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Civil War

107th OH Meyer(w) / Lutz

Cumberland Township, Adams County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

107th Ohio Infantry 2nd Brigade 1st Division 11th Corps This memorial is dedicated by the surviving members of the regiment to their fallen comrades Ohio’s Token of Gratitude

The Story

Dedicated by the surviving members of the regiment to their fallen comrades, this Ohio monument honors the 107th Ohio Infantry of the Second Brigade, First Division, Eleventh Corps at Gettysburg. On July 1, 1863, the regiment — largely made up of German-American volunteers — fought on the northern edge of the battlefield, where the division under Barlow and Ames was overwhelmed and driven back into town. The inscription, "Ohio's Token of Gratitude," speaks in the voice of the veterans who returned to mark where their friends had died.

Why it matters

Monuments raised by the survivors themselves capture how deeply the Civil War generation felt the need to remember its dead and give their sacrifice permanent meaning.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

By July of 1863 the Civil War was two years old and had spilled north into Pennsylvania. Lee's army had marched into the free states, and the Union's Army of the Potomac hurried after it. Where they met, at the town of Gettysburg, the first day's fighting swept across the fields north and west of town.

The northern edge of that first-day battlefield — the ground here in Cumberland Township — was open farmland with little cover. It fell to the Union's Eleventh Corps to hold this exposed flank, and the assignment would prove brutally hard.

Among the regiments sent here was the 107th Ohio, a unit filled largely with German-American volunteers. Ohio in the mid-nineteenth century had drawn waves of German immigrants, and many communities sent their young men to war in regiments that drilled and spoke in German. These were citizen-soldiers in the truest sense: recent arrivals and first-generation Americans defending the country they had chosen.

People & events

On July 1, 1863, the 107th Ohio took its place in the Second Brigade of the First Division of the Eleventh Corps, on the hard-pressed northern end of the Union line. The division, led that day by Barlow and then Ames, was struck by a powerful Confederate flanking attack and overwhelmed. The line gave way, and the survivors were driven back through the streets of Gettysburg toward the heights beyond.

For a regiment, such a day leaves wounds that never fully close. Men fell here who had marched from Ohio farms and river towns, and their friends carried the memory of this ground home with them.

Years later, those survivors returned. This monument was raised not by a state committee at a distance but by the regiment's own veterans, dedicated to the comrades who did not live to grow old. Its phrase, "Ohio's Token of Gratitude," speaks in their collective voice — the living thanking the dead.

Its place in the American story

Monuments like this one tell two stories at once. The first is the story of a single hard day, when a division was overrun and a regiment paid dearly for holding an exposed flank. The second is the story of memory itself.

The Civil War generation felt an almost sacred obligation to remember its dead. Across the reunited country, surviving veterans returned to the fields where their friends had fallen and set stone in the ground so that the sacrifice would not fade. This monument is one small piece of that vast national act of remembrance.

There is also the immigrant thread. That German-American volunteers stood and fell on this ground is a reminder that the Union preserved in this war was already a nation of many tongues and origins. Their willingness to die for it helped write newcomers permanently into the American story.

If you visit

Approach this monument as a message from the men who survived. Read the dedication slowly and remember that the hands which raised it had held rifles on this very ground, and had buried friends nearby.

Look out across the open fields to the north and imagine them without today's calm — filled instead with smoke, noise, and an enemy sweeping around the flank. The lack of cover you see is exactly what made this ground so costly.

On a battlefield tour, this is a first-day stop on the northern end. Pair it with the nearby markers of the other regiments that stood on this flank, then follow the line of retreat south toward the high ground. Walking the sequence in order helps you feel why a day that began badly here still ended with the Union holding the heights.

Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.

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Related events

  • · Battle of Gettysburg
  • · First day at Gettysburg

Themes & tags

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