Greencastle was covered in part during the Burning of Chambersburg series of posts (link) but there are a few other sites relevant to the war there. Greencastle is about nine miles south of Chambersburg. It is the site where the first Union soldier was killed in action in Pennsylvania as Ewell’s Corps of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia marched north into the state during the Gettysburg Campaign. A map of that march is shown below.

The Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania began on June 22nd when Richard Ewell’s 2nd Corps broke camp in Maryland and crossed the Mason Dixon line. Brigadier General Albert Jenkins cavalry brigade was in the lead.

There is a marker in the town square dedicated to Captain Ulric Dahlgren. The important papers recovered, referred to in the marker, were a message from Confederate President Jefferson Davis indicating that he had no reinforcements to send Lee from Richmond. Only 4 days later he was wounded in the right foot and lower leg in a cavalry skirmish in Hagerstown, Maryland. He returned to his father’s home in Washington D.C. to recuperate. However, the wound became infected, and his right leg was amputated. He returned to service with an artificial leg and later in the war would become a very controversial figure. He was killed in 1864 while leading part of a cavalry raid (Dahlgren’s Raid) which was to free Union prisoners of war in Richmond. Documents were found on his body that in addition to freeing the prisoners he was to burn the city of Richmond and assassinate Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. Richmond newspapers published the documents with the assertion that the orders came directly from President Lincoln while Northern newspapers claimed that the papers were a forgery. The controversy persists to this day. We will cover Dahlgren’s Raid in a future series of posts.

The First Soldier to Fall marker below is very weathered and hard to read. The text on the marker states- “When General Robert E. Lee’s invading army overran the Union garrison at Winchester, Virginia, on June 15, 1863, elements of the 1st New York “Lincoln” Cavalry covered the retreat. Company C, under Captain William Boyd, continued to harass the Confederates as they crossed into Pennsylvania. On June 22, Boyd’s 35 men narrowly avoided an ambush at the William Fleming farmhouse. When Corporal William Rihl, a 21-year-old Philadelphia native, and Sergeant Milton Cafferty rode out in front of the house to reconnoiter, the Confederates fired a volley at point-blank range. Cafferty suffered a serious leg wound; Rihl was struck in the head and died instantly, the first Union soldier killed on Pennsylvania soil. The events at Gettysburg soon overshadowed the skirmish at Fleming farm, but the people of Greencastle remembered, as did the veterans of the 1st New York Cavalry. On June 22, 1886, Greencastle’s G.A.R. Post 438 reburied Rihl with full military honors at the spot where he fell. Exactly one year later, Pennsylvania’s state legislator erected a monument over Rihl’s new grave, honoring him as “a humble but brave defender of the Union.””

Monument to Corporal William H. Rihl.

In the book- The First New York (Lincoln) Cavalry From April 19, 1961 to July 7, 1865 by William H. Beach- Rihl is described as “being born in Philadelphia in 1843. He was 5 feet 6 1-4 inches tall, with light complexion, blue eyes, and dark hair; by occupation a gardener. Mustered in as private in Company C, July 19, 1861. He was buried near where he fell. A few days afterward the citizens removed the remains to the Lutheran churchyard. After twenty-one years his body was again exhumed and buried with imposing ceremonies on the exact spot where he was killed.”

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