Sculpted by Gary Casteel
 
1863 Signed and Numbered Limited Edition Monument Replicas
 
Battery G of the Fourth U.S. Artillery was organized at Cincinnati, Ohio, and was ordered to join General George B. McClellan in western Virginia in July 1861.  During the Battle of Gettysburg, this light artillery battery was attached to the Eleventh Corps of the Army of the Potomac and was commanded by Lt. Bayard Wilkenson. 
 
The battery arrived at Gettysburg about 11 a.m. on July 1 and advanced, with two sections taking position on what is now known as Barlow’s Knoll, and a detached section taking position near the Adams County Almshouse.  They engaged Confederate troops, both artillery and infantry, on their right and left.  Lt. Wilkeson fell early, mortally wounded, and the command devolved on Lt. Eugene A. Bancroft.  The sections were compelled to change positions several times.  The battery retired about 4 p.m.--one section relieving a section of Battery I, 1st Ohio on Baltimore Street in covering the retreat.   About 5 p.m. the battery took up position on Cemetery Hill.
 
On July 2, the battery moved to the rear of the Cemetery facing Baltimore Pike.  They were in action at the Cemetery from 4.30 p.m. until 7 p.m.  On July 3, at about 2 p.m. two sections were engaged in the Cemetery until the repulse of the Confederates.  During the battle, the battery’s casualties were 1 officer and 1 man killed, 11 men wounded, and 4 men missing.  1400 rounds of ammunition expended, and 31 horses killed.
 
From the wayside marker on Barlow’s Knoll:
Here on Barlow’s Knoll, Lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson, 19, directed Battery G, 4th US Artillery, from horseback.  While dueling with Confederate batteries, an enemy shell mangled his right leg.  According to one legend, he bound his leg and amputated it with a pocket knife, as shot and shell fell around him.  He died that night at a makeshift hospital.
 
Samuel Wilkeson, Bayard’s father, a correspondent for the New York Times, was traveling to Gettysburg when he heard his son had been wounded.  On July 4, he located his son’s body and penned a piece which appeared on the front page of the Times.  “My pen is heavy,” he wrote, addressing those who had given the ultimate sacrifice.  “Oh, you dead, who at Gettysburgh have baptized with your blood the second birth of Freedom in America…” 
 
In the upper right of the wayside is a drawing of Battery G, 4th U.S. in action, captioned:
Lt. Bayard Wilkeson commands Battery G, 4th U.S. Artillery, here on Barlow Knoll on the afternoon of July 1. When the Confederates routed the Union infantry, the cannoneers were forced to withdraw.

Wilkeson, age 19, was mortally wounded here when a cannonball nearly severed his leg. Carried to a nearby almshouse, he amputated the leg with a pocketknife. As his dying act, he gave his last canteen of water to a thirsty comrade.
 
“Who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are immovably fastened upon a central figure of transcendingly absorbing interest — the dead body of an oldest born son, crushed by a shell in a position where a battery should never have been sent, and abandoned to death in a building where surgeons dared not to stay?” Samuel Wilkeson, The New York Times, July 6th, 1863.
 
The marker was placed in 1907, and is located along East Howard Avenue near the crest of Barlow Knoll.