Existing comment:
Ellwood
Prosperity, War, Transformation
For most of its two centuries, Ellwood abided the cadence of the fields: sow, tend, and harvest. Slaves, and later hired hands, worked the crops. Owners supervised, socialized, and, especially after the Civil War, pitched in themselves. And so it continued, year after year, decade after decade.
Today Ellwood is defined not by those endless rhythms, but by the events that shattered those rhythms. Much of the Battle of the Wilderness took place on J. Horace Lacy's Ellwood lands -- nearly 5,000 acres, most of them wooded. The combination of dense woods and fierce combat made for a human experience whose horrors were seared into the American consciousness. |