Gettysburg Campaign
Antrim Township, Franklin County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Here on June 22, 1863, the First N.Y. Cavalry attacked the Southern advance force of cavalry under Gen. A.G. Jenkins. Here died the first Union soldier killed in action in Pennsylvania. Corporal William H. Rihl of Philadelphia, serving in a Pennsylvania unit assigned to the New York regiment.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
On June 22, 1863, the 1st New York Cavalry clashed here with the Confederate advance guard under General Albert G. Jenkins, one of the first armed encounters as Lee's army entered Pennsylvania. In the fighting Corporal William H. Rihl of Philadelphia fell—the first Union soldier killed in action on Pennsylvania soil. He was buried near where he died, and this ground became his memorial.
Why it matters
It marks the first Union combat death defending Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg Campaign, personalizing the moment the war reached the North's own doorstep.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the summer of 1863, the Civil War had been grinding on for two years, but the fighting had mostly stayed south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Pennsylvania farmers in the Cumberland Valley had read about distant battles in the newspapers; now the war was coming to their own fence rows. In June, Robert E. Lee marched his army north, hoping a victory on Union soil might crack Northern resolve and win foreign recognition for the Confederacy.
The rolling farmland of Franklin County sat squarely in the path of that advance. This was rich, settled country — grain fields, orchards, and small towns strung along the roads that led toward the Susquehanna. To the people living here, the approach of a Southern army was not an abstraction. It meant hooves in the wheat and the very real possibility of combat on ground they had always thought of as safe.
Into this landscape rode the leading edge of Lee's force, screening cavalry probing ahead of the infantry. It was the job of Union horsemen to find them, slow them, and learn what was coming. The clash remembered here was one of those first, sharp meetings — the moment the campaign that would end at Gettysburg first drew blood on Pennsylvania soil.
People & events
On June 22, 1863, troopers of the 1st New York Cavalry rode into the Confederate advance guard led by General Albert G. Jenkins, a Virginia cavalry commander whose mounted brigade formed the tip of the invasion. What followed was the kind of fast, close skirmish that defined cavalry work — sudden, confusing, and deadly, fought from the saddle along roads and field edges rather than in the neat lines of a set-piece battle.
In that fighting fell Corporal William H. Rihl of Philadelphia. He served in a Pennsylvania company attached to the New York regiment, which is why a Philadelphian died wearing the war on his home state's soil. He was, by the record honored here, the first Union soldier killed in action within Pennsylvania — a distinction no one seeks and no one forgets.
Rihl was buried near where he fell, and the ground itself became his memorial. There is something plain and moving in that: not a general laid in a grand tomb, but a corporal resting close to the spot where his war ended, on the farmland he had come to defend. The names Rihl and Jenkins are bound together here forever, the fallen young soldier and the commander whose advance brought the war to him.
Its place in the American story
The Gettysburg Campaign is one of the hinge points of American history, the moment Lee's second invasion of the North was turned back in the war's largest battle. But great campaigns are made of small, sharp moments like this one, days before the main armies collided. This skirmish marks the instant the invasion became real to Pennsylvania — when the fighting crossed from someone else's country into your own.
What gives this place its weight is a single life. Wars are counted in vast numbers, and the numbers can go numb. A marker that names one man — the first to die here in defense of his state — restores the human scale. Every one of those tens of thousands of casualties was a particular person from a particular street, and Rihl stands here for all of them.
It is also a reminder that the North did not experience the Civil War only as distant news. For a few weeks in 1863, the war came home to Pennsylvania's farms and towns, and ordinary places became battlegrounds. This quiet Franklin County ground is where that reckoning began.
If you visit
This is a place that rewards a slow, quiet stop rather than a quick photo. Stand at the marker and look out at the surrounding farmland — it is not so different now from what it was in 1863, and that continuity is the point. The war reached ground exactly like this, plain and productive and utterly ordinary until the morning it wasn't.
Read the inscription and let the single name do its work. This is not a monument to a battle you learned about in school; it is a memorial to one young corporal from Philadelphia who died first among his state's defenders. Take a moment with that before you move on.
If you are touring the Gettysburg Campaign, this makes a thoughtful first stop on the way to the great battlefield to the east. Visiting here first, where the invasion drew its first Union blood, gives the enormity of Gettysburg a human doorway. You will arrive at the big field already understanding that it was built out of moments — and men — like this one.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- Monterey Pass Battlefield Museum13.7 mi away
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Related people
- · William H. Rihl
- · Albert G. Jenkins
Related events
- · Gettysburg Campaign
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Captain Ulric Dahlgren
Greencastle, PA · est. 1954
On July 2, 1863, as the armies clashed just miles away at Gettysburg, young Union cavalry officer Ulric Dahlgren led a bold raid into the square at Greencastle and struck a larger body of Confederate horsemen. His troopers captured couriers carrying dispatches intended for General Lee, seizing papers that offered a glimpse into enemy movements at a decisive moment of the campaign.
Gettysburg Campaign
Antrim Township, PA · est. 1997
In the tense weeks before the guns opened at Gettysburg, Confederate columns poured north through the Cumberland Valley on their way to the largest battle ever fought on American soil. General Richard S. Ewell's Second Corps used this route in June 1863 to spearhead Lee's second invasion of the North, with Jubal Early's division peeling off toward Waynesboro. Within days these same forces would converge on a small crossroads town to the east, where three days of fighting decided the campaign.
Gettysburg Campaign
Guilford Township, PA · est. 1947
Chambersburg felt the Confederate invasion early: General Albert G. Jenkins' Southern cavalry rode in on June 15, 1863, well ahead of the main army, and returned to lead the advance a week later. On June 26, Robert E. Lee himself entered the town at the head of the Army of Northern Virginia. From this staging ground the Confederates fanned out across south-central Pennsylvania in the days before Gettysburg.
Chambersburg
Chambersburg, PA · est. 1948
Benjamin Chambers settled at the forks of the Conococheague in 1734 and laid out "Chambers Town" in 1764; two decades later it became the seat of the newly formed Franklin County. During the Civil War the town sat squarely in the path of Confederate operations—raided by J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry in 1862, occupied by Confederate troops in 1863, and finally put to the torch in 1864 when residents refused a ransom demand.