Bob Epp
Well, I am not sure just what I have gotten myself into today. When Carolyn first asked me to speak I wasn’t convinced that I had anything to share that would be of interest to this assembly. Carolyn pointed out that as a Genealogist, there had to be something interesting and of value to you. So, here goes!
Early one morning, yes, after midnight, I put my fingers to the keyboard and out came this title: “One Genealogist’s View of the Confederate Cemetery.” I assure you that a significant amount of my personal genealogical research has been accomplished in those early morning hours. I emphasize the word “one” in that title. For I, as a genealogist, have one view of things “genealogy.” A view that is unique to me. Ask any other Genealogist here and you will most likely get a different view than what I am going to express for you today.
So, with that said, I begin.
Who here thinks they have never done a lick of genealogical research? I submit to those of you who raised your hands that you have done some basic genealogy. For example, countless times you have filled in your parental information on an application for something, perhaps on a driver license application, or on a marriage license application or on a family member’s death certificate. Those, after-all, are the three basic genealogical facts in most of our lives: one’s birth, one’s marriage and one’s death event. Our BMD! And, did you realize at the time that you were recording that salient information so that it might be available for those who will someday follow your life’s story? Most likely, you did not.
So what is a genealogist then? She or he is an historian!!! History! Something that I never thought I would want to be engaged in while I was enduring my school days. I assure you, History and I were never compatible throughout my years of toil in the classroom.
I innocently began my genealogical quest almost 45 years ago. On a cold, January, Wisconsin afternoon, after just returning from the funeral of Ethel, my favorite aunt, I was inspired to ask my mother whether there were any family papers, anywhere. With her hands in the soapy water of the kitchen sink, she replied “Call your Uncle Art”.
A quick call to Uncle Art rewarded me with an invitation for coffee the next morning. As we drank that coffee, Uncle Art descended into the basement multiple times, each time to reappear with a single document for my perusal. Have any of you had an experience like that? Yes, relatives can be so difficult to deal with! Uncle Art reported that Grandpa’s papers had been passed on to him and were resident in a trunk in the basement. I am now the possessor of those papers. Within and from those assorted papers I gained my first glimpses of the history of Grandfather, Rudolph Epp, of Baden, Germany.
Several months later our young family of four was on its way to live in Heidelberg, Germany, a mere 30 kilometers from the ancestral villages of the Epp family. A civilian job opportunity with the US Army had opened there and I was selected to fill the position. During those three years I put much of my free time into researching the three Germanic branches of my family, the one Norwegian branch, as well as some of my wife Dian’s Danish and Irish ancestors. I was truly hooked on family history. And, by then, I had acquired a “view” of genealogy!
After completing my career in the Federal Government in 2009, Dian and I moved to the Wilderness of Virginia, where I was uncertain as to what I was going to do with the rest of my life. We had departed Northern Virginia where I had been active in several Genealogical Societies. I quickly sought out a local genealogical society and found the F’burg Regional Genealogical Society. I am now a past president of that organization and currently the 1st VP, responsible for programing at our monthly meetings.
A chance meeting with an old colleague, that 2009 Christmas season led to my joining the Friends of Wilderness Battlefield. A key member of the Friends was none other than Carolyn (Jones) Elstner. I immediately realized that the Wilderness was a fertile genealogical arena wherein I could apply my research talents. I longed to know more about the Wilderness families that were impacted by the Civil War battle that happened there, both those of the local residents as well as those of the soldiers in the engaging armies. Ellwood, built by William Jones and his elder brother Churchill Jones, is paramount in the Wilderness story and the focal point of the Friends organization. Other local Wilderness families such as the Higgersons, the Tapps and the Chewnings come to mind and each, at times, has been a focus of my genealogical interest.
By now you are probably thinking that I have seriously digressed from the topic of the Confederate Cemetery. But have I?
