In 1849, a 21-year-old artist named David Forney spent an afternoon in nature south of his hometown (likely around the Rose farm and the Michael Bushman farm). He was apparently sketching and painting, and when he was finished for the day, he carved his first initial, his last name, and the year into the rock on which he sat. In doing so, he etched his name into history and became a stop for tens of thousands of people wandering around Devil’s Den and Little Round Top. The rock he sat atop is known as Elephant Rock, and it sits near the famous boulders of Devil’s Den. (Check out a photo of Forney’s etching in this article.)

David was part of the extensive Forney family of Gettysburg—his parents, Samuel Shriver Forney (Samuel was a relative of George Washington Shriver) and Elizabeth Herr Swope, had ten children. His Forney grandparents had fifteen children. David was an artist throughout his life. In 1850, a year after his etching, the census shows him living at home and working as an artist.

After the war, he moved south to Virginia and lived near his older sister Josephine and her husband, Reverend William Roedel. The 1870 census shows David working as a portrait painter. Late in life, he apparently acquired a stake in a local mine.

Less well remembered is a tragic incident involving David in 1865. In late mid-December 1865, shortly after the war’s end, David was living in Virginia and went hunting with his brother-in-law, Reverend Roedel. According the newspaper accounts of the time, the men flushed a group of partridges from some bushes. David raised his shotgun, which fired prematurely—the reverend caught the majority of the blast in his shoulder. Wounded severely and in great pain, Reverend Roedel rushed home with David. Doctors tended to him, and though he suffered greatly, all believed that he was likely to survive. However, about two weeks after the accident, the reverend became gravely ill, lingered another day or two, then passed away the day after Christmas.

The tragedy was profound for all involved. Both in their 30s, William and Josephine had no children of their own, though William ran a school and served as a Lutheran minister. William and David must have been close—David is mentioned specifically in William’s 1863 will, wherein William notes that David is an artist and bequeaths to him an “enamelled head which was . . . dug from the foundations of the walls of the city of Paris in France.”

David was also terribly affected. Like his sister and brother-in-law, he was in his mid-thirties. He remained unmarried until 1886 when, at age 58, he married the 29-year-old Nancy Jane Warren. Together, they had four girls and boy. Their firstborn daughter, Daisy, died in infancy, though the rest of their children lived to adulthood. They named their fourth daughter Josephine Roedel Forney.