First Union Soldier Killed in Pennsylvania

On June twenty-second, eighteen sixty-three, Corporal William H. Rihl of Philadelphia became the first Union soldier killed in action on Pennsylvania soil. He died here when the First New York Cavalry clashed with a Southern advance force of cavalry under General Albert Gallatin Jenkins, part of the Confederate Army then driving north into Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg Campaign.

The fighting at this crossroads was a skirmish, not a major engagement, but it marked the moment Lee's invasion reached home territory for the North. Within two weeks, the armies would collide at Gettysburg, about twenty-five miles to the east, in the battle that would turn the tide of the Civil War.