When the war came to the Wilderness in the spring of 1863, the Ellwood Manor House (then owned by J. Horace and Betty Lacy) was deserted. Stonewall Jackson brought his 2nd Confederate Army Corps to the fields of the nearby Wilderness Tavern, where the Corps and Division Hospitals were established. These facilities are now recognized as being the Confederacy’s first deployment of a Mobile Hospital. Following his famous “Flank Attack” on Hooker’s Union forces, many of the Confederate injured were treated in that hospital area including Stonewall himself. However, when the Corps soon thereafter returned to the Hamilton Crossing area south of F’burg, those sick and wounded who were too “seriously injured to travel” were placed in and at the Ellwood Manor house. Many of the injured had experienced amputations.
Therefore, Ellwood became a “convalescent” hospital. A small staff of surgeons and nurses toiled there for some three to six months tending the injured, reportedly more than 130 soldiers. Some of those soldiers died in the following days and were buried in the fields on the west side of the house.
Following the cessation of hostilities in 1865, J. Horace Lacy returned to his Rappahannock Valley manor homes of Chatham, here in the city, and Ellwood out on the Wilderness Battlefield. Fortuitously, he recorded the identities of many of those buried soldiers on his properties, both at Ellwood as well as those on the Widow Tapp fields. Some 18-24 burials of deceased Confederate soldiers were found in the Ellwood fields.
You might ask, how did he know those identities? Well, soldiers often took time to bury their fallen comrades. Using anything available to them, they wrote the names on such materials as slats from cracker cases and ammunition boxes. Sometimes they used the blood of the deceased to write the name of the fallen soldier on the marker. Or, they may have used a piece of leather, or even a nearby tree, where the names or initials could be etched. We have only recently determined the identities of the six letters, two sets of soldiers’ initials, etched on one of Lacy’s trees.
Eventually, most of those soldier’s remains buried at Ellwood were reinterred here to the Confederate Cemetery, both the identified as well as the unknown.
However, at the time of Lacy’s work to identify those soldiers, there was no Confederate Cemetery. A F’burg City Cemetery had been established in the mid-1840s and is today located at the Southern end of this Cemetery complex. Confederate soldiers who died locally in the early days of the conflict were buried in the City Cemetery or other local burial grounds. Many of them remain interred in those other cemeteries today.
At war’s end, Federal funding for the disinterment of soldiers from battlefields applied to only the deceased Union soldiers and not to the buried Confederate soldiers.
J. Horace Lacy had been an ardent Confederate secessionist and military aide to several Confederate Generals during the war. He and his wife Betty recognized the injustice of the federal laws and set about correcting the situation.
Betty Lacy organized the leading ladies of F’burg into the Ladies’ Memorial Association(LMA)-the first women’s guild in Fredericksburg. A call was made from the pulpits of the F’burg Churches on May 6, 1866. That announcement invited interested parishioners to discuss the re-interment of the deceased Confederate soldiers from the Wilderness burials to a new Confederate Cemetery. The first meeting took place four days later on May 10th, coincidentally on the third anniversary of Stonewall’s death. J. Horace Lacy addressed the assembly that day and won an overwhelming endorsement for the establishment of the Ladies Memorial Association and the creation of the Confederate cemetery.
A short time later a similar association became active in the Spotsylvania Courthouse area. Merger talks were held between the two Associations, but the two groups were never able to agree on a working arrangement.
By the time of the May 17, 1866 LMA meeting, 1 week after the initial meeting, they had collected almost $167 to put toward their stated goals. Horace was soon authorized to visit the state legislatures in Baltimore, New York, Virginia, Georgia and Louisiana. His visits were an effort to solicit funds to support the exhuming of the bodies of Confederate soldiers from the local battlefields and the re-interment of those bodies in the soon-to-be created Confederate Cemetery. It was during Horace’s forays to Louisiana locations that he strengthened his reputation as being the “Lion of the South,” a reference to his noteworthy public speaking acumen. Betty and the other ladies also campaigned for funds by putting on shows and fairs as fund-raisers. One of the first activities conducted by the Ladies was the sodding of the graves of the Confederate Soldiers buried in the City Cemetery.
The LMA soon thereafter had raised sufficient funds to enable the purchase of Lots 18 and 19 of the Kenmore Track, the area located directly north of the City Cemetery. As funds continued to accrue the building of a permanent wall around the grounds replaced temporary fencing.
