Gettysburg -The Town
The town of Gettysburg was laid out in the late 1700's by James Gettys,
who purchased this land from part of his father's property. The lots he
assigned in the years before 1786 soon grew into the bustling town it
was by July 1863.
Gettysburg may have been relatively small, but it had something
special to offer: The Lutheran Theological Seminary was established
in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and Gettysburg College.
The town also had shops, a bank, and all of the required 1800's
amenities. Gettysburg was renouned for its carriage business, and
one of the local citizens had a carriage-trim shop right in his home.
Over two-thousand people made up this small but important community.
Rumor dictates that Gettysburg was brought under siege by
Confederate soldiers first marching into town because the rebels were in
search of shoes; the southerners had heard that a vast quantity of shoes
could be found nearby. This bears evidence to the region of Gettysburg's
superiority in mercantile goods.