July 17, 2013

 The top photo is one of my favorites of Culp’s Hill. The monument is Knap’s Battery E, Pennsylvania Independent Artillery, and dates from the late 1880s. There’s just something about the shot that I really like . . . the boulders arranged in a haphazard fashion, the greenery, the sprinkling of purple foliage in the trees, the stone monument and its accompanying 10-pounder Parrott Rifle.


I never knew many particulars about the battle at Culp’s Hill, but lately it’s been coming up more often, and something I read recently really sparked my interest. The article concerned the Confederate dead at Gettysburg and how it’s common knowledge that there are still soldiers, mostly Southern, buried throughout the battlefield. I knew there were some of these men resting far from home on Culp’s Hill. What I didn’t know, however, was a number. According to “The Reporter”, a Lansdale, PA newspaper which quoted from The Hanover Evening Sun and Marc Charisse, “the National Park Service acknowledges there are at least 100, maybe more than 200 Confederate soldiers still interred in the thick woods that cover the Culp’s Hill area.”

The article goes on to say that “the NPS leaves the bodies buried because current archaeological practice in all national parks is to disturb as little as possible, so that future generations will have intact sites available for study.” This makes Culp’s Hill very eerie, at least in my opinion. At any place on the battlefield you might be standing over soldiers’ remains, but at Culp’s Hill you know they’re there.

**HONORED TODAY**

1^ST LT. JOSHUA SIMSTER GARSED

Co. B, 23^RD Pennsylvania Infantry

Born November 11, 1839 --- Died July 03, 1863 at age 23

Lt. Garsed was both a public servant and a man of God, working with Law and Collection and serving as an Episcopal vestryman. His brushes with danger began after he entered the army. In late 1862 he was captured by the enemy but was paroled two months later. At Gettysburg there was no such escape. He was killed by an artillery shell, a horrific death that was witnessed by his brother. Lt. Garsed was later buried at Leverington Cemetery in Roxborough. Listed as single, he left behind three brothers and two sisters. A picture of him can be found here.


(c) 2013 Skies of Blue and Gray