Squabble at the cemetery: Whose flag flies today?

— Antietam Campaign 1862 —

On September 9, 1862, the running engagement between Illinois, Indiana, and Virginia cavalry units that began the day before in Poolesville continued in Beallsville when two Federal regiments forced the single regiment of Virginia cavalrymen posted here to flee to Barnesville. The fight cost the Virginians two dead, their captain and six enlisted men made prisoners, and their regimental flag captured as well. The Indiana troopers pressed into Barnesville where skirmishing continued.

During the Civil War, the crossroads village of Beallsville was known as Monocacy Church, for the 1748 Anglican "Chapel of Ease" across the field before you. Union soldiers camped nearby in the fall of 1861 and virtually destroyed the church by using the pews for firewood and stabling their horses inside. The crossroads here, where the road from Rockville to the mouth of the Monocacy River and Nolands Ferry crossed the road from Edwards Ferry to Hyattstown, made Beallsville a strategic location.

(sidebar) After the war, the E.V. White Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy rebuilt Monocacy Church. They held funeral services there for local Confederate veterans buried just north of the church in Monocacy Cemetery, to "honor the valor of the soldiers who wore the gray." Every June 3, the birthday of Jefferson Davis, townspeople cleaned the cemetery and children decorated the tombstones with flowers. After a Southern congressman gave an oration, the ceremonies concluded with a potluck luncheon.

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Show me all markers in:  Beallsville, MD  |  Montgomery County  |  20839  |  Maryland  |  United States of America

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