Credit: Courtesy of Randy Chadwick, www.brotherswar.com
They first knew by sound. Someone ran to get Lt. Marcellus Jones of the 8th Illinois Cavalry who commanded this picket line across the Chambersburg Road three miles west of Gettysburg. When Lt. Jones sighted the Confederates through the early dawn haze of July, 1, 1863, he borrowed a carbine from his sergeant and fired at the mounted figure leading the column. As Jones sent off a courier with a note to General Buford back at Gettysburg, a cannon ball bounced down the road toward the Union pickets. The battle of Gettysburg had begun. In 1886, veterans of the 8th Illinois Cavalry erected this monument to mark the spot where the first shots of the Battle of Gettysburg were fired. Today it stands beside the busy thoroughfare of Route 30.
