Dedicated: November 1905.
Location: Ayres Avenue near main regimental monument to the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves. Located on the north side of the loop in Ayres Avenue. Marks place where Colonel Charles Frederick Taylor, commanding regiment, fell on July 2, 1863 and died “sword in hand at the head of his regiment, for the land he loved.”
Description: Marker is a rough hewn granite monolith with polished panels on the east and west sides with incised inscriptions and likeness of a cap and bucktail. Overall height is 4.7 feet. A marker was initially placed in 1878, but it since removed and replaced by this monument in 1905.
About Colonel Charles Frederick Taylor
Born on February 6, 1840 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Taylor was known as “Fred” to his family. His three brothers included the celebrated poet and traveler Bayard Taylor, Union Army Colonel William W. Taylor, and Union Army surgeon John Howard Taylor. He was a farmer at the outbreak of the Civil War.
Taylor was unanimously elected as captain of Company H in the 42nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in 1861. Taylor acted as the regiment’s commander at Fredericksburg where he was wounded in the shoulder, and his horse was shot out from under him. He was promoted to colonel on March 1, 1863. He was the youngest colonel in the Army of the Potomac.
At Gettysburg, Taylor, on foot, led a charge down the hill across Plum Run, drove the Confederates back from a stone wall and through the Rose Woods to the edge of The Wheatfield. It was here he fell, pierced through the heart by a bullet. His remains were returned to Kennett Square and interred at Longwood Cemetery on July 8, 1863. Brigadier General Samuel W. Crawford, praised him as “the gallant and brave leader of the Bucktail Regiment” who “fell while leading his regiment to the charge. No braver soldier and patriot has given his life for his cause.”