As I have explained in previous posts, the 1st
U.S. Sharpshooters lost five men killed or mortally wounded at Pitzer’s Woods.
For the longest time, I always thought they had lost six men killed. Only
recently, I discovered I was in error in my counting. One of those six, Lewis
Girichton, was never killed. This mistake was not entirely my fault. Even thirty
years after the battle, the Sharpshooters themselves thought that Girichton had died at Gettysburg.
Here’s what happened:
On February 11, 1863, in its effort to meet the August 4,
1862, call for 300,000 drafted men, the State of Michigan drafted Darius
Ambrose Babcock, one of sixteen men called up in St. Joseph County. Unwilling
to serve in the Union army, Babcock tried to acquire an exemption, claiming
that an old head injury disqualified him from service. Unfortunately for him,
the examining surgeon found him fit as a fiddle. Desperate to stay home, Babcock paid for a
substitute to go in his place, and thus, a fifteen-year-old immigrant from
Bavaria, Lewis Girichton, went into the army instead. Girichton claimed to be
eighteen-years-old, passed his examination, and in April, he mustered into
Company I, 1st U.S. Sharpshooters. Three months later, on July 2, Girichton
found himself involved in the gunfight at Pitzer’s Woods.
Another soldier remembered how Girichton received his wound.
This man was Private Jonathan Newcomb, Jr. of Company A, 3rd Maine
Volunteer Infantry. You see, when the 1st U.S. Sharpshooters
retreated from the initial point of contact with Wilcox’s Brigade, they passed
through the skirmish line of the 3rd Maine, a unit sent to support them.
In fact, Newcomb remembered seeing Colonel Berdan pass to the rear, as he
wrote, “between the skirmishers in front of our regiment, on a white horse, as
fast as the horse could go, while the bullets were flying lively.” (When battle
approached, Berdan had a reputation for getting to the rear very fast!)
Newcomb remembered Girichton specifically. In fact, they hid
behind a tree together. He explained, “There was a sharpshooter right in front
of me behind a big tree, and as I was the only one I could see who had no
shelter I got behind the same tree with him.” Later on, Newcomb explained where
he found this tree. He wrote, “It seems there is to be a monument erected on
the most advanced spot held by our troops that day. That spot will be the tree
behind which the sharpshooter and I were. It is on the highest part of the
ridge that I occupied with the sharpshooter.”
Presumably, this tree no longer exists, but the 3rd
Maine’s monument sits in its place.
As the other Union soldiers gave way around them, Newcomb
and Girichton had to choose between running and surrendering to the oncoming
Confederates. As Newcomb continued, “They were quite near me when I saw them
from behind the tree, and I made up my mind it would be death to me to try and
run away, so I threw up my hands. Immediately there were a dozen rifles in that
line aimed at me, I saw the flash and as quickly went to the ground, and did not
receive a scratch. The sharpshooter who had remained behind the tree was
wounded in the knee severely.”
Newcomb’s and Girichton’s captors transported them to the
rear, and the last that Newcomb ever saw of his green-coated companion was at
the field hospital. Presumably, they went to the Samuel Pitzer Farm, the same
place where Captain Charles McLean (of the previous post) died. In 1892,
Charles Stevens published his unit history of the Sharpshooters—an excellent
one I might add—and in it, he claimed that Girichton had been killed at
Pitzer’s Woods. Stevens got it wrong. Girichton lived for another thirty-four
years. Apparently, the young substitute never returned to his regiment.
Instead, he reported for duty with the Invalid Corps, received a discharge and
invalid pension, and then moved to San Francisco, where he married and found
work as a gymnastics teacher.
It is a mystery to me that the Sharpshooters believed him to
be dead. If Girichton joined the Invalid Corps, the regiment would surely have
received record of his being alive. The fact that his companions did not know
of his survival suggests that the young substitute tried to keep his identity
off the grid. Even after Stevens published his book, Girichton did nothing to
report the fact that he had survived the Battle of Gettysburg. In so doing,
Girichton remained the one body that the Sharpshooters never recovered from
their bloody reconnaissance. As we have seen in previous posts, the
Sharpshooters did everything humanly possible to recover the bodies of Smith
Haight, George Sheldon, and Charles McLean. In their minds, Girichton was the
one man they left behind.
(This monument marks the spot where the 3rd Maine fought on the morning of July 2. Private Jonathan Newcomb claimed that a large three stood on this spot, and there, he and Lewis Girichton found shelter from the enemy bullets.)
(This map shows the overlapping skirmish lines of the 1st USSS and the 3rd Maine. I've marked the spot where Girichton received his wound.)
