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Forward to a Friend Become a Member Learn more about Upcoming Events: Saturday Morning Special Field Trips Conference on the Art of Command in the Civil War "The 1862 Valley Campaign" BROWN! Newsletter Archive: January 2008
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The Mosby Heritage Area Association Newsletter From The President Scroll down this newsletter for more details. This is our first fundraising event of 2009 and we would love to see a big crowd come out to support MHAA, hear Cokie Roberts, and tour the gardens at Oak Hill. Make your reservation today! We had a great turnout on Saturday, June 13, at the Inn At Kelley’s Ford for our second annual Mosby Ranger Descendant Reunion. More than a hundred folks showed up, thanks to the terrific organizing by our Executive Director Judy Reynolds. Thanks also to the volunteers and Board Members who pitched in to make this event a great success. Scroll down for more on this great event, along with pictures by MHAA Board member Doug Lees, a man of many talents. Thank you for your interest in MHAA and in preserving our special area of the country. We look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events. For more info, go to our website, www.mosbyheritagearea.org, scroll down, or call us at 540-687-6681. Marc Leepson Cokie Roberts Talk at Oak Hill Roberts, a commentator for ABC News and National Public Radio, along with her husband, Steven V. Roberts, writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column. Both are contributing editors to USA Weekend, and together they wrote From This Day Forward, an account of their more than forty-year marriage and other marriages in American history. Admission to this fundraising event for the Mosby Heritage Area Association is $100. With a limited number of seats, we strongly encourage you to RSVP ASAP. Call 540-687-6681 or visit www.mosbyheritagearea.org to make your reservation and payment online today. This event is being made possible through the generous support of Thomas and Gayle DeLashmutt, the stewards of James Monroe’s Oak Hill, a National Historic Landmark located on the west side of U.S. Route 15, two miles north of the intersection of Route 15 and Route 50 at Gilbert’s Corner. In her best-selling book Founding Mothers, Cokie Roberts paid homage to the heroic women whose patriotism and sacrifice helped create a new nation. In Ladies of Liberty, she presents a colorful blend of biographical portraits and behind-the-scenes vignettes chronicling women’s public roles and private responsibilities.
Prince William Civil War Heritage Trail Launched With the Sesquicentennial (150th) Anniversary of the Civil War fast approaching, efforts are in full swing across Virginia to prepare for the commemoration. The Prince William County Historic Preservation Division began an ambitious plan to place Virginia Civil War Trails at all significant Civil War related historic sites within the County. With the help of dedicated volunteers such as Mark Trbovich and Jim Burgess of MNBP, this project is almost complete. In the past two years over 15 signs have been installed by the County with another three planned. In May 2009, Prince William County, the City of Manassas and the City of Manassas Park joined efforts and produced a County wide map brochure that links all of the Civil War Trails markers, battlefields and historic sites within the Prince William region. This “Prince William Civil War Heritage Trail” will enable visitors to the area to tap into the richness of the County’s Civil War heritage. This full color brochure includes a map with all the sites marked, contact information for all the parks, museums and historic sites and a Prince William Civil War history timeline. 50,000 copies have been printed with another 100,000 in production now. This collaborative effort has allowed many lesser known Civil War stories to be told to a broader audience. Prince William County has one of the nation’s richest Civil War stories filled with battles, campaigns, encampments and hardships on the home front. This heritage trail is just the beginning of Prince William County collaborative efforts to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War. If you are interested in assisting in this great opportunity or to get a copy of the Prince William Civil War Heritage Trail brochure, please feel free to contact Rob Orrison of the Prince William County Historic Preservation Division at 703-365-7895 or rorrison@pwcgov.org NEWS from the Development Committee Our entire board is committed to our mission and has been extremely generous in their support. We ask that you renew your support when your membership and donation appeal comes to you because our success is due only to your financial support. On July 16, we will be putting on the very special Cokie