BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Fredericksburg Natl Battlefield -- Chatham

VA -- Fredericksburg Natl Battlefield -- Chatham:

Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.

Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon

underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.

Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 18.222.117.109 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.

Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]

[1] CHAT_171015_001_STITCH.JPG

[2] CHAT_171015_002_STITCH.JPG

[3] CHAT_171015_003_STITCH.JPG

[4] CHAT_171015_004_STITCH.JPG

[5] CHAT_171015_006.JPG	[6] CHAT_171015_011.JPG	[7] CHAT_171015_014.JPG
[8] CHAT_171015_018.JPG	[9] CHAT_171015_022.JPG	[10] CHAT_171015_026.JPG
[11] CHAT_171015_030.JPG	[12] CHAT_171015_033.JPG	[13] CHAT_171015_037.JPG
[14] CHAT_171015_042.JPG	[15] CHAT_171015_048.JPG	[16] CHAT_171015_049.JPG
[17] CHAT_171015_056.JPG	[18] CHAT_171015_060.JPG	[19] CHAT_171015_061.JPG
[20] CHAT_171015_065.JPG	[21] CHAT_171015_067.JPG	[22] CHAT_171015_076.JPG
[23] CHAT_171015_081.JPG	[24] CHAT_171015_083.JPG	[25] CHAT_171015_085.JPG
[26] CHAT_171015_090.JPG	[27] CHAT_171015_091.JPG	[28] CHAT_171015_092.JPG
[29] CHAT_171015_094.JPG	[30] CHAT_171015_099.JPG	[31] CHAT_171015_104.JPG
[32] CHAT_171015_108.JPG	[33] CHAT_171015_111.JPG	[34] CHAT_171015_116.JPG
[35] CHAT_171015_119.JPG	[36] CHAT_171015_121.JPG	[37] CHAT_171015_128.JPG
[38] CHAT_171015_131.JPG	[39] CHAT_171015_138.JPG	[40] CHAT_171015_144.JPG
[41] CHAT_171015_149.JPG	[42] CHAT_171015_155.JPG	[43] CHAT_171015_161.JPG
[44] CHAT_171015_166.JPG	[45] CHAT_171015_171.JPG	[46] CHAT_171015_180.JPG
[47] CHAT_171015_182.JPG	[48] CHAT_171015_184.JPG	[49] CHAT_171015_187.JPG
[50] CHAT_171015_190.JPG	[51] CHAT_171015_196.JPG	[52] CHAT_171015_206.JPG
[53] CHAT_171015_207.JPG	[54] CHAT_171015_211.JPG	[55] CHAT_171015_214.JPG
[56] CHAT_171015_218.JPG	[57] CHAT_171015_226.JPG	[58] CHAT_171015_227.JPG
[59] CHAT_171015_229.JPG	[60] CHAT_171015_231.JPG	[61] CHAT_171015_235.JPG
[62] CHAT_171015_239.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. CHAT_171015_006.JPG: Chatham Chatham has watched quietly over Fredericksburg for almost 250 years -- an imposing, 180-foot-long brick manor house once visible from much of town. It has witnessed great events and played host to important people. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln were here; Clara Barton and Walt Whitman too. To some residents it was a home, to others a place of toil, and to soldiers during the war a headquarters or a hospital. Here at Chatham, as at few other places, is the full breadth of Southern history: its rise on the foundation of slavery, its ruin during the turbulent years of the Civil War, and its rebirth in the 1900s. Chatham is not merely the story of a Southern house, but of American culture -- sometimes cruel and unjust, sometimes noble and refined, but always interesting.
2. CHAT_171015_011.JPG: The Union army used Chatham repeatedly during the war -- as a hospital, a headquarters, and even as a stable. This image shows Chatham in 1863; the devastation is apparent.
3. CHAT_171015_014.JPG: William Fitzhugh and his wife Ann Randolph Fitzhugh built Chatham in 1771. Fitzhugh knew George Washington well and supported the Revolution with spirit and funds (though not with service -- he had lost an eye as a child). The Fitzhughs' granddaughter later married Robert E. Lee.
4. CHAT_171015_018.JPG: James Horace Lacy and his wife Betty Churchill Jones Lacy owned Chatham during the Civil War. Lacy held more than 100 slaves and supported secession with the same fervor that Fitzhugh had supported the Revolution. The war devastated both Chatham and the Lacys' fortune.
5. CHAT_171015_022.JPG: Beyond the Big House Slaves did virtually all the work that kept Chatham worthy of its widespread reputation for productivity, elegance, and hospitality. Before the Civil War, it's unlikely that white residents ever amounted to more than 20 percent of Chatham's population. At times as many as 100 slaves lived here. They worked fields, cooked meals, ran the mill, seined for shad and sturgeon, shod horses, slaughtered livestock, made barrels, did the laundry, picked fruit, and did a thousand other things that generated income, luxuries, and status for Chatham's owners. Those slaves formed a vibrant community beyond the "big house." Some lived in the laundry or kitchen, but most lived in cabins removed from the owner's view. There they sustained family units and cultural traditions as best they could, asserting at least some measure of control over their non-work hours. When not in their living quarters, slaves at Chatham functioned under the gaze of an overseer. He controlled their daily schedule, whom they could visit, and when they could rest.
