The Governor’s Own Iowa Rifles
Acquire a Piece of the
Gettysburg National Battlefield Park

Iowa Units did not fight at Gettysburg. Most were too busy laying siege to the “Gibraltar of the South”, as Vicksburg, Mississippi, was often called in the press of the day. But now, one-hundred-forty-seven years after what most historians believe to have been one of the two “crushing blows” to Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederate cause, (the other, of course being the fall of Vicksburg on July 4th, 1863) Company A, 49th Regiment of Iowa Volunteer Infantry can legitimately claim ownership of a “piece of the action.”

Regimental Commander, David M. Lamb, has found an original Deed of Conveyance issued in 1959 by the “Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association”, and sold at that time by them as a funds-raising effort to purchase 700 acres of “endangered” battlefield land to keep it from being developed. The DEED conveys to the purchaser “one-square-foot” of land known to have been part of the ground contested during the battle on July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, 1863.

The purchaser agreed to cede the land back to the Government of the United States, “to be held in perpetuity forever by said Government and preserved in good order as a memorial to honor all men who fought on this soil.”

The DEED is signed by William M. Haller, Major, US Army Ret., and President of the Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association; and also by Cliff Arquette (known to millions as the comedian of that day known as ‘Charlie Weaver’) Emergency Fund Chairman. Mr. Arquette was a life-long student of the Civil War, and a driving force behind the early preservation efforts for battlefields of the war.

The DEED had been purchased in 1960, but never filled out and filed by its original owner. When he passed on, his family sold the document to 1/SGT. Lamb, who purchased this piece of historic ephemera and immediately gave it to his beloved Regiment as a gift.

Company A, 49th Regiment of Iowa Volunteer Infantry is at present making plans to deploy to Gettysburg in November, 2010, to the annual Remembrance Day ceremonies.