At The Wall : The 69th Pennsylvania at Gettysburg: The 69th Pennsylvania at Gettysburg

They came from the Irish neighborhoods of Philadelphia. At the bottom of the social strata, they were the laborers; the railroad workers; the canal diggers and the dock workers always “last hired – first fired”. In 1861, at the start of the Civil War, several Philadelphia Irish neighborhood militia companies joined together to volunteer their services to the Union army and would eventually become the 69th Pennsylvania “Irish Volunteers”. From September 1861 to April 1865 these men would fig...