6. CHAT_171015_026.JPG: The laundry (shown here) and kitchen served as both workplace and living space for slaves. They are the only two of probably a dozen outbuildings that survive from before the Civil War. The simple architecture of slave cabins contrasted hugely with the elegance of the "big house." Chatham's slave cabins do not survive, but perhaps looked something like this.
7. CHAT_171015_033.JPG: Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania -- this is the bloodiest landscape in North America. No place more vividly reflects the Civil War's tragic cost in all its forms. A city bombarded, bloodied, and looted. Farms large and small ruined. Refugees by the thousands forced into the countryside. More than 85,000 men wounded; 15,000 killed -- most now in graves unknown. The fading scars of battle, the home places of bygone families, and the granite tributes to those who fought still mark these lands. These places reveal the trials of a community and nation at war -- a virtuous tragedy that freed four million Americans and reunited a nation. To visit the battlefields, begin your tour at either the Fredericksburg Battlefield Visitor Center or the Chancellorsville Battlefield Visitor Center. Wilderness Battlefield For two days Union and Confederate soldiers grappled with one another in the woods 15 miles west of Fredericksburg. James Horace Lacy's house, "Ellwood," was a headquarters during the battle. Chancellorsville Battlefield Robert E. Lee forged a victory against great odds here but suffered the irreparable loss of his brilliant subordinate "Stonewall" Jackson. Spotsylvania Battlefield Two weeks of gruesome combat culminated in hand-to-hand fighting at this turn in the Confederate line, known as the Bloody Angle. Jackson Shrine After his mortal wounding at Chancellorsville, "Stonewall" Jackson was taken to a Caroline County plantation, where he died eight days later. His final words were, "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees." Fredericksburg Battlefield Protected by a stone wall, Confederate defenders turned back wave after wave of brave but futile Union assaults at the Sunken Road.
8. CHAT_171015_037.JPG: Sow... Tend... Harvest For most of its existence, Chatham had an unchanging rhythm: sow, tend, and harvest, each according to the crop. Most of Chatham's slaves lived out their lives to this seasonal cadence, year after year. More than 50 enslaved workers -- sometimes more than 100 tended to Chatham's 1,300 acres. Slaves in these fields managed huge swaths of wheat or long rows of corn. Some of the crop went to feed the plantation's cattle. The rest was ground into meal at Chatham's mill on nearby Claiborne Run and sold to merchants in town. Slaves received none of it, except in the form of rations. Instead, slaves received shelter in small cabins, a bundle of clothes each year, and enough food to keep body and soul together. Holidays and Sundays assumed huge importance in the slaves' lives -- they were the only days of rest. A 1798 painting of slaves working under the gaze of an overseer near Fredericksburg. This is the only known image of Fredericksburg-area slaves at work.
9. CHAT_171015_042.JPG: A Changed Landscape The sketch below, done by a Union soldier, shows the landscape in front of you as it looked in 1863. During the Civil War, this was the rear of Chatham -- a functional space unadorned with gardens or architectural finery. Union soldiers had cut down whatever trees stood here. Graves of men killed at Fredericksburg dotted the yard. During the 1920s, Chatham's owners moved the main entryway from the river side to the fa�ade in front of you. They also moved the formal gardens to this side, hiring America's foremost female landscape architect, Ellen Biddle Shipman, to design the new landscape. Shipman, the daughter of a Civil War general, designed more than 650 gardens during her career, and many consider her work at Chatham to be among her best. Although Chatham's last private owner made significant changes to the gardens, many of Shipman's original design elements are still present: classical sculpture, pathways, the rose arbor, and parterre beds.
10. CHAT_171015_138.JPG: Beleaguered Town Union soldiers and officers gazing upon Fredericksburg from this spot in 1862 saw many of the same landmarks visible today. The skyline of this peaceful river town, population 5,000 in 1860, is still dominated by the three steeples of City Hall and the Episcopal and Baptist churches. The Rappahannock River, which was a source of power, a transportation artery, and a military obstacle in the 1800s, flows from right to left along its journey from the Blue Ridge to the Chesapeake Bay. To the west of Fredericksburg lies the high ground known as Marye's Heights upon which Robert E. Lee posted his gray-clad forces, eager to meet the Union army on the battlefield Burnside had chosen. Following reckless and unsuccessful assaults at the base of those heights on December 13, many hundreds of soldiers from both sides would never gaze upon this or any other earthly vista again.
