Taneytown

Taneytown. Meade’s Pipe Creek Plan. On June 29, 1863, Union Gen. George G. Meade ordered the Army of the Potomac to Pipe Creek to counter any move toward Washington or Baltimore by Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and to engage the Confederates in battle. Meade established his headquarters here at Taneytown and over the next two days watched his exhausted and footsore soldiers march by. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles stood on the porch of the old stone tavern and reviewed his III Corps troops as they arrived on June 30. Pvt. Charles Mattocks, 17th Maine Infantry wrote, “We marched through in columns by platoon. The young damsels sang Union songs and waived handkerchiefs to us as we passed along.” After a rest, III Corps marched on to Bridgeport in the afternoon. , Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock’s II Corps passed through Taneytown about noon on July 1. While resting at the Swope farm, Hancock received an order from Meade to leave his corps, hurry to Gettysburg, and take charge of Union forces there, as General John F. Reynolds, the commander, had been killed in the battle's opening moments. At 10 p.m., Meade followed, making his headquarters in the house of Mrs. Lydia Leister, a Carroll County native, who with her children took refuge in Silver Run.