Boulders and Quartz Stone: The Spot Where General Stevens Fell
The boulders and quartz stone beside this fence mark the location where Union General Isaac Stevens fell with the flag of the 79th New York “Highlanders”. While leading the Highlanders up the grassy slope, General Stevens was shot in the head and died instantly.
In 1883, Hazard Stevens, General Stevens’ son and who was serving as the General’s adjutant at the time of the Battle, and Charles Walcott, of the 21st Massachusetts, returned to this field and identified the locations where Generals Stevens and Kearny were killed. The farm was then owned by Confederate veteran John Ballard and his wife, Mary Reid Ballard. John Ballard marked this location, where General Stevens fell, with a mound of boulders. He later added the white quartz stone.
In 1915 Ballard’s son, James W. Ballard, said of his father and this stone, “…an ex-Confederate maimed in that great struggle, with weak hands but with a heart strong in its respect for a brave fallen foeman, planted that stone to mark that spot…with no services other than the reverence one brave man has for another.”