John Fulton Reynolds died on the battlefield at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863.

That's as much as many people know about the general, who grew up in Lancaster and made the Army his career.

Arlene Harris thinks that's a shame.

"He set the stage for the victory of Gettysburg at the cost of his life," she says.

She should know.

Since 1995, Harris has been a student of Reynolds and the American Civil War. She has lectured on Reynolds' life. She has participated in battle re-enactments.

But more than that, Harris so reveres the man who died fighting the first Confederates on the battlefield 147 years ago that she spends days of her free time caring for his gravesite in Lancaster Cemetery.

She and her husband, Steve, have been working in the old cemetery, off East Lemon Street, for four years. One or both travel to Lancaster from their home in Maple Shade, N.J., about twice a month.

They have planted flowers, mowed grass, trimmed weeds and maintained the stones of Reynolds, his parents, and his brothers and sisters.

They are so committed to Reynolds and this cemetery that they have purchased cemetery plots 60 feet away where they will be buried some day.

Why this devotion to a man and his gravesite in a town two hours away, on a good day, by way of the Schuylkill Expressway and other challenging highways?

Harris's younger brother died in 1995. The two were very close, Harris says, but he was buried at sea. So she had no tangible way to honor his memory.

"It helped fill in a space for my losing my brother. It's a deep connection," she says of her decisions to study Reynolds' life and then maintain his gravesite.

"When I started reading about John Fulton Reynolds, I found he was very much like my brother," she explains. "He was high-principled. He wanted things to be honorable."

She says caring for the cemetery plot is "the most important of all the history things I do," because it helps honor the memory of a great American.

"It was a tragedy not only to his family but to this country to lose him," she maintains.

The first days of July are particularly meaningful to Harris.

"While everyone else was celebrating Independence Day in 1863," she notes, "Lancastrians were attending the funeral of John Reynolds."

Late Thursday morning, Harris, without her husband, is cleaning Reynolds' gravestone and trimming the grass around it when John and Jeanne Motto arrive to pay their respects at the general's grave.

It is the approximate time Reynolds was killed late on the morning of July 1, 1863.

The Mottos live in Easton, Md., but have spent considerable time in Pennsylvania over the past few years examining Reynolds documents and sites connected with his life.

Motto has completed but not yet published a historical novel about Reynolds and Kate Hewitt, the woman he planned to marry.

The Mottos thank Harris for caring for the gravesite and exchange thoughts about Reynolds' place in history.

"They always skip over him or get it completely wrong," says Motto of how many historians have treated the general.

Harris, of course, completely agrees.

"If I can educate some people of the general's value to this country," she says, "I'll be satisfied."

Contact The Scribbler: jbrubaker@lnpnews.com or 291-8781.