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Upcoming Events: Forward to a Friend Become a Member Learn more about Newsletter Archive: January 2008
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The Mosby Heritage Area Association Newsletter Statement From The President We have more good things planned for the month of October and into the fall, including our signature event, the annual Civil War Conference, which will be held in Middleburg October 3-5. It’s still not too late to register. As usual, the conference’s coordinator, Childs Burden, one of MHAA’s founders, has a stellar line-up of Civil War experts on tap for the weekend, which also includes a guided tour of the Antietam Battlefield. For details, just scroll down. While you’re scrolling, check out the fantastic two-day event that our Education Director, Rich Gillespie, has created on John Brown’s Raid. It will take place November 7-8. This is a hands-on living history program that takes you back to the days Brown’s Raid and the chaos that ensued in this part of the world. For those of you who are not members of MHAA, I urge you to join us in our ongoing mission to help preserve the history and the landscape of our special section of the Northern Virginia Piedmont. Marc Leepson,
Civil War Conference – Revisiting Antietam During the summer, we have been highlighting the speakers for MHAA’s Civil War Conference. This month we take a look at Jeffry Wert. Jeffry, an old friend of the conference, this being his fifth year as a speaker, will speak on Saturday at 9:45 a.m. on “Corn Acres of Hell.” Jeffrey Wert is author of seven books on the Civil War, including From Winchester to Cedar Creek; Mosby’s Rangers; General James Longstreet: the Confederacy’s Most Controversial Soldier; Custer: the Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer; A Brotherhood of Valor: the Common Soldiers of the Stonewall Brigade, CSA and the Iron Brigade, USA; Gettysburg, Day Three; and The Sword of Lincoln: the Army of the Potomac. In addition to his books, Jeffrey Wert’s articles regularly appear in Blue and Gray and Civil War Illustrated magazines. He is currently working on a biography of JEB Stuart. Jeffry Wert earned a M.A. in history at Penn State University and his B.A. in history, cum laude at Lockhaven University. He has recently retired after a long career teaching history at Penns Valley Area High School in Spring Mills, Pennsylvania. Other scheduled speakers for the 2008 Conference include: PETER CARMICHAEL, GARY ECELBARGER, LESLIE GORDON, KIM HOLIEN, ROBERT K. KRICK, STEPHEN R. POTTER and, DENNIS FRYE. For additional information and the complete Conference program, please visit the MHAA website: www.mosbyheritagearea.org (Events Page). Individual copies or quantities of the Civil War Conference brochures are available on request from the MHAA office or online. Spaces are available, so register today! We accept walk-ins.
Heritage Hero Award Presented to The evening began with wine in the gardens and a tour of Huntland, owned by Dr. Betsee Parker. The brick house, originally know as ‘New Lisbon’, was built in 1837 by William Benton. Benton had earlier been employed by James Monroe to help build Oak Hill, the president’s home in Loudoun County. Benton’s l house, located at the crossroads called Pot House, consisted of a two story, five course American bond brick structure. Additions of single story brick wings were added in 1915 by Joseph B. Thomas. Thomas also built the impressive stable and kennel structures making Huntland a hunt country estate without rival. Gayle DeLashmutt, vice-president of MHAA, welcomed guests to the event and presented U.S. Senator John Warner MHAA’s Heritage Hero Award for 2008. Senator Warner is the third recipient of the award. Previous honorees are Karen Hughes White, director of the African-American Museum of Fauquier County and Robert Smith of Upperville. Senator Warner spoke briefly of the importance of preserving our heritage for future generations. Senator Warner’s remarks were followed by a wonderful musical presentation of American music. Joshua Sekoski and Ashleigh Rabbitt Sekoski accompanied by pianist Tyson Deaton presented a program of American opera, Broadway show tunes and folksongs.
