Offered is a great badge worn by the cavalry unit that fired the first shot at the battle of Gettysburg. The 8th Cavalry was the only Illinois cavalry unit to serve on the Eastern theater.
Battle of Gettysburg[edit]
During the Gettysburg Campaign, the 8th Illinois Cavalry was in the division of Brig. Gen. John Buford. They deployed west of Gettysburg on June 30, 1863, under the command of Colonel William Gamble, and waited for oncoming Confederates that arrived early the following morning. The first shot of the subsequent battle was fired by Lieutenant Marcellus E. Jones of Company E, who borrowed a carbine from Sergeant Levi Shafer and fired at an unidentified officer on a gray horse over a half-mile away. The 8th, along with the rest of the brigade, performed a fighting withdrawal towards McPherson's Ridge, delaying the Confederate division of Henry Heth for several hours and allowing the Union I Corps to arrive.[1][2]
Two decades after the war ended, veterans of the regiment dedicated a monument to the 8th Illinois along the crest of McPherson's Ridge.[3] Lt. Jones would also erect a monument in recognition of the first shot he fired on the location of the shot next to the Whistler's home just east of Marsh Creek on the Chambersburg Pike. The stone was quarried from Naperville limestone; Naperville was the hometown of Levi Shafer, whose carbine Jones borrowed.