News--No Clear Reason For Moving Remembrance Day at Gettysburg

Gettysburg Remembrance Day Has New Date, Laura Wheeler, Washington Post, January 22, 2013.

In anticipation of larger than usual crowds expected at Gettysburg for the annual Remembrance Day parade, planners have moved the event to the weekend of Nov. 23, a week later than had been scheduled. This year is the 150^th anniversary of both the battle in July and Remembrance Day in November, the day President Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address. The parade is very popular with visitors and residents and draws thousands of smartly dressed reenactors who march in military units through the city.

 Planners say the change was made to better accommodate “lodging requirements.” Other events rescheduled for the weekend include four balls.

However, the reading of the Gettysburg Address and other related events will still occur Nov. 19, the actual anniversary of Lincoln’s visit to the then-new Gettysburg National Cemetery.
The city of Gettysburg and the National Park Service have organized numerous events    for the whole of 2013 to mark the sesquicentennial year.

CWL comment:  No direct quotations in this article.  Who are 'the planners'?  National Park Service and the Sons of the Union Veterans. Yet no on record comment from them.  Best guess: Department of Interior is clearing the path for a presidential visit and there would be too many men with guns in the street.    VP Biden scampered out of the visitors' box during the 2012 St. Patrick's Day Parade in Pittsburgh when the Irish Brigade came within 300 yards of him.  CWL marched with the Irish Brigade that day.

Text source: Washington Post
Image Source: Maryland Brigade

CWL---Remembramce Day 2010: Silence at Little Round Top; Communion With Father Corby

Immediately after the Remembrance Day parade, The Ninth Pennsylvania Reserves, Company A, a Civil War living history and reenactment unit, marches from Ziegler's Grove to the saddle between the Round Tops. At the monument, an image of which was on the 2008 Licensed Battlefield Guide Exam, the military and civilian members and their guests, remember the Ninth with a wreath and appropriate remarks.

The other Pennsylvania Reserve units, First through Twelfth are remember during a march which begins at 8:00am on Remembrance Day. The combined Pennsylvania Reserve reenactment units march from Big Round Top, where the 12th, 11th and 10th Regiments have monuments and then through Plum Run valley with the Brigadier General Samuel Crawford and the 6th Pennsylvania Reserve monuments and then to the Wheatfield and Houck's Ridge where the remaining monuments are located.

As 2nd Corps Federal troops were marching toward the Rose farm's wheatfield, a 29 year old priest addressed the Irish Brigade. As he stood upon a rock, possibly the rock upon which his monument stands today, Father Corby prayed, gave absolution and warned the troops that any individual who did not perform their duty would be denied a Christian burial. Within an hour, nearly 200 hundred members of the Irish brigade would be dead or mortally wounded. Fourteen years after his death, Father Corby was honored with a statue on the battlefield at an October 1910 dedication ceremony. During the afternoon of Remembrance Day 2010, a Catholic Mass occurred and about 50 battlefield visitors participated.

Photographer: Rea Andrew Redd [Civil War Librarian]

CWL--Remembrance Day, Gettysburg, 2010

November 20, 2010, Remembrance Day, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Lieutenant Nick Griffey and Color Sargent Rea Andrew Redd [Civil War Librarian]. Taken immediately after the Remembrance Day Parade and immediate before the Ninth Pennsylvania Reserves, Company A, forms a column to march from Ziegler's Grove to the south side of Little Round Top where the Ninth's Monument is located.