Gettysburg Battle Stories: Iverson’s Pits and the Irish Brigade with Tim Smith

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:01][music] >> Hello. I'm Tim Smith with Gettysburg history, and welcome to another Gettysburg ABCs.

[00:00:15]And I got to tell you, I'm really glad to be outside. The snow is nearly melted, and spring is coming.

[00:00:24]So, today we're going to do letter I, and I've chosen John D. Imboden, Iverson's Pits, and the Irish Brigade as person, place, and thing.

[00:00:41]So, John Daniel Imboden was born in Staunton, Virginia in 1823.

[00:00:51]He was a lawyer.

[00:00:53]He was in the Virginia House of Delegates for a time.

[00:00:57]At the outbreak of the war, he organized the Staunton Light Artillery, and in January 1863, became a brigadier general. He was in charge of a independent cavalry brigade that raided along the B&O Railroad in Virginia.

[00:01:16]And um uh at the Battle of Gettysburg, John D.

[00:01:21]Imboden's Brigade was attached to Jeb Stuart's Cavalry Division. And although they didn't play a real role in the battle, they played an important role after the battle. On July 4th, John Imboden was summoned to Robert E. Lee's headquarters and placed in charge of a wagon train of wounded. There were hundreds of wagons with thousands of wounded soldiers. And uh he was charged with taking the wounded over the South Mountain range back across Franklin County into uh Washington County, Maryland to the Potomac River at William- Williamsport. The wagon train was 17 miles long and there was a huge amount of suffering amongst the wounded on the train.

[00:02:12]think Imboden states in one of his accounts that it was like 32 hours where some of the men in the wagons had not eaten. There are other wagon loads of wounded, but this is probably one of the more famous because in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, John Imboden actually has an account about this that you can read.

[00:02:36]Um Iverson's pits.

[00:02:39]Here we are at one of the best-known burial sites associated with the Battle of Gettysburg. Alfred Iverson's Brigade came across this open field from the area of the Eternal Light Peace Memorial and they were just annihilated by General John Cleveland Robinson's division, primarily Baxter's Brigade.

[00:03:02]And according to the brigade plaque, they lost 820 out of 1,470 men, including 130 men killed in action. Now, they reported 300 missing and undoubtedly some of those missing were also killed in action. Supposedly about 170 of them were buried here after the battle and it wasn't until 10 years later that their bodies were removed from this site.

[00:03:34]According to the history of the 12th North Carolina of Iverson's Brigade in the lowest part of the depression in rear of the battleground of Iverson's Brigade, four shallow pits were dug by the pioneers in which were buried the dead of that brigade. The surface of these pits is to be easily distinguished this day from the surrounding ground on account of the more luxurious growth of the grass and crops over them.

[00:04:04]Mr. Forney, who owned the ground on which the battle was fought, and who still owns it, and the writer of the sketch 2 years ago, about 1900, with pointers in their hands, traced with ease and certainty the edges of these pits as they walked around them. Mr. Forney said that the place was then known throughout the neighborhood as Iverson's pits, and that for years after the battle, there was a superstitious terror in regard to this field, and that it was with great difficulty that laborers could be kept at work there on the approach of night on that account.

[00:04:44]And this is like the only ghost story that we have associated with the battle.

[00:04:52]And then, the Irish Brigade, consisting of the 63rd, 69th, and 88th New York, and at Gettysburg, the 28th Massachusetts and 116th Pennsylvania.

[00:05:06]One of the most famous brigades associated with the Northern Army, made up mostly of Irish immigrants. Uh this brigade uh lost heavily attacking the sunken lane at Antietam, and attacking the stone wall at Fredericksburg. And at Gettysburg, they were in the wheat field. Of course, the bloodiest spot in the bloodiest day of the bloodiest battle in American history.

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