06/17/2026
(Civil War medicine facts to get you through the longest day of the week.)
President Richard Nixon and Gettysburg
54 years ago, June 17, 1972, the Watergate break-in occurred. The subsequent cover up and additional events lead to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Nixon had an ancestor that fought and died in the Civil War? On July 2, 1863, at the Battle of Gettysburg, Nixon’s Great Grandfather George Nixon of Company B, 73rd Ohio Infantry, was shot in the hip. He lay in a field on Smiths Ridge for hours in the thick of fighting and crying out in pain. The 73rd Ohio’s young drummer boy, Richard Enderlin, risked his life to rescue Nixon from the field under enemy fire. The act of heroism earned Enderlin a Medal of Honor. Unfortunately, George Nixon did not survive the wound he suffered and died at the Spangler Farm field hospital 12 days later on July 14th, 1863. In 1954, then Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife Pat Nixon would often come to Gettysburg as part of their formal duties, on work trips to visit President Dwight Eisenhower, who famously considered his Gettysburg farmhouse the “Summer White House.” While in Gettysburg, Nixon would always visit his ancestor George Nixon’s grave and lay flowers there.
