Tillie Pierce: Teen Eyewitness to the Battle of Gettysburg

Tillie Pierce: Teen Eyewitness to the Battle of Gettysburg — page 3
INTRODUCTION Gettysburg a Crossroads Town LONG BEFORE WHITE SETTLERS MOVED INTO SOUTHERN PENNSYLVANIA NATIVE AMERICANS HAD WORN AN EAST WEST TRAIL THERE The path later turned into a well traveled dirt road when French and English trappers ventured into the wildlife rich Allegheny Mountains Over time another road developed This one ran north and south connecting Shippensburg Pennsylvania and Baltimore Maryland The place where these two roads crossed would one day be called Gettysburg In the 1730s and the 1740s settlers who wanted nothing of city life in Philadelphia Pennsylvania and other large towns moved to York County in south central Pennsylvania They were hardworking independent families who managed to turn the rock filled rolling hills into working farms One of those areas was known as the Marsh Creek settlement Samuel Gettys an immigrant from northern Ireland was a settler there He bought 381 acres 154 hectares of the Marsh Creek settlement as a farmstead around 1740 In 1761 he built the Gettys Inn and Tavern