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Fairview
Just ahead of you stood a story-and-a-half log house known as Fairview. This was originally a Chancellor home, but during the Civil War James Moxley and his family occupied it. Moxley was overseer of Frances Chancellor's 20 slaves. Moxley likely managed most aspects of physical work on the Chancellors' 800-acre farm - dispatching slaves to daily assignments, maintaining buildings and machines, and ensuring that crops made it to market. Moxley's status as overseer exempted him from service in the Confederate military.
As the Union army approached Chancellorsville, the Moxleys fled to Catharine Furnace, two miles to the south. Then Gen. Alpheus Williams turned the house into his headquarters; artillerymen built more than 40 lunettes, a type of fortification, in the fields nearby. On May 3, 1863, the farm became the focal point of one of the most intense artillery duels of the war. Though riddled, Fairview survived the battle but burned down just weeks later - one of three Chancellor houses lost during the war. |