Battle of New Market and its Re-enactment

 Although the flag they died to save

Floats not o'er any land or sea,

Throughout eternal years shall wave

The banner of their chivalry.

                                                         (John Wayland, 1926)

     May brings the smell of musket fire and the volley of cannons across the Valley.  Civil War

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re-enactment camps spring up in the fields from Lexington to Winchester.  The most memorable and the oldest annual re-enactment held on its original 1864 ground is the Battle of New Market, or, the "Field of Lost Shoes" as it is commonly known because of the participation of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) cadets.
     The first ceremonial remembrance of the battle was held at VMI in 1866 and continues every year on May 15th.  All of VMI turns out at the graves of six fallen cadets to hear the roll call of all ten cadets who lost their lives on that fateful day.  Their graves are marked by the statue of Virginia Mourning Her Dead, sculpted by Moses Ezekiel, who also was a cadet who fought on that same battlefield and who read the bible through the night to his fatally wounded friend and fellow cadet, Thomas G. Jefferson.[1]   Eighty miles away, on June 15th, New Market held its first memorial service and the following year, the Women's Memorial Society was formed.
            On May 21^st, 1914, the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of New Market, the wheat field saw its first re-enactment of VMI cadets.  Under the leadership of Commandant Col. Wise, son of former New Market cadet John Wise, 327 cadets re-enacted their charge across the orchard and up the hill. [2]
            On Sept. 20^th, 1923 Brigadier General Smedley Butler brought about 3,500 real U.S. Marines to New Market to represent Gen. Seigel’s Union troops.  This is considered the first “modern” re-enactment and “the VMI cadets were there.”[3]

Women in Blue and Gray

Women in Blue and Gray: Female Soldiers of the Civil War

Loreta Janeta Velázquez aka Henry T