 1918 at the age of 86 – takes a prominent place in this story here.

Wilson was 30 at the time of the battle and appears to have been married to a woman named Catherine, with whom he had one daughter.

According to Samuel Bates’ History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, Wilson was captured on July 1.

But before he was captured, he probably saved McFarland’s life, making himself a casualty in the process.

McFarland wrote that Wilson was “the only man near me” and picked up his wounded regimental commander and carried him into the seminary building “a ball carrying away the middle button of my coat-sleeve while my arm was around his neck.”

“The regiment, passing on, had gained the north end of the seminary, and was fortunately covered from the flank fire (volley) which wounded me,” McFarland wrote.

McFarland and Wilson were both captured as the Confederates overran the Seminary position, pushing the men back into the town of Gettysburg itself.

The retreat was on.

Retreating from the fields of the first day’s fight, troops from both the First Corps, of which the 151st was a part and the 11th Corps, streamed back through the town of Gettysburg toward the hills south of town – Culps Hill and Cemetery Hill.

The 151st wound up on Cemetery Hill overnight from July 1 to July 2.

The defensible high ground was a hot commodity on Civil War battlefields and Union strategists quickly recognized the value of the defensive position they could fall back to.

But that doesn’t mean the retreat was orderly.

Nathan Cooper knew many were captured in the process.

“I should of been taken,” he wrote.

Leander W. Wilcox, a corporal in Co. F., was one of the soldiers swooped up in the retreat through the town.

Wilcox was born in 1833 in Sherman, New York, making him 30 at the time of the battle.

Dreese tells the story of Wilcox’s unlikely escape from capture. He writes that Wilcox had been “slightly wounded” during the fight and “became winded during the withdrawal as enemy soldiers closed in on him.

“He sought refuge in the open door on the back porch at present-day 155 South Washington street. The red brick house was occupied by Mary White Foster and her elderly parents during the battle. The Fosters observed much of the day’s action from the western balcony of their home, despite repeated requests from Union officers, including General Reynolds, to retire to the cellar.

“This advise proved sound as an artillery shell demolished the roof and ceiling above the balcony only moments after the family descended to the front of the house. The Fosters also witnessed the pell-mell retreat of Union artillery, cavalry and infantry down Washington Street past their home. After enemy bullets grazed their clothing, the family finally moved off to the security offered by the basement.”

That’s where Wilcox comes into their view.

“On the way down, Catherine spied Wilcox crouched in the doorway. The corporal discreetly invited himself to the underground hideaway. Catherine peered out the cellar window and saw vicious enemy officers whom she described as ‘hatless, with long hair standing on edge.’ She also remembered ‘furious yelling and firing, curdling one’s blood as the situation flushed upon us.’

“In the brief interval, Wilcox hastily concealed his gun in a stovepipe, buried his knapsack under the ashes of a fireplace and hid himself under a potato bin. As Catherine followed Leander’s instructions to cover him with some nearby kindling, the outer door suddenly burst open. A rebel captain and two privates soon appeared from above and commenced to explore the cellar for hidden Yankee soldiers. When these men came dangerously close to her new friend, not yet fully concealed, Catherine reacted quickly and sprang between the parties. She distracted the searchers by displaying nervous anxiety for the welfare of her aged parents. The captain bought the act and compassionately ordered his men upstairs. Catherine immediately finished the task she had started earlier and although Confederate soldiers searched the premises repeatedly over the next couple of days, Wilcox escaped detection.”

After the regiment was mustered out, Wilcox returned to Crawford County where he was admitted to the bar in 1864. He moved to Titusville, married Anna Hecker, whose parents were pioneers residents of Saegertown per Findagrave, had two daughters, practiced law and lived in a home originally constructed by the famed Col. Edwin Drake, credited with discovering oil outside of Titusville.

Wilcox, citing ill health, moved to Cambridge Springs in August 1893 believing it would improve his health. However, he died several weeks later and is buried at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Titusville.

Many of those were captured but ultimately paroled after the battle, including Samuel Tuttle, John Stanton and Lyman Wilson of Co. F.

Wilson, who scooped up his wounded regimental commander, McFarland, and took him into the relative safety of the Lutheran Seminary building, outlived Stanton. Born in 1832, he and his wife, Catherine, had one child. He lived until the ripe old age of 86 and died on December 21, 1918. He is interred at the Thompson Hill Cemetery.

All three men were mustered out with their company on July 27, indicating that they must have been paroled from their captivity after the battle.

But, in some sense, those were the lucky ones.

“I am untouched, a fact I can hardly believe myself,” Blodget wrote home after the fight.

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