11. CHAT_171015_144.JPG: Bombardment When Confederate sharpshooters blocked his efforts to span the Rappahannock River with pontoon bridges, General Ambrose E. Burnside ordered his artillery to bombard the town. For eight hours more than one hundred cannon, some as large as the 4.5-inch ordnance rifle behind you, hurled shot and shell into Fredericksburg from these bluffs, east of the river. In all, more than 6,000 shells rained down upon the doomed town. Civilians fled Fredericksburg or sought shelter in cellars. Sharpshooters took over the abandoned houses and shops, turning each structure into a small fortress. Walls collapsed and buildings caught fire, but the Confederates stubbornly held their ground. As long as they remained, Burnside could not complete his bridges. If he wished to capture Fredericksburg, he was going to have to send troops across to do it. "The roar of the cannon, the bursting of shells, the falling of walls and chimneys; added to the fire of the infantry on both sides, the smoke from the guns and burning houses, made a scene of the wildest confusion, terrific enough to appall the stoutest hearts." -- Private John H. Rhodes, Battery B, 1st Rode Island Artillery
12. CHAT_171015_155.JPG: Between Battles As the spring of 1863 brought green to the countryside and fish up the river, the legions of civil strife faced each other cheerfully across the Rappahannock. After the slaughter of Fredericksburg, the embattled brothers held off death for the time. No cannon roared. No picket fired. Instead, fishing parties on either bank shouted caustic jokes, and rival bands sent plaintive melodies back and forth. During favorable winds, the doughboys traded souvenirs by means of toy sailboats improvised from scrap lumber and torn bits of old shirts. The tides of the Rappahannock ran free of blood; each soft day seemed to dawn beyond the reality of war. Then Joe Hooker, the new Union commander, took his army upstream and across to defeat at Chancellorsville, after which, again on their sides of the dividing river, the foeman tensely awaited a further move. Lee made that one, and the result was Gettysburg.
13. CHAT_171015_166.JPG: Pontoon Bridges At Fredericksburg, the Union army crossed the Rappahannock River by means of temporary, floating bridges built upon pontoons. In front of you is a reconstructed section of such a bridge, built to eighty percent of its original size. More than 30,000 Union soldiers crossed the two bridges that spanned the river below you. Under ideal conditions skilled engineers could construct a bridge in a couple of hours. First, they would row or pole pontoon boats into the river. Then they would connect the boats by means of large side rails known as bulks. Wooden boards, called chesses, placed across the bulks as flooring completed the bridges. Engineers staked the bridge to the shore and dropped anchors in the river to steady it against the force of the current.
14. CHAT_171015_171.JPG: A Bloody Crossing Church bells in Fredericksburg tolled 3 a.m. on December 11, 1862, as Union engineers wrestled pontoon boats toward the river's edge in front of you. They intended to use the boats to construct two of the six floating bridges that the Army of the Potomac would need to cross the Rappahannock. For two hours the engineers toiled in darkness, trying to complete the spans before Confederate sharpshooters on the opposite bank spotted them. At 5 a.m. Confederate musket fire burst from cellars and windows across the river. Those engineers not shot down scrambled for cover on the shore. Union cannon atop these heights responded with an eight-hour-long bombardment that ravaged the city but failed to silence the Confederates. Only by ferrying troops across the river under fire was the Union army able to drive the Confederates from the town and complete the bridges. Such a feeling of anxiety and suspense I never experienced. I could scarcely breathe. -- Sergeant Clark Baurer, 50th NY Engineers, watching the bridge builders about to come under fire.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Wikipedia Description: Chatham Manor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chatham Manor is the Georgian-style home built in 1768-71 by William Fitzhugh on the Rappahannock River in Stafford County, Virginia opposite Fredericksburg and was for many years the center of a large, thriving plantation. Flanking the main house were dozens of supporting structures: a dairy, ice house, barns, stables. Down on the river was a fish hatchery, while elsewhere on the 1,280 acre estate were an orchard, mill, and a race track, where Fitzhugh's horses vied with those of other planters for prize money. The house was named after British parliamentarian,William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, who championed many of the opinions held by American colonists prior to the Revolutionary War.

