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After they are brought to Dover Air Force Base, all fallen soldiers, Marines, airmen, and sailors are escorted home to their families and loved ones by a uniformed member of the U.S. armed forces. In mid-April 2004, 38-year-old U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Michael R. Strobl, a manpower analyst assigned to the Combat Development Command in…

by Eric Powell   While modern highways are a 20th Century feature, transportation has always played an important role in Stafford’s History.  Bordered by both the Potomac and the Rappahannock Rivers, the earliest highways were the rivers.  The local tribes traveled these by canoe, trading with other tribes throughout the Chesapeake.  When the English arrived,…

We often take for granted daily mail delivery, giving little thought to this vital service unless a problem occurs.  Yet daily delivery is a relatively modern convenience that evolved gradually over some two hundred years.  Colonial authorities recognized the need for a dependable postal system early on and on March 2, 1693 the Assembly passed…

A remarkable Stafford figure during and after the Civil War was Mrs. William Henry Fitzhugh, Anna Maria Sarah Goldsborough Fitzhugh. A daughter of Maryland governor Charles Goldsborough, she was Fitzhugh’s wife (1814) and widow (1830). Childless, Anna Maria took an active interest in supporting the Lee family and other relatives and friends. Robert E. Lee…

John Hedgman was born around 1776. He died in 1887 in Detroit, Michigan. His obituary reads: “John Hedgman, Aged 111 years. John Hedgman, who died in Detroit last Sunday, was perhaps one of the oldest persons of modern times. He was born in Fauquier Co., Virginia, in August 1776, and in that state spent nearly…

Oral history should play a part in historical research, but there must always be an effort to find documentation to support it, at least in part. When the MacGregor family purchased Concord in 1859, they were told some of the oral history of the property. On the eastern end of the yard is a finely…

“Excursions” served as diversions for busy people and opportunities to escape some of the summer heat by taking a boat ride. These trips were quite popular from the 1850s through the early twentieth century. Some of the ships that offered excursions were already outfitted as passenger steamers. Others were freight carriers that were normally laden…

William Waller (1740-1817) was the son of Edward Waller (1702-1753) and Ann Tandy (1721-1748) of Concord on Aquia Creek. During the American Revolution, he served as a Corporal in the 11th and 15th Continental Lines as well as in Capt. George Rice’s Company #9 in the Virginia Battalion. In his civilian life, he served as…

As a young man, SCHS past-president Rick MacGregor heard his grandfather talk about the Army Corps of Engineers having dumped toxic chemicals into Aquia Creek for the purpose of killing an invasive species of water plant that was choking the waterway. Mr. MacGregor said that the treatment killed every plant in the creek and that…

The first of this family to settle in Stafford County was John Moncure (1710-1764). Family history holds that he was born in the parish of Kinneff, County Mearns, Scotland. He arrived in Virginia in 1733, taught school, studied divinity, and, after ordination, moved to Stafford in 1738. There he resided with Alexander Scott (1686-1738) at…