The Remaining Clue? Not Always... Gettysburg's Harvest of Death Location, continued...

     Allow your blog host to present two idioms that we all know, but sometimes lose sight of. The first is "haste makes waste", and the other, "cooler heads prevail." Thus I present an object lesson in allowing oneself to be cautious when getting off on a tangent, and having other issues distract at the same time. The earlier version of this post, which examined the possibility of the famed 90 foot Poplar tree on Cemetery Hill being visible in the "Harvest of Death" photograph, turns out to be a prime example. And that material is thus being stricken from the posting so as not to allow a continual misleading on the subject. So, lesson learned, "don't get fogged and hastily post/and or publish something before you calmly think it out." Also, one must remember to be thankful to friends and peers who gently point out your apparent misjudgement. Caution is something never to cast aside, anywhere in life.

Finally, I will continue with the image below, which remains correct in illustrating my long standing theory of the "Harvest of Death" image location. It basically looks east, toward my hypothesized location, from a view that bisects the two images' angles of view. The words in white present the vicinity of the bodies that appear scattered. Thus, the two Gardner images retain the nececessary angles of view of northeast for the "Field Where Reynolds Fell", and southwest for "A Harvest of Death", respectively.

                           Looking roughly east from Reynolds Avenue, across the field where

the retreating First Corps escaped to Seminary Ridge. The middle

distance is the theorized vicinity of the Harvest of Death bodies.

The above map precludes any prior assumption of the "Harvest of Death"

photograph possibly having the Poplar tree on Cemetery Hill in its horizon line.

There is potential folly in attempting to do work of this nature from a distance of

a three hour road trip. One needs to continually walk the terrain to know it, for

being at ground level certainly helps to keep the researcher anchored to the subject. 

I will return to Gettysburg in the next few months to continue my efforts to find the

 exact camera locations for "then and now" comparisons. In the meantime, I am

 comfortable with the approximate locations illustrated, however, ground truthing is vital.

Be sure to read the previous blog post here, and its attached links, for complete details of my study.

Also, be on the lookout for Garry Adelman and Tim Smith's future posting on Gettysburg Daily, where they intend to examine and debunk several theories on the location of the Gardner images, included those of myself and National Park Service Historian, Scott Hartwig.