BROWN! BROWN! will immerse you in the “peculiar” situation of slavery in Northern Virginia on the eve of the Civil War, simulate a nighttime walk on the Underground Railroad, debate the political options before the Civil War, and follow in the footsteps of John Brown and his raiders as you shadow them when they come to the region and ignite the firestorm. Each participant follows one raider, but also feels the angst of the slave’s situation andthe terror experienced by Northern Virginians in the wake of John Brown’s Raid This weekend is collegial and participatory, and also is heart-pounding, emotional and intense. The program comes with a history of historical epiphany for participants. Some walking will be involved, including by cloak of night, as participants experience being slaves sneaking to a station on the Underground Railroad on the back roads of Loudoun and later being Brown’s Raiders making their way into Harpers Ferry as they march beside the rushing Potomac. Suggestions for simple background reading will be provided. You’ll long remember this experience! Mosby Heritage Area Association Education Director and former teacher Rich Gillespie has designed and will conduct this program, with the fine historical interpreters of the Gray Ghost Interpretive Group (GGIG) doing period sketches in costume throughout. GGIG is known for its production of Cavaliers, Courage, and Coffee at Atoka these past four years. This program begins at 6:45 p.m. on Friday evening at Historic Morven Park, the plantation of Thomas Swann, Jr. in 1859, and ends inside the Engine House at Harpers Ferry, where John Brown was captured on Saturday night. Sites will be used in Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland to tell this hair-raising tale. Billed as “an adventure in time,” this program comes with a history of memorable occurrences. Participants will be responsible for their own lodging on Friday and Saturday evenings. We have rooms blocked for $79 per night, with breakfast, at the Country Inn and Suites in Loudoun for those coming from afar until October 20, 2008. Country Inn and Suites can be reached at 703-435-2700. Mention that you are coming for the Mosby Heritage Area Association’s John Brown weekend to get this discount rate. You can also go to www.countryinns.com/mosbybrownretreat to book your accommodations directly with them online. Help is also available from the Loudoun Convention and Visitors Association www.visitloudoun.org at 800-752-6118 ext. 11 or from the Mosby Heritage Area Association at 540-687-6681. A participant fee of $120 will be charged for this 2-day program. Registration forms are available at www.mosbyheritagearea.org . Use the links below for a registration form and the itinerary for the event.
Final Cavaliers, Courage, & Coffee Program of 2008 MHAA’s Gray Ghost Interpretive Group will offer its final lantern-lit program of the season on Saturday evening November 1st at Atoka beginning at 7:30 p.m. This has been a great season, with a total of nine programs, presented at Atoka, Front Royal, Millwood, and Aldie. We’ve enjoyed excellent attendance at most programs. The presentations strive to build interest in our region’s history and its historic landscape to encourage citizen involvement with the preservation of this resource. Those attending receive Profiting from Preservation, MHAA’s preservation pitch, plus other handouts on programs and stewardship opportunities. Our Gray Ghost Interpretive Group (GGIG) volunteer corps now has over twenty active members, including teachers, living historians, military officers, government employees, high school students, college students, and retirees. Each exudes passion in the stories they tell. All design their own vignettes of people from the 1860s, telling different (and often contrary) aspects of the Gray Ghost Legend. All care deeply that this historic region be better known and that its citizens become stewards for this resource. Since 2004, some seventy volunteers have helped us present programs. Each Cavaliers, Courage, and Coffee varies, with a different theme for each month. The November program, A Mosby Harvest, celebrates the completion of four years of presentations, focusing on an autumn theme. The program will look at events in the Mosby Heritage Area that occurred in the autumns of 1862, 1863, and 1864. Some stories will be presented for the first time. Admission is $5 for adults, and $2 for students. Programs begin at the Caleb Rector House, 1461 Atoka Road in Atoka, just off Route 50 west of Middleburg (for those using a GPS or navigation unit, Atoka is actually listed as Marshall, VA 20115).
MHAA Expands Educational Programming to 11th Graders
with a New Presentation The free 85-minute program is initially being offered to Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate U.S. History classes in the region. It is entitled “Sometimes there Comes a Crack in Time . . .”--The John Brown Raid and Northern Virginia. The quotation, from Stephen Vincent Benet’s John Brown’s Body, concerns the overwhelming impact John Brown’s 1859 Harpers Ferry Raid had on American events—and in particular, on Northern Virginia’s history. With the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War beginning this coming June, this timely topic was chosen for its relevance to the course of study and for its high interest. The presentation dramatically examines John Brown, abolitionism by 1859, slavery in this region, and the panicthat followed John Brown’s Raid. The program highlights issues, introduces key background and the relevant players, uses riveting first-person accounts (done in period dress), vivid story telling, poetry, and music—all with one objective: to bring exam-strapped history students to the point of feelingand caring about a crucial moment of our history. Gray Ghost Interpretive Group member Olivia Colville—our singing redhead—will play a variety of dramatic roles during the program to help Education Director Rich Gillespie bring it alive. A former AP U.S. History prodigy and Mary Washington University student, Olivia helped with the Loudoun Public History Internship Program run jointly between the Mosby Heritage Area Association and the APUSH program at Loudoun Valley High School this past year. Students will be given materials to explore the local stage where this story played out after they hear the program. They will be introduced, as well, to the resources of the Mosby Heritage Area. Readers of the MHAA e-newsletter who would like to join MHAA or make a tax-deductible contribution to help finance this new and exciting programt are encouraged to do so. Please contact Executive Director Judy Reynolds at (540) 687-6681.
