Stereo card has a yellow mount with “Artistic Stereo Gems of Gettysburg Scenery” on one edge and “W.H. Tipton, Gettysburg, PA.” on the other .

Image is of the monument to the 19^th Maine Infantry which stands on Hancock Ave on Cemetery Ridge. The monument is a granite square capped by a pyramid, with a total height of 12′ 7″. The front has incised text on a polished surface set into the rough cut finish. Both sides have the trefoil symbol of the Second Corps and the date, “1863.” The State of Maine dedicated the monument on October 3rd, 1889.

Mount and paper are very clean. Contrast and clarity are excellent.

Reverse has a light pencil inscription at bottom that reads “19^th MAINE INF.”

Colonel Francis E. Heath commanded the 19th Maine at the Battle of Gettysburg. Colonel Heath was wounded on July 3. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Whitman then took over the regiment.

As Sickles’ Third Corps was overrun on the afternoon of July 2nd Hancock led the 19th Maine from their position on Cemetery Ridge and placed them in the field southeast of the Codori barn. Colonel Heath ordered the men to lay prone as knots of Third Corps refugees ran over them to the rear.

A Third Corps officer ordered Heath to have his men stand and stop the retreating men with the bayonet. Heath refused, not wanting his own line disordered. He waited until the Third Corps men had passed. When the Confederates – men of the Florida Brigade – loomed out of the smoke thirty yards away Heath ordered the men up. They traded several volleys, stopping the charge and capturing one set of colors.

Warned that they were being flanked on the right, Heath began to pull back. But after falling back some twenty yards out of the dense clouds of smoke he saw that the report was false and turned back. They hit the Floridians as they were beginning to retire and pushed them back to Emmitsburg Road, taking a number of prisoners.

As night fell the regiment returned to the knee-high stone wall on Cemetery Ridge just south of the Copse of Trees that would be the aiming point for Pickett’s Charge.

Pickett’s Charge itself was almost a relief after the artillery barrage that preceded it. After firing into the oncoming Virginians angling toward the Copse, the regiment rushed north and joined in the hand to hand fighting that overwhelmed the Confederate assault. Colonel Heath, who was wounded here, claimed the regiment captured two Confederate colors but lost them to men of other regiments who “tore them from the lances.” (history courtesy of the Stone Sentinels website.)    [ad] [ph:L]

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