Existing comment:
Front Royal: Crossroads of War:
During the Civil War, Front Royal, a "crossroads town" of fewer than 600 residents, was the economic center of Warren Country. One soldier described the town as "... quite rural. The principal objects of interest are two small churches and the town pump. The streets run all manner of ways, crossing each other at all points of the angle. Terrifically muddy and awfully gloomy."
The homes of Bel Air, Rose Hill, Bon Air, Oakley, and Hillcrest, now absorbed in the town, were working farms. A large plantation, Belmont, with its vineyards, orchards and grain fields, was located just south of town.
By the end of the war, there was not a store or business left open in Front Royal.
"[Belle Boyd was] not beautiful but she was attractive and fascinating to a degree that would charm the heart out of a monk and cause him to break his vows of celibacy."
Boyd, who had come to Front Royal as a nurse early in the war, used the town as a base for her spying activities. She was imprisoned twice, "reported" nearly 30 times and arrested six.
Confederate Lieutenant Henry Kyd Douglas, aide to Stonewall Jackson, recounts their meeting before the battle at Front Royal in May 1862: "Nearly exhausted and with her hand pressed against her heart, she said in gasps, 'I knew it must be Stonewall Jackson, when I heard the first gun Go back quick and tell him that the Yankee force is very small.... Tell him to charge right down and he will catch them all."
"Hang them without Trial":
Six of Confederate Col. John S. Mosby's Rangers were executed in Front Royal on September 23, 1864, under orders from Union Gen. George A. Custer.
As they were brought through town, four men were shot. One was 17-year-old Henry Rhodes from Front Royal, who borrowed a neighbor's horse and joined Mosby's men on that fateful day. The remaining two were hanged from a tree midway between the town and the Shenandoah River. A placard was placed around the neck of one of the men reading "This will be the fate of Mosby and all his men."
Mosby later retaliated by executing several Union troopers. After that, the practice came to a quick close. |