Gettysburg and the 33rd Virginia

Yesterday we took a drive up to the Gettysburg National Military Park just over the Pennsylvania border. My cousin Rob is one of the premiere Civil War experts in the country, so we had our own private tour guide through the battlefields.

I was surprised to learn that members of my maternal grandmother's family had fought in Gettysburg at the battle of Culp's Hill. Simeon, Christian, and Philip Lucas all left their family homestead in the Shenandoah Valley to join the rebel cause and become part of the famed 33rd Virginia Infantry Regiment. Rob pointed out where, on those steamy days of early July 1863, the 33rd VA crept up the hill through dense woods strewn with large boulders while dodging Union rifle shots raining down upon them. Christian was the only one of the three that survived long enough to fight at Gettysburg. He survived the battle, but went A.W.O.L. on September 1, 1863, and was later court-martialed and sentenced to death. The lawyer defending him got the sentence reduced to life, but he was paroled by the Union Army in May 1865 as a P.O.W.

(Philip was killed in the Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, two years before The Battle of Gettysburg, and Simeon was killed in the Battle of Chancellorville in May 1863, just two months prior to the Gettysburg engagement.) *Note: Thanks, Greg, for catching the error I had previously posted!