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Civil War

10th NY Cavalry “Porter Guard” Avery

Straban Township, Adams County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

10th New York Cavalry 3rd Brig. 2nd Div. Cavalry Corps July 2nd 1863. 3 to 8 p.m.

The Story

East of Gettysburg this marker notes where the 10th New York Cavalry — nicknamed the "Porter Guard" — was engaged on the afternoon and evening of July 2nd, 1863. As part of the Cavalry Corps' Second Division, the regiment operated on the army's flank, the kind of screening and skirmishing that kept commanders informed and protected the infantry's vulnerable edges. The fighting around Gettysburg raged for three days before Lee's army withdrew back toward Virginia.

Why it matters

It preserves the role of Union cavalry, whose flank fighting and reconnaissance shaped the war's turning-point battle.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

In the first days of July 1863, the war that had ground across Virginia for two years suddenly spilled onto the farm country of southern Pennsylvania. Robert E. Lee had led his army north, hoping a victory on Union soil would break the North's will. What he found, in the crossroads town of Gettysburg, was the largest battle ever fought on the American continent.

The fields east of the town, where this monument stands, were the army's flank — the exposed edge where the infantry lines gave way to open ground. It was cavalry country. In an age before radios or aircraft, mounted troopers were the eyes of an army: they scouted the roads, screened the movements of the foot soldiers, and stood guard where a surprise attack could unravel everything.

By the afternoon of July 2nd, the second and bloodiest day of the fighting, both armies were locked in a desperate contest for the ridges and hills around Gettysburg. Away from the famous names — the wheat field, the peach orchard, the rocky heights — regiments like this one held the quieter but vital ground on the army's edge.

People & events

This marker records a specific unit at a specific hour: a New York cavalry regiment, part of the Cavalry Corps' Second Division, engaged on the afternoon and into the evening of July 2nd, from roughly three until eight o'clock.

Those five hours tell their own story. Cavalry on the flank rarely fought the sweeping mounted charges of legend. More often they dismounted, took cover behind fences and farm walls, and fought as skirmishers — trading fire, feeling out the enemy's strength, and buying time. Every hour they held was an hour the infantry could count on its flank being secure.

The men who served here had ridden a long road to reach this Pennsylvania field, and the fight around Gettysburg would rage for three days in all before Lee finally gave up the ground and began the long, sodden retreat back toward Virginia. This modest stone marks where one regiment did its part on the day the battle hung in the balance.

Its place in the American story

Gettysburg is remembered as the turning point of the Civil War, and its most famous moments belong to the infantry and the artillery. But a battle is won or lost on its edges as much as its center, and that is where the cavalry earned its place in the story.

Markers like this one, scattered across the battlefield, are part of one of the most thoroughly commemorated landscapes in America. In the decades after the war, veterans returned to walk the ground and to place stones marking exactly where their units had stood. They wanted the precise truth of it preserved — not a general memory, but this regiment, on this spot, at these hours.

That impulse is what makes the Gettysburg landscape so rare. It preserves not just the grand narrative but the granular one: the flank guards and skirmishers whose work never made the headlines yet without whom the famous stands could not have held.

If you visit

You'll find this marker east of the town, away from the crowds that gather at the high-water mark and the copse of trees. This is the quieter side of the battlefield, where the ground opens into the farm country that framed the fighting.

Give yourself a moment to read the plain lines of the inscription — a unit, a date, a span of hours — and then look out across the fields. Try to picture troopers dismounted behind the fences, horses held to the rear, the long summer evening filling with smoke and noise.

The eastern approaches make a rewarding detour on any Gettysburg road trip, precisely because they are less traveled. Pair this stop with the cavalry ground and you'll come away with a fuller sense of how wide the battle really was — not a single clash on a single ridge, but a sprawling struggle whose edges reached far beyond the famous names.

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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