Mosby's Falls Church Raid

Confederate Col. John Singleton Mosby's Partisan Rangers (43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry) conducted raids on Falls Church through the summer and fall of 1864. On the night of October 17, a detachment of Mosby's command rode through the village down the Middle Turnpike (Broad Street) near where you are standing.

Mosby's men killed Frank Brooks, an African American member of the highly unusual interracial Falls Church Home Guard, after he sounded the alarm. The horsemen then stopped at the home of John Read (300 W. Broad Street), the abolitionist lay minister of Columbia Baptist Church, and captured Read and African American Jacob Jackson. Read had warned his wife, Charlotte Read, telling her "Wife, I think they are coming, We can hear horses' hooves, but I do not know who they are." The two men were taken near the vicinity of Hunter's Mill near Vienna. Read was killed; Jackson survived a gunshot wound but lost an ear. The next day Mosby sent a note to Charlotte Read assuring the safety of their daughter and sister-in-law as they went to recover Read's body. Mosby's men claimed that Read was a Union spy. Charlotte Read believed her husband was targeted for other reasons. In 1871, she wrote the "rebels around there had a great antipathy to him, [because he served in the Union Home Guard] and because he taught Sabbath school to the colored people, and befriended them. Many of them came in there hungry, and in a destitute condition, and we used to do what we could for them."

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Show me all markers in:  Falls Church, VA  |  Stafford County  |  22046  |  Virginia  |  United States of America

Hangman's Tree
Virginia Training School
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Falls Church Home Front
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