Monuments to a person

Brigadier General Samuel Wylie Crawford

The monument to Brigadier General Samuel Crawford is south of Gettysburg on the east side of Crawford Avenue. It was dedicated in 1988.

Location: 39.795737 N, 77.23881 W; see map.

From the monument:

Brigadier General Samuel Wylie Crawford
Commander of the Pennsylvania Reserves
1829-1892

The monument was dedicated in 1988. It was created by sculptor Ron Tunison, who also created the bas relief on the Delaware State Monument, the Friend to Friend Masonic Memorial and the Women's Memorial at Gettysburg and the bas reliefs on the Irish Brigade monument at Antietam.

Samuel Crawford was born in 1846 in Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1850 and its medical school in 1851, joining the army as an assistant surgeon.

He was serving at Fort Sumter as the Civil War began, and commanded several guns during the bombardment in spite of being medical staff. Combat command apparently appealed to him, for shortly afterwards he accepted a commission as a Major in the Infantry. By 1862 he became a Brigadier General, leading an attack at Cedar Mountain that routed the Confederate Stonewall Brigade but cost Crawford 50% casualties.

Crawford was wounded at Antietam after briefly commanding his division. He didn't recover from the wound until May of 1863, when he was given command of the Pennsylvania Reserves, then recovering from hard campaigning by serving in the Washington defenses.

The Gettysburg crisis saw the Reserves again part of the Army of the Potomac, and Crawford found himself leading them into the fighting around Little Round Top. Crawford, seizing a stand of colors from a surprised and resisting color-sergeant, led his division in a charge that cleared the Valley of Death and, in his estimation, saved Little Round Top.

Crawford remained in command of his division through the Overland campaign and the Siege of Petersburg and was again wounded at the Weldon Railroad. He was with the army at Appomattox, one of two men (the other General Truman Seymour) who could claim to be present at both the beginning of the war at Fort Sumter and its end at Appomattox.

After the war Crawford stayed on with the army until his retirement in 1873. He died in 1892 and is buried in Philadelphia.