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Lieutenant Hugh Adie’s sawed-off shotgun went to war with him. Four years’ later, it returned with him to Stafford. Within a short time, it was stolen and disappeared. In the 1990s it was discovered in a Civil War collector’s show, purchased, and added to the collection of Stafford’s White Oak Civil War Museum and Research…

Colonel Thomas Conway Waller of North Stafford, initially Captain, Company “A” (“Stafford Rangers”), 9th Virginia Cavalry — later regimental major and lieutenant colonel – led the Leedstown cavalry raid in Westmoreland County (December 2, 1862) and rose to colonel of that regiment. Waller was Stafford’s highest ranking Confederate officer.  He lived where Stafford Marketplace is…

First Sergeant (later Lieutenant) Hugh Adie of North Stafford, Company “A” (“Stafford Rangers”), 9th Virginia Cavalry became one of the area’s Confederate officers.

About 1,000 of Stafford’s Confederates (41 % of the white males) served primarily in the 9th Virginia Cavalry and the 30th, 40th, 47th, and 55th Virginia Infantry Regiments, as well as the Fredericksburg Artillery and the Stafford Light Artillery. These units all served in Stafford during the Confederate Year of April 1861-April 1862 as part…

The combination of shore artillery bombardment, mines, and infantry, artillery and cavalry units along the Potomac effectively “blockaded” Washington in the early months of the war. The subsequent movement of Confederate forces below the Rappahannock promoted growth of the Federal Potomac Flotilla and its capability to patrol the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers out into the…

Conway, Henry R. Conway, and John Moncure — are listed as prominent customers by “Negro Hirers and General Agents” firm P.M. Tabb and Sons of Richmond in October 1860.    

Increasingly, failure to control enslaved persons attracted legal attention. In October 1856, Staffordian John W. D. Ford was cited for “permitting slaves under his control to go at large.” Especially during tense times – such as during the Chatham Slave Revolt in 1804-1805, the Nat Turner Revolt in Southampton County in 1831, and the John…

John Brown’s 1859 Harpers’ Ferry raid renewed old fears of enslaved insurrection and Virginia militia companies were rapidly formed or re-formed.  Prewar business-as-usual continued in Stafford where enslaved persons now worked as domestic and plantation/farm workers.   Falmouth’s “Captain Pickett” continued to whip errant enslaved people for fees.  Also continuing in the area was the “underground…

Hannah Coalter of  “Chatham” attempted to emancipate her 92 enslaved people in her 1857 will.  Their manumission was to take place in January 1858.   But, it was blocked successfully in the Virginia courts by J. Horace Lacy, a Coalter in-law relation who bought the plantation. Featured Image: Chatham, National Park Service

Not all enslaved people remained enslaved.  Sully Watson, originally enslaved by the Moncure family at “Windsor Forest” in northern Stafford, was described as light-skinned, with green or blue eyes.  Born there in 1780, Watson managed to buy his freedom and lived as a free man in Stafford until 1834, when he moved to Ohio and…

A December 1804 revolt at Chatham warned the region of potential insurrections by those enslaved.  A January 1805 “Virginia Herald” article related that the Chatham enslaved rebelled at having their Christmas holiday cut short, then seized and whipped the overseer, a Mr. Starke.  Militiaman Benjamin Bussell of Falmouth was wounded and died.  An enslaved leader,…

Potential revolts by enslaved persons kept Virginia militia strengths at high levels. By 1840, Virginia’s organized citizen-soldier militia fielded over 111,000 men (compared to a U.S. Regular Army of over 8,000). Maintained throughout the antebellum period, historian Kelly O’Grady relates: “Militias, as state-level military organizations, were mustered by counties and even small communities like Hartwood.…