A Not-So-Tender Reunion

On September 28, 1863, Confederate Maj. John S. Mosby raided the house that stood nearby on the bluff at the end of May Boulevard. The day before, Mosby and eight of his men road from Fauquier County toward Alexandria, where Mosby planned to capture Francis H. Pierpont, the provisional governor of the Restored Government of Virginia.

Mosby expected to find Pierpont at the City Hotel, known today as Gadsby's Tavern, but was disappointed to learn that Pierpont had gone to Washington City. Mosby and his men burned a railroad bridge within sight of Forts Ellsworth and Lyon, then rode along Telegraph Road to the Rose Hill Plantation to surprise the governor's aide, Col. Daniel F. Dulany. One of Mosby's Rangers, French Dulany, was Col. Dulany's son.

Anne S. Frobel, a Rose Hill neighbor, wrote in her diary that a "party of Mosby's boys came very unexpectedly to Rose Hill, and took off Col. Dulaney. One of them was his own son. ?This boy's first greeting to his father when he rushed into the room where his father was in bed [was] ... ?How do Pa—I'm very glad to see you,' and the father's answer sitting up in bed, with proper dignity, ?Well, sir, I'm d-sorry to see you.' But they took him down to Richmond nevertheless."

Dulany was imprisoned, exchanged, and survived the war. His son, however, was mortally wounded in 1864. The house burned in 1895.

"The Colonel sarcastically remarked to his son that he had an old pair of shoes he had better take, as he reckoned they were darned scarce in the Confederacy, whereupon the son holding up his leg which was encased in a fine pair of cavalry boots just captured from a sutler, asked the old man that he thought of that." — Maj. John S. Mosby, October 1, 1863

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