Abner Doubleday was born on June 26, 1819, in Ballston Spa, New York, and spent his childhood at a home at the corner of Washington and Fenwick. He attended schools at Auburn and Cooperstown, graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1842 with a commission in the artillery, served in the Mexican War under General Zachary Taylor, and fought in Indian hostilities in Texas and against the Seminole Indians in Florida. In 1861 he was assigned to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, and on April 12, 1861, he is credited with firing the Union's first shot in defense of the fort. During the Civil War he led troops at the second battle of Bull Run, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, and at Gettysburg he took command of the First Corps of the Army of the Potomac when Maj. Gen. John J. Reynolds was killed, helping fend off a vastly superior Confederate army under Lee and enabling the Union army to hold the high ground south of Gettysburg. From 1863 to 1865 he served as president of military commissions and remained in continuous command until retired. Other accomplishments attributed to him include the belief that he devised baseball at Cooperstown in 1839, and after the Civil War he developed the first cable operated trolley car in San Francisco, California. In later years he relocated to Mendham, New Jersey, where he died on January 26, 1893, and he was buried in Section 1 of Arlington National Cemetery.