Tag Archives: Civil War

GEORGES MILL – a waltz through history

The Main House on Georges Mill Road – the Millview House

The Main House on Georges Mill Road – the Millview House

The ever-present multi-generational George family and the Wire family have a history bound together with an old mill and the parcel’s Main House on Georges Mill Road, just West of Lovettsville.

The fabric of these long family trees is woven together, beginning with John George in about 1750.

 

Fred George and Fran Wire

Fred George and Fran Wire

Fred George, President of the Lovettsville Historical Society, wrapped his arm around Fran Wire, and said, “Fran is the hardest working 90 year old I ever got to know.”

Fran said, with a chuckle, “Thank you Fred for mentioning my age.”

In the 1750s, John George signed a lease obligating him to maintain the land. Continue reading

Southern character – John S. Mosby

“The Gray Ghost”

“The Gray Ghost”

Most of us are familiar with “the Gray Ghost,” John Singleton Mosby, a Confederate Army Cavalry Battalion commander in the Civil War, a guerilla fighter leading irregulars in Northwest Virginia, and throughout Loudoun County, known for raids on the Union forces and getting away afterwards, thus the appellation, “ghost.”

I’ve always found Mosby fascinating, but more for what he did after the Civil War, transformed, serving as a lawyer and public servant, and mending a nation divided.  We might learn from his character by mimicking today how Mosby acted then.

When the Civil War began, Mosby spoke out against secession, but joined the Confederate army as a private; it was his civic duty, he said, to fight for his “country.”  Mosby found a way to reconcile these difficult choices.

Herman Melville wrote a poem, warning – “Of Mosby best beware” for “mounted and armed he sits as a king” and “each alley [is] unto Mosby known” as his battalion “kill[s] and vanish[es] … through grass they glide” and “[t]o Mosby-land the dirges cling.”

Union General Ulysses S. Grant described Mosby as “slender, not tall, wiry and [he] looks as if he could endure any amount of physical exercise.  He is able, and thoroughly honest and truthful.”

Mosby said after the war that “whoever has seen the horrors of a battlefield feels that it is far sweeter to live …”  Mosby was not the first soldier to understand that working for peace and comity is much to be preferred but to make this adjustment so quickly after a civil war is quite remarkable.

Mosby knew that “we went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the North about.” He said, “I’ve never heard any other cause than slavery.”

After the war, he practiced law and lived in Warrenton, Virginia.  Many have appeared in the same courthouse where Mosby argued causes.  Mosby was, however, harassed after the war, some tried to kill him, but what was surprising was that General Grant granted Mosby an exemption from arrest and guaranteed his safe conduct and Mosby wrote that otherwise he “should have been outlawed and driven into exile.” Continue reading

Statues for Black Union Troops and Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglas statue - to be unveiled in the Capitol

It’s high time that we had a statue placed on the Loudoun County Court house lawn honoring Frederick Douglas and the black Union troops from Loudoun County that fought for the union and for their freedom from slavery.

In Washington, DC, there is a statue to Black Union Troops.

Next week, there will be a statue of Frederick Douglas unveiled in the Capitol.

But we have no memorial in Loudoun.

You may not appreciate that there’s good and sufficient history to do so.

Kevin Dulany Grigsby, a Loudoun native, believes his black ancestral heritage from the Civil War has been overlooked, invisible in Loudoun County, particularly how Blacks fought for the Union. Continue reading