Shipp Monument

Shipp Monument. . , Before you stands the First Lieutenant William Ewen Shipp Monument. William Shipp was born near Asheville in 1861 and raised in Lincolnton After attending the Carolina Military Institute in Charlotte and later West Point (where he was the first southerner to graduate after the Civil War), Shipp was assigned, at his request to the Tenth Cavalry, a unit comprised of African American soldiers known as the "Buffalo Soldiers." As a second lieutenant, he saw hard service with his unit on the western frontier., Shipp was promoted to first lieutenant in 1889. Declining assignments that would have kept him out of Cuba, Shipp joined his unit in active service in the Spanish-American War. Shipp met his death in the charge on San Juan Hill during the Battle of Santiago on July 1, 1898. This monument, erected with the encouragement of President Theodore Roosevelt, who served with Shipp in Cuba, was dedicated with great fanfare on May 20, 1902. Roosevelt traveled to Charlotte and visited the Shipp monument on October 19, 1905. President Roosevelt wrote of Shipp, "What a gallant fellow he was!", This memorial was originally located at the front of the Mint on West Trade Street and was repositioned to the southeast corner of the site when the Post Office expanded in 1934. In 2018, the granite obelisk returned to the front lawn facing Mint Street as part of the Courthouse modernization project.