Slavery at Chatham:

Fitzhugh owned upwards of one hundred slaves. Most worked as field hands or house servants, but he also employed skilled tradesmen such as millers, carpenters, and blacksmiths.

January 1805, a number of Fitzhugh's slaves rebelled after an overseer ordered slaves back to work at what they considered was too short an interval after the Christmas holidays. The slaves involved overpowered and whipped their overseer and four others who had tried to make them return to work. An armed posse put down the rebellion and punished those involved. One black man was executed, two died while trying to escape, and two others were deported, perhaps to a slave colony in the Caribbean.

A later owner of Chatham, Hannah Coulter, who acquired the plantation in the 1850s, tried to free her slaves through her will upon her death, a rare event for ante-bellum Virginia. She stated that, upon her death, her slaves would have the choice of being freed (and have their passage to Liberia paid for) or remaining as a slave for the new owner of Chatham. That new owner, J. Horace Lacy, took the will to court and had it overturned. The laws of the day, affirmed through the 1857 Dred Scott Decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, had declared that slaves were property -- without choice -- and not persons with choice. Thus, Chatham's slaves remained so. Naturally, the slave story at Chatham ended in 1865 with end of the Civil War and the passage of the Constitutional Amendment abolishing the institution.

Antebellum:

Chatham's builder, Fitzhugh was a friend and colleague of George Washington whose family's farm was just down the Rappahannock River from Chatham. Washington's diaries affirm that he was a frequent guest at Chatham. They had served together in the House of Burgesses prior to the American Revolution, and they shared a love of farming and horses. Fitzhugh's daughter, Mary Lee, would later marry the first president's step-grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, whose daughter in turn wed the future Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Evidence supports that Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe were there, as well, beginning a veritable "Who's Who" of important Americans who stopped in to sample Fitzhugh's hospitality. His feasts were legendary and even included caviar from the sturgeon (in the Rappahannock at the time and until the 1930s) he trapped in what essentially was a "caviar factory" on his river frontage.

Major Churchill Jones, a former officer in the Continental Army, purchased the plantation in 1806 for 20,000 dollars. His family would own the property for the next 66 years.

William Henry Harrison stopped by Chatham in 1841 on his way to be inaugurated as President.

The Civil War:

The Civil War brought change and destruction to Chatham. At the time the house was owned by James Horace Lacy {1823-1906}, a former schoolteacher who had married Churchill Jones's niece. As a plantation owner and slaveholder, Lacy sympathized with the South, and at the age of 37 he left Chatham to serve the Confederacy as a staff officer. His wife and children remained at the house until the spring of 1862, when the arrival of Union troops forced them to abandon the building and move across the river. For much of the next thirteen months, Chatham would be occupied by the Union army who would refer to the mansion as the "Lacy House" in their orders and reports as well as diaries and letters.

Northern officers initially utilized the building as a headquarters. In April 1862, General Irvin McDowell brought 30,000 men to Fredericksburg. From his Chatham headquarters, the general supervised the repair of the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad and the construction of several bridges across the Rappahannock River. Once that work was complete, McDowell planned to march south and join forces with the Army of the Potomac outside of Richmond. President Abraham Lincoln journeyed to Fredericksburg to confer with McDowell about the movement, meeting with the general and his staff at Chatham. His visit gives Chatham the distinction of being just one of three houses visited by both Lincoln and Washington (the other two are Mount Vernon and Berkeley Plantation).