Roberts event at James Monroe’s home, Oak Hill. This will be a big fundraiser to support our budget. If possible, please consider becoming a $500 sponsor to this event. You will get program recognition, a signed copy of her book and your donation will be matched by a member of our board of directors. You will enjoy a great talk in an extraordinary setting and your $500 donation will bring in $1,000 to help us get through these “best of times and worst of times.” Respectfully submitted, Cavaliers, Courage, and Coffee--and Plaid The American South was enchanted with the history of Old Scotland in the years before the Civil War. If Northerners were reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the 1850s, Southerners were reading Ivanhoe, the work of famed Scottish author Sir Walter Scott. Scott’s work was inevitably romantic and chivalric. Southerners also loved the work of Scottish poet laureate Robert Burns, whose 250th birthday is being celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic this year. Mosby’s men clearly saw a parallel with Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, William Wallace, and other earlier Scots who had opposed an invading tyrant. Mosby himself, a third-generation Scottish-American, well remembered hearing his Scottish grandfather, James McLaurine—of Clan MacLaren—tell stories of outwitting the British during the American Revolution. Mosby’s men craved the writing of Burns and Scott—often reading to a rapt Southern belle of an evening. Mosby even referred to his rangers as “my Tam O’Shanter rebels” in reference to Burns’ famous poem about the ne’er-do-well Tam. The Scottish spirit of independence never left these Virginia Rangers; they never surrendered, preferring simply to disband into the mists at the end of the War. The legends of them still abound o’er the landscape of this hauntingly beautiful region of Virginia. The Mosby Heritage Area’s volunteer Gray Ghost Interpretive Group will seek to bring that oddly distant Scottish-Southern link into focus with their July program of stories, reminiscences, music, and poetry, all performed in the dim light of evening and of candle lanterns.. “Cavaliers, Courage, Coffee—and Plaid” will be presented Saturday evening July 11th at the Caleb Rector House, which sits just off Route 50 between Middleburg and Upperville at 1461 Atoka Road, Marshall VA 20115 (opposite the Atoka Store). Call the Mosby Heritage Area Association office at (540) 687-5578 for more information. Feel free to join us in your plaid, or even in your kilt! We’ll be wearing ours!
The 12th Annual Conference on The Art of Command in The Civil War In that first year of his term, Lincoln turned to 35 year old General George McClellan to lead the Union army to victory by defeating the Confederate forces and by taking Richmond. By the summer of 1862 McClellan had led his army to the very gates of Richmond and total victory seemed just days away. General McClellan’s plan called for the forces left back to protect Washington to join him for the final push to victory. Both Confederate president Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee saw clearly that this consolidation of force must be prevented at all costs. So General Thomas J. Jackson was given an independent command to come north down the Shenandoah Valley to stir up trouble by bold maneuver and aggressive action. Jackson’s success despite his small force caused Lincoln to change McClellan’s plans and to hold back the reinforcements which McClellan wanted and expected. That decision enabled General Lee to successfully attack and drive the Union Army back away from Richmond. Stonewall Jackson was already a hero for his famous stand at First Manassas (Bull Run) that enabled Confederate victory there in July of 1861. Now, in the summer of 1862, he became a super hero to the people of the south and a southern general sullenly respected by the people of the north. Childs Burden John Brown Programs On October 24, 2009 the Saturday Morning Special program will explore the topic of Slavery and Flight in the Mosby Heritage Area from 9:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. Meeting at the old Mount Zion Church Cemetery on Old Waterford Road, Leesburg, opposite the former school board offices, we will examine the situation of slavery in the region and explore how the secretive Underground Railroad worked. This will involve a one-mile hike into historic Waterford, Virginia. At 7:30 p.m. on the same evening of October 24, 2009 the Grey Ghost Interpretive Group will present John Mosby, John Brown. Our usual “Cavaliers, Courage, and Coffee” program will be devoted to a look at the situation of the spring of 1865 in the Mosby Heritage Area with a long backward glance at how the train of events began with fearsome reports of slave insurrection in the autumn of 1859. On Saturday November 7, 2009 MHAA will sponsorBROWN! John Brown’s 1859 Raid and the Ensuing Panic in Northern Virginia. In this exciting, immersive, and interactive field experience, participants are oriented to the Northern Virginia of 1859 and to the institution of slavery locally. Shadowing John Brown and the raiders, participants visit the Kennedy Farm where the plans were laid, Harpers Ferry where the plan was executed, the Virginia countryside where panic ensued, and end with a thoughful march in the dark to Harpers Ferry as the raiders once did. The program ends with a country supper and discussion at Historic Morven Park near Leesburg. Time: 8:45 a.m. to 9:15 p.m. Mosby Rangers Descendant's Reunion In the past, reunions were held regularly by the Rangers, beginning in January 1895 with a reunion at Alexandria that Mosby himself attended and dwindling to a halt in 1928 with a last reunion in downtown Manassas. The reunions were often attended by those hoping to catch a glimpse of the famed Rangers. No living Rangers could attend the 2009 reunion, of course, but their spirits were in attendance. Their descendants came from Ohio, Kansas, Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania, as well as Virginia. The storied Fount Beattie and Edward Francis “Ned” Thompson were particularly well represented by their descendants. There were representatives from every company, with the most having ancestors who served in Company D. David Goetz gave a talk on the nature of Col. John S. Mosby which was followed by Gary Carroll, portraying Col. Mosby, delivering the speech that Mosby gave at the first Ranger Reunion in Alexandria, Virginia in 1895. Members of the Gray Ghost Interpretive Group, Richard Gillespie, Clay Steward, and Eric Buckland, told Ranger stories in first person. One of the highlights of the program was the role call of Rangers. As Don Hakenson read the names of the Rangers represented, their descendants stood. Everyone who attended received a commemorative badge of the reunion. There are extra badges available for those who would like one. Visit the MHAA store at our office or online at www.mosbyheritagearea.org. The Tuscarora Brass Band provided stirring Civil War period music during the program and gave a concert following lunch. Bill and Linda Willoughby, owners of the Inn at Kelly’s Ford, provided a cannon-firing demonstration, and later a tour of Kelly’s Ford Battlefield in their 1947 Studebaker truck, “Alexander.” The Mosby Heritage Area Association collected information brought by descendants about their Ranger ancestors. Photographs, documents, newspaper clippings, and more were brought to the reunion for scanning and sharing. This information will be compiled and copies given to the Thomas Balch Library in Leesburg, Fauquier County Public Library in Warrenton, and the Manassas Museum. The day was followed by a Cavaliers, Courage and Coffee program at Atoka. Although a terrific electrical storm with a deluge of rain hit the village twenty minutes into the program, the game audience and plucky Gray Ghost Interpretive Group crew played on by flickering lightning, guttering candles, and emphatic peals of thunder. “It definitely gave the program a little atmosphere,” said MHAA Director of Education Rich Gillespie. Refreshments and conversation by candlelight followed the program. It took time for power to be restored in the village of Atoka.
Site of the Month- Mannassas Museum System Current temporary exhibits through September 1 include Journey Through Hallowed Ground: Birthplace of the American Ideal, featuring the stunning photographs of National Geographic photographers; and Women in Railroading, a study of six women who worked in the railroad industry. Cows to Condos, an exhibit detailing the urbanization of the region, opens in October, and the exhibit Virginia Women in History, opens in November. Several popular programs will be offered at the Museum this summer and fall. Check www.manassasmuseum.org for the complete listing of programs and events scheduled for the Summer and Fall or call 703-368-1873 for more information. Manassas Museum System
Did You Know? MHAA Store:
Reunion Badges The commemorative badge consists of a button inside a red rosette with a red and gray ribbon. The button has “43rd Bttn. Va. Cav.” written above a picture of Col. Mosby with “Mosby’s Rangers” written under the picture. The red ribbon, which is on top of the gray ribbon, has “Second Celebration of Mosby’s Rangers Descendents” written in gold. Crossed sabers and the year 2009 are at the bottom of the red ribbon. The badges are now available from MHAA for $15 each. To order online, visit the MHAA web site at www.mosbyheritagearea.org.
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©2007 Mosby Heritage Area Association • All Rights Reserved |
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