The Dedication of the new Cemetery took place in May, 1870, the genealogical birthdate of these hallowed grounds. Most of the local re-interments were completed by the time of that dedication ceremony.
So, as a Genealogist, I ponder the identities of these re-interred confederate soldiers who are now married to the Cemetery. Names such as Daniel Humphreys, Edward F. Falke and Joseph Rice from the Ellwood field. Samuel A. Roon, Thomas W. Henry and Harrison P. Lyon from the Widow Tapp field and Hilary D. McAdams, William D. Ross and Robert B. Tate from the Parker Confederate hospital area. Most of them were brought to the Confederate Cemetery at F’burg by April, 1870.
Let me name a few others for you:
John Cook was born in Virginia about 1820. John married Martha Turner August, 1850 in Rockingham County. By 1860 John and Martha were the parents of four children. John’s 10th VA Inf. muster records show that he died May 10th, 1863, at Ellwood, one week after the Chancellorsville battle. LMA records show that he was buried later here in the F’burg Confederate Cemetery.
Daniel Humphreys enlisted Jun 18th, 1861 and was mustered in at Abingdon, Washington County, Virginia; he was assigned to the 48th VA Inf. Regt. Daniel was appointed Lt. April 21st, 1862 and on January 20th, 1863 in that capacity he signed a voucher for goods received by his Company. Horace Lacy included his name among the soldiers buried near Ellwood. LMA records show that his remains were removed to the Fredericksburg Confederate Cemetery. On September 14, 1863 a settlement claim was filed for his back pay by J. W. Humphreys, Administrator, and his probable father.
Murdock Wood enlisted as a private in Company K, 3rd NC Inf. on August 31, 1861, at Dogwood Grove North Carolina. He was promoted to 4th Corporal on Jan. 1st, 1863. His muster records show that he was wounded at Chancellorsville May 3rd of that year. A later muster record reflects that he died at Ellwood on May 17.
William E. Posey was born in Maryland about 1837. He was living in Jackson Parish, Louisiana when the civil war began. He enlisted as a private in the 2nd LA Inf. Regiment in May of 1861; he was later promoted to 1st Lieutenant. He was injured May 3rd 1863 at Chancellorsville and died June 4th at Ellwood.
In some cases, the families of the fallen acquired the remains of their family members and brought them home to their local cemeteries. For example,
Joseph A. Rice enlisted April 18, 1861 at Harrisonburg, Rockingham County, Virginia. His muster records show that he was appointed a Corporal, Co B, 10th VA Inf. and was promoted to 3rd Sgt. November 3 of the same year. He was promoted to 1st Sgt. April 23rd, 1862. His muster records show that he was missing in action May 3rd, 1863 at Chancellorsville and that he died June 1, 1863 at Ellwood. At some point, Joseph’s remains were removed from Ellwood. On a yet-to-be- discovered date, his body was taken to Harrisonburg and reinterred there in the Woodbine Cemetery.
Not to be over-looked are the numerous civilians buried here in the Confederate cemetery, not the least of which are Betty and Horace Lacy. Today, under the leadership of Carolyn, the Ladies’ Memorial Association is striving to locate living descendants of those civilians whose remains are marked in the cemetery. They would appreciate any assistance you might be able to provide in identifying those descendants. This effort is truly a Genealogical Research Project for the ages.
In summary then, I have identified the birth of this cemetery in 1870. I have shared some genealogical information on several of those buried on these hallowed grounds, their marriage to the site itself.
Death came to the heroes of the local battles and to the citizens in the civilian populace; but death will never come to their placement in this historic burial place, a place to be recognized on this Memorial Day, and all future Memorial Days. Genealogists such as Dan Janzegers, Roy Perry and others such as yourselves will make it a priority to continue documenting the lives of these Confederate Soldiers and citizens.
And that, friends, with your indulgence, is “One” Genealogist’s view of the Confederate Cemetery! I thank you for your attention.
As a footnote, much of the information that I have shared with you is documented in the book titled: Dear Old Ellwood, co-authored by none other than Carolyn (Jones) Elstner. The book is available at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park’s Visitor Centers.