Seven months after Lincoln's visit, fighting erupted at Fredericksburg itself. In November 1862, General Ambrose E. Burnside brought the 120,000-man Army of the Potomac to Fredericksburg, using pontoon bridges, Burnside crossed the Rappahannock River below Chatham, seized Fredericksburg, and launched a series of bloody assaults against Lee's Confederates, who held the high ground behind the town. One of Burnside's top generals, Edwin Sumner, observed the battle from Chatham, while Union artillery batteries shelled the Confederates from adjacent bluffs.

Fredericksburg was a disastrous Union defeat. Burnside suffered 12,600 casualties in the battle, many of whom were brought back to Chatham for care. For several days army surgeons operated tirelessly on hundreds of soldiers inside the house. Assisting them were volunteers, including poet Walt Whitman and Clara Barton who later founded the American chapter of the International Red Cross.

Whitman came to Chatham searching for a brother who was wounded in the fighting. He was shocked by the carnage. Outside the house, at the foot of a tree, he noticed "a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, etc.-about a load for a one-horse cart. Several dead bodies lie near," he added, "each covered with its brown woolen blanket." In all, more than 130 Union soldiers died at Chatham and were buried on the grounds. After the war, their bodies were removed to the Fredericksburg National Cemetery. Three additional bodies were discovered years later. They remain at Chatham, their graves marked by granite stones lying flush to the ground.

In the winter following the battle, the Union army camped in Stafford County, behind Chatham. The Confederate army occupied Spotsylvania County, across the river. Opposing pickets patrolled the riverfront, keeping a wary eye on their foe and occasionally trading newspapers and other articles with them by means of miniature sailboats. When not on duty, Union pickets slept at Chatham, Dorothea Dix of the U.S. Sanitary Commission operated a soup kitchen in the house. As the winter progressed and firewood became scarce, some soldiers tore paneling from the walls.

Dr. Mary Edwards Walker has also been associated with serving the wounded at Chatham. Walker was awarded the Medal of Honor, the only woman from the Civil War to be so recognized for her meritorious service to the wounded during several battles. When the law for the Medal of Honor changed to restrict the medal to combat veterans, she refused to return the medal and died with it still in her possession. Her family continued to petition for its restoration and, in 1977, then President Jimmy Carter, signed the Congressional bill into law that restored Dr. Walker's medal.

Military activity resumed in the spring. In April, the new Union commander, General Joseph Hooker, led most of the army upriver, crossing behind Lee's troops. Other portions remained in Stafford County including John Gibbons' division at Chatham. The Confederates marched out to meet Hooker's main force and for a week fighting raged around a country cross-road known as Chancellorsville. At the same time, Union troops crossed the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg and drove a Confederate force off of Marye's Heights, behind the town. Many of 1,000 casualties suffered by the Union army in that engagement were sent back to Chatham.

Postwar years:

By the time the Civil War ended in 1865, Chatham was desolate. Blood stains spotted the floors; graffiti marred its bare plaster walls. Outside the destruction was just as severe. The surrounding forests had been cut down for fuel; and the lawn had become a graveyard. Although the Lacy's returned to their home, they were unable to maintain it properly. They moved to another house they owned called "Ellwood" and sold Chatham in 1872. The property languished under a succession of owners until the 1920's when Daniel and Helen Devore undertook its restoration (and made significant changes). Their efforts can probably be credited with literally saving the house. In addition to the restoration, the DeVore's re-oriented the house away from the river / West front and made the East entrance the main entrance. They also added a large, walled English-style garden on the East and as a result of their efforts, Chatham has regained its place among Virginia's finest homes.

Today the house and 85 surrounding acres are open to the public thanks to the generosity of Chatham's last owner, industrialist John Lee Pratt. Mr. Pratt purchased Chatham from the Devores in 1931 for $150,000 cash. Chatham's distinction as a destination of note for important people continued during his ownership. Visitors whom Pratt met during his tenure as one of President Roosevelt's "Dollar-a-Year" men included Gen. George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower. Upon Pratt's death in 1975, he willed additional land for parks to Stafford County and Fredericksburg as well as a large section to the region's YMCA. He gave the manor house and approximately 30 surrounding acres to the National Park Service which uses it as the Headquarters facility for the Fredericksburg-Spotsylvania National Military Park. Five of the rooms are open as a museum facility and the grounds are open to the public; the remainder of the house and outbuildings are offices and support facilities.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].