Dedicated: July 1, 1895.
Location: Located on the McPherson farm on the north side of the Chambersburg Pike (US 30).
Description: A standing portrait of General Buford by sculptor James E. Kelly looking out to the west as he did in 1863 when three thousand cavalrymen of his division prepared to meet the advance of Robert E. Lee’s army. He holds a pair of binoculars in his raised proper right hand. The monument was funded by Jerome B. Wheeler. The Buford Memorial Association was formed in 1888 and during design discussions, John Calef, who had commanded a horse artillery battery under General Buford, suggested that the design incorporate four ordnance rifles that were in the battery. One of the ordnance rifles was number 233, the rifle that fired the first Union artillery shot of the battle under Buford’s direction. The Army Chief of Ordnance located the rifle tubes and donated them to the monument committee. At the dedication ceremony, Major Calef symbolically spiked the four rifle tubes. Overall height is 15.6 foot.
National Park Service List of Classified Monuments Number: MN30-D
Sculptor: James Edward Kelly.
About Major General John Buford, Jr.
Buford was born in Woodford County, Kentucky on March 4, 1826, but was raised in Illinois. He came from a divided family; his half-brother also became a Union general while a cousin became a general in the Confederate one.
Buford graduated from West Point in the class of 1848 and served as a cavalryman in the Indian Wars against the Sioux. As a Kentuckian, Buford could have chosen to serve in either army, but as his friend General John Gibbon recalled:
One night after the arrival of the mail we were in his (Buford’s) room, when Buford said in his slow and deliberate way “I got a letter from the Governor of Kentucky. He sent me word to come to Kentucky at once and I shall have anything I want.” With a good deal of anxiety, I asked “What did you answer, John?” And my relief was great when he replied “I sent him word I was a Captain in the United States Army and I intended to remain one!
Buford distinguished himself in the Second Bull Run Campaign, eventually rising to command a cavalry division at Gettysburg. His actions on the first day including his skillful defensive troop dispositions allowed time for John Reynolds and the I Corps to arrive and played a pivotal role in the battle.
Buford fell ill in the fall of 1863 with what was likely typhoid. He was promoted on his death bed to major general by Abraham Lincoln and died on December 16. Buford was buried near Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing in West Point’s Cemetery. In 1865, a 25-foot obelisk style monument was erected over his grave, financed by members of his old division, a token of their esteem.