On June 29, 1863, Union Gen. George G. Meade ordered the Army of the Potomac to Pipe Creek to counter any move toward Washington or Baltimore by Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and to engage the Confederates in battle. Meade established his headquarters at Taneytown and over the next two days watched his exhausted and footsore soldiers march by. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles stood on the porch of the old stone tavern and reviewed his III Corps troops as they arrived on June 30. Pvt. Charles Mattocks of the 17th Maine Infantry wrote that they marched through in columns by platoon while young women sang Union songs and waved handkerchiefs as they passed. After a rest, III Corps marched on to Bridgeport in the afternoon. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock’s II Corps passed through Taneytown about noon on July 1. While resting at the Swope farm, Hancock received an order from Meade to leave his corps, hurry to Gettysburg, and take charge of Union forces there after General John F. Reynolds, the commander, was killed in the battle’s opening moments. At 10 p.m., Meade followed and made his headquarters in the house of Mrs. Lydia Leister, a Carroll County native, while she and her children took refuge in Silver Run.