Sculpted by Gary Casteel
 
1863 Signed and Numbered Limited Edition Monument Replicas
 
Captain Jedediah Chapman was killed leading a company in the charge of the 27th Connecticut across The Wheatfield at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863.  Chapman was born in New Haven Connecticut on November 21, 1839.  Along with Lieutenant Colonel Merwin, Chapman served as a member of the New Haven Grays and served for three months with the 2nd Connecticut in 1861.  In August of 1862, Chapman enlisted in the 27th  Connecticut and won election to the post of First Lieutenant of Company H.  Due to “protracted sickness”, he missed the Battle of Chancellorsville in May of 1863, where approximately eight companies of the regiment were captured—leaving in the field two companies and a few remnants of the others not taken prisoner.
 
“These scattering portions were formed into one company, and Lieutenant Chapman was placed in command.  His peculiar qualifications of discipline and character contributed much to their unity and effectiveness during the succeeding campaign of Gettysburg; and at their head fell on the second of July, 1863.  His commission as Captain of Company H, dated May thirteenth, 1863, had been already issued and forwarded; but he did not live to know of this well-deserved honor.”  -- from The “Twenty-Seventh” A Regimental History.
 
The first markers placed by veterans of the 27th Connecticut were two small tablets that purported to mark the location where Lieutenant Colonel Merwin and Captain Chapman fell.  Both markers were placed several yards apart along the Wheatfield Road, a crossroad that connected the Taneytown and Emmitsburg Roads and ran across the northern border of the Wheatfield.
 
According to The Location of the Monuments, Markers and Tablets on Gettysburg Battlefield, compiled by Kathy Georg Harrison in 1993, the monuments are dated to the early 1880s.  Some battlefield guides believe that the markers appeared shortly after the placement of a marble stone marking the location of Strong Vincent's wounding on Little Round Top in August of 1878 - the first marker placed outside of the cemetery.  If true, this makes the Chapman marker the oldest original marker still on the battlefield (outside of the cemetery) today.  At some point, the veterans of the 27th moved the Chapman marker from its original location along the Wheatfield Road, placing it several hundred yards to the southwest along DeTrobriand Avenue, near the edge of Rose's Woods, presumably marking the site of Chapman’s death more accurately than their first attempt, when the Wheatfield was under private ownership.
 
The monument was dedicated in September 1878 and is located along the north side of DeTrobriand Road on the south edge of the Wheatfield.