Haven for the Wounded

Here, where the Warrenton Turnpike turned west from Braddock Road, the Union army marched from Centreville to meet Confederate forces in the first great battle of the Civil War on July 21, 1961. The afternoon, Union soldiers passed by here again, fleeing from the Manassas battlefield to reach Washington, D.C., the next day.

To your right is the "Old Stone Church" used as a Union hospital by Assistant Surgeon David L. Magruder, who later wrote that he "took possession of a stone church, pleasantly situated in a grove of timber, directly ? to the right of the road we had passed on advancing t the attack." The numerous casualties treated here and in other nearby hospitals overwhelmed the Federal medical service, which was not well-organized, had too few ambulances, and lacked trained personnel. The church served as a Union hospital again during the Second Battle of Manassas in August 1862. Both armies used these roads and occupied this area several times during the war. Soldiers dismantled the church, but it was rebuilt in 1870.

Behind the church to the south stood the largest fort in the Confederate defensive network around Centreville. Nearby camps housed 40,000 Confederate soldiers in log huts during the winter of 1861-1862. Some of the smaller fortifications, a connecting trench, and hut sites survive today about a mile to your left.

Pvt. Frank Thompson, 2nd Michigan Infantry, served as a nurse here after the battle to 1861. Thompson was in reality Sarah Emma Edmonds (1841-1898), one of hundreds of women who assumed male garb to participate in the war. Edmonds wrote a book, Nurse and Spy in the Union Army, recounting her experiences and later received a pension for her service.

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Show me all markers in:  Centreville, VA  |  Fairfax County  |  20120  |  Virginia  |  United States of America

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