Mosby Wants You! Think about volunteering to assemble mailings---put materials in envelop, put on stamps (easier now that they are self-adhesive) and labels. You can read the interesting addresses to which our material is going. We also participate in events in which MHAA materials are needed for distribution. The best part about these jobs is the fact they can be done at Atoka with a group of people, or you can take materials home and assemble them there at your own pace. Those with computer skills are most helpful in maintaining our databases. MHAA has several databases that need updating from time to time. Rich Gillespie brings our Scavenger Hunts of the Mosby Heritage Area into the classrooms he visits. Last year he visited 188 classrooms and presented the hunts to 4,429 students. There is an informational sheet that is placed in the scavenger hunt booklets. Volunteers have been working to assemble materials for Rich for four years. They can tell you how much easier it is now than when we first started. If you help, you will reap the benefit of others before you. Again, this is a job that can be done at the Rector House or taken home. If you’d like to become a part of this growing group of volunteers, contact Judy Reynolds. (540-687-6681 or email at info@mosbyheritagearea.org)
Did You Know? A small Union burial detail came to Ball’s Bluff under a flag of truce on October 22, 1861, the morning after the Battle of Ball’s Bluff. The victorious Confederates controlled the field and accounted for all their dead. The Federals found and gathered the remains of some 70 of their fallen comrades and buried 47 of these during the day. They planned to return the following day to bury the rest, but were ordered to withdraw that evening. The remaining bodies were hastily buried by the Confederates. In the fall of 1865, the U.S. government assigned Lt. Col. James M. Moore of the Quartermaster’s office to build a cemetery at Ball’s Bluff to serve as a final resting place for the Union dead. Moore laid out the 48 x 48 foot square, which now encloses the graves. By this time, rain had washed away the original shallow graves and animals had scattered the soldier’s remains. Such as could be found after four years were gathered and buried in 25 graves in a semi-circular configuration. The cemetery was completed on December 18, 1865. The original wooden picket fence was replaced by a stone wall in 1871, though this had deteriorated badly by the turn of the century and was rebuilt in 1901. This same year, the Army nearly closed the cemetery and transferred the remains to Arlington. But veterans of the 15th and 20th Massachusetts, both of which had fought at Ball’s Bluff, petitioned Secretary of War Elihu Root to keep it open. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., then Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and formerly a lieutenant in the 20th Massachusetts who had been wounded at Ball’s Bluff, wrote to Secretary Root in support of the petition. The cemetery remained open but little attention was paid to it and it was poorly maintained over the next few decades. Three times—in 1943, 1947, and 1957—the Army offered it to the National Park Service, which turned it down each time. The Army tried again to close it in 1958, but failed due to opposition from Virginia’s congressional delegation. In 1984, largely as a result of a public outcry against the possible development of the property, the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority assumed ownership and the National Park Service declared the site to be a National Historic Landmark. Shortly thereafter, the Ball’s Bluff Regional Park was created with the cemetery as its centerpiece. In recognition of the purpose of the park, the name was changed in 2004 to the Ball’s Bluff Battlefield Regional Park.
Site of the Month: The Ball’s Bluff Battlefield Regional Park is a 223-acre park owned and maintained by the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority. It encompasses much of the original 1861 Ball's Bluff battlefield and is the only battlefield in the NVRPA system. NVRPA initially acquired 168 acres of the battlefield in 1984 at about the same time that the National Park Service designated it as a National Historical Landmark. Additional property was purchased in 2001 to bring the park to its current size. Within the battlefield park is the Ball's Bluff National Cemetery, which is owned by the Department of Veterans Affairs and maintained through a cooperative arrangement with NVRPA. The park is open from dawn to dusk all year round. There is no entry fee. Free guided tours, by trained battlefield guides, are conducted at 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays between April and October. Visitors may also follow a well-marked, color-coded system of interpretive and hiking trails. A series of 20 historical markers, part of the interpretive trail, tells the story of the October 21, 1861 battle. Bicycles and motorized vehicles are not allowed on the trails. There are no picnic tables or facilities for camping, though a portable lavatory is maintained on site during the tour season. Visitors are asked to remove all of their own trash when they leave and to clean up after their dogs. Plastic bags for this latter purpose are provided near the park information kiosk at the parking area.
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