Dedicated: Likely placed around 1889.
Location: Little Round Top, behind the secondary monument to the 91st Pennsylvania (known as the Weed – Hazlett Monument).
Description: Denotes the spot where General Stephen Weed and Lieutenant Charles Hazlett fell mortally wounded on Little Round Top on the afternoon of July 2.
About Lieut. Charles E. Hazlett
Charles Edward Hazlett was born on October 15, 1838 in Zanesville, Ohio. His parents were abolitionists and supporters of the Underground Railroad in central Ohio. After briefly attending Kenyon College, Hazlett accepted an appointment to West Point. During his first year, he was court-martialed and suspended for several months, but later graduated on May 6, 1861, fifteenth in his class.
He was initially assigned to the cavalry but was quickly promoted to first lieutenant and assigned to Battery D of the 5th United States Artillery. He was part of the battery during its near annihilation at the First Battle of Bull Run, fought through the battles of the Peninsula Campaign and was in command of the battery by the Second Battle of Bull Run. He commanded the battery at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville.
On July 2, Hazlett and his men man-handled their six three inch, 10 pounder Parrott rifles to the summit of Little Round Top. While standing near the battery during the intense fighting, Brig. Gen. Stephen H. Weed was mortally wounded and asked to see Hazlett. Reportedly, Hazlett came to Weed’s aid and was shot in the head as he knelt to hear what Weed was saying. Hazlett was originally buried at the Jacob Weikert house near Little Round Top. Later, his body was reinterred at Woodlawn Cemetery in his hometown of Zanesville, Ohio.
Hazlett’s brother, John, was killed at the rank of captain commanding a battery at Stones River in December 1862. The two brothers are buried next to each other.
About Brig. Gen. Stephen H. Weed
Stephen Hinsdale Weed was born on November 17, 1831 in Potsdam, New York. He graduated 27th of 46 students in the West Point Class of 1854. He was posted to the artillery and saw service in the west as well as in the Seminole Wars and the Utah War.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, Weed was promoted captain of the newly formed Battery I, 5th U.S. Artillery. By the battle of Fredericksburg, he was charged with commanding the Fifth Corps’s artillery brigade. On June 6, 1863, he left regular service to accept a brigadier generalship in the volunteer service and was given command of a brigade of New York and Pennsylvania troops.
At Gettysburg, Weed came to the assistance of Vincent’s Brigade in the defense of Little Round Top. Weed was mortally wounded in the chest while standing near Haztlett’s guns. His last words on the field were reported as “I would rather die here than that the rebels should gain an inch of this ground.”
Weed was carried to the Weikert farm on Taneytown Road just to the east of Little Round Top where he died early on July 3. Weed was buried in the Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp, a village on Staten Island in Richmond County, New York.
91st Pennsylvania – Weed/Hazlett Monument | Weed/Hazlett Memorial Carving