Pennsylvania Reserve Corps Camp

For four days in March 1862, the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps camped here. It left Camp Pierpont at Langley on March 10 for Hunter's Mill on orders of Union Gen. George B. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, who had heard that Gen. Joseph E. Johnson's Confederate army had evacuated northern Virginia for Richmond. The corps prepared for the Peninsula Campaign and remained here until March 14, when it broke camp and headed to Alexandria.

Gen. George A. McCall commanded the corps, which consisted of three brigades under Gens. George G. Meade, Edward O.C. Ord, and John F. Reynolds. Civil War correspondent George A. Townsend described the pullout on the rainy evening of March 14: "Although 15,000 men comprised the whole corps, each of its three brigades would have seemed as numerous to a novice. ... The country people gathered in fright at the cottage doors, and the farm dogs bayed dismally at the unwonted scene."

Behind you to your left stood Hunter's Mill, a grist mill and sawmill named for George W. Hunter, Sr., who acquired it in 1831. Townsend described it as "a storm-beaten structure that looked like a great barn." Only remnants of the millrace survive today.

The Hunter's Mill area changed hands several times during the war. The Alexandria, Loudoun, and Hampshire Railroad (just behind you) was completed past this point in January 1860, allowing easy access between Alexandria and Leesburg. Abundant water, forage, and farm fields could sustain thousands of men and horses, but at an immense cost to the community, which took decades to recover.

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Hunter Station
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Civil War Star Fort

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