After General Robert E. Lee’s invading army overran the Union garrison at Winchester, Virginia, on June 15, 1863, elements of the 1st New York “Lincoln” Cavalry covered the retreat, and Company C under Captain William Boyd continued to harass the Confederates as they crossed into Pennsylvania. On June 22, Boyd’s 35 men narrowly avoided an ambush at the William Fleming farmhouse. When Corporal William Rihl, a 21-year-old Philadelphia native, and Sergeant Milton Cafferty rode out in front of the house to reconnoiter, Confederates fired a point-blank volley. Cafferty suffered a serious leg wound, and Rihl was struck in the head and died instantly, becoming the first Union soldier killed on Pennsylvania soil. Although the events at Gettysburg soon overshadowed the skirmish at Fleming farm, the people of Greencastle and veterans of the 1st New York Cavalry remembered him. On June 22, 1886, Greencastle’s G.A.R. Post 438 reburied Rihl with full military honors where he fell, and one year later Pennsylvania’s state legislator erected a monument over his new grave honoring him as “a humble but brave defender of the Union.”
