As Maj. Gen. Robert Rodes approached Gettysburg during the late morning on July 1, he faced a dilemma. A line of cavalry videttes from Col. Thomas C. Devin's Brigade blocked his route into the town along the road from nearby Middletown (today's Biglerville). The division commander deployed sharpshooters from three of his brigades to confront the cavalry. While the sharpshooter detachments were engaged with Devin's troopers, Rodes spotted "a prominent hill" on his right that overlooked the area northwest of town. The problem was that he had no clear idea of the terrain along that part of his front.
The only cavalry that accompanied the division that day was Company A from the 1st Maryland Cavalry Battalion under Capt. Frank Bond. Those troopers, however, had already been sent to escort one General Ewell's staff officers with messages for Gen. A. P. Hill. An obscure account in the Confederate Veteran Magazine helps clarify his solution. The story comes from Lt. J. Coleman Alderson of the 36th Virginia Cavalry Battalion in Albert Jenkins' cavalry brigade. A few day earlier, he had been sent from the area outside Harrisburg to the town of York with dispatches for Maj. Gen. Jubal Early. He remained with Early's command and accompanied those troops to Heidlersburg on June 30, where he was temporarily attached to Rodes' division staff.
As one of the lone horsemen at hand, Rodes turned to the cavalryman for help in carrying out the reconnaissance. "About ten o'clock on the morning of July 1 I rode up to the top of Oak Hill, some distance north of Pennsylvania College, and saw that it commanded the whole Federal army," Alderson recalled. "I immediately reported this fact to Gen. Rodes in the presence of Gen. Ewell." With that, Rodes soon moved his forces into place on the nearby hill directly on the flank of the Federal I Corps.
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