The article below by Dr. Marek Chodakieiwcz appeared in the Daily American on July 5.
Somerset resident Capt. Gratian Yatsevitch (USAR ret.) walked Wednesday pensively on Howe Avenue in Gettysburg.
One hundred and fifty years ago that was his great-grandfather’s encampment on the bloody battlefield. Yatsevitch is a direct descendant of Brevet Major General Albion Parris Howe. Born in 1818 to a New England physician, Gen. Howe was a West Point graduate. His first major deployment was in the 1847 Mexican-American War where he fought under the command of Gen. Winfield Scott, a hero of the War of 1812.
Howe was just one generation away from the brave men who fought in the American Revolution. And in combat against the Mexican troops his comrades in arms included other young West Point graduates, most notably Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, George G. Meade, James Longstreet, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson: soon to be fratricidal adversaries during the Civil War.
