Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church was founded in 1836 to accommodate the Lutheran residents of Gettysburg who preferred to have their worship services conducted entirely in the English language. The older Lutheran congregation in the community, which was known as St. James and which dates from the early days of the town, was then sharing a church building at the corner of South Stratton and High Streets with the German Reformed congregation. Most of the services in this union church were in the German language. Many of the early worshippers at Christ Church were faculty members and students of the local seminary and Pennsylvania College (now Gettysburg College), where the instruction was entirely English. Townspeople who had no direct affiliation with either of these institutions, but who wanted to be part of an “English Lutheran” church, were also among the early members.

Horatio Stockton Howell (August 14, 1820 – July 1, 1863) was a Union Army chaplain killed in downtown Gettysburg on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War.

In 1853 he was called on to serve the Presbyterian Church in the small hamlet of Delaware Water Gap in northeastern Pennsylvania. There he also ran a private school for boys.

On the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1, 1863, Confederate forces engaged Union troops to the west of town, near the Lutheran Theological Seminary. Medical personnel of the I Corps selected the College Lutheran Church at #44 Chambersburg Street as a divisional field hospital. (The building is now called Christ Lutheran Church.) A civilian resident of Gettysburg recalled that 140 men were laid in the sanctuary around midday, beds being improvised by laying boards on top of the pews. Limbs were being amputated and thrown out of the church windows, piling up on the ground below.

Late in the afternoon, the Confederates began to push the Union troops back through town. Shortly after 4 o'clock, the overwhelmed First Corps soldiers fell back through the streets of Gettysburg to the heights on Cemetery Ridge and Cemetery Hill south of town. A chaotic scene ensued as jubilant Confederates followed closely on their heels. As the Union retreat swept toward the College Lutheran Church, Chaplain Howell was assisting members of the medical staff inside the building. After hearing shots outside, Howell turned to a nearby surgeon and said, "I will step outside for a moment and see what the trouble is."

Sgt. Archibald Snow followed Howell out of the church door. Later, Snow wrote the most detailed account of what happened:

"I had just had my wound dressed and was leaving through the front door just behind Chaplain Howell, at the same time when the advance skirmishers of the Confederates were coming up the street on a run. Howell, in addition to his shoulder straps & uniform, wore the straight dress sword prescribed in Army Regulations for chaplains... The first skirmisher arrived at the foot of the church steps just as the chaplain and I came out. Placing one foot on the first step the soldier called on the chaplain to surrender; but Howell, instead of throwing up his hands promptly and uttering the usual 'I surrender,' attempted some dignified explanation to the effect that he was a noncombatant and as such was exempt from capture, when a shot from the skirmisher's rifle ended the controversy... The man who fired the shot stood on the exact spot where the memorial tablet has since been erected, and Chaplain Howell, fell upon the landing at the top of the steps."

Howell died at age 42. Following the battle, his remains were shipped to Brooklyn, New York and laid to rest in Green-Wood Cemetery.