On July 1, 1863, early in the morning, three members of the Union’s 8th Illinois Cavalry were on guard duty on Chambersburg Pike, Pennsylvania. Lt. Marcellus Jones spotted what turned out to be the 13th Alabama Infantry, a Confederate regiment, on their way to Gettysburg.
The story goes that Jones borrowed a carbine off of Sgt. Levi S. Shafer, another member of the unit, and fired a single shot on a mounted Confederate officer. It was apparently the first shot fired in what would be the bloodiest battle of the American Civil War, and it missed its target completely.
Following the war, there was some controversy as to who actually fired the initial shots of the battle. In a bid to claim the honor for themselves, the now Captain Marcellus Jones, Sgt. Levi Shafer, and Lt. Riddler had a 600-pound obelisk quarried, which they then brought to Gettysburg and placed on a small plot purchased from the owner of what is now known as the Wiser House. The monument can be seen from the street and still stands beside that house.
The monument was erected in 1886, which means it predates another “first shot” claim cited by another regiment, the 9th New York Cavalry, by two years. The 9th has defended their first shot claim to the Gettysburg Battlefield Monument Association and erected their own memorial marker in 1888. As a result, two monuments now stand to what may be the starting shot of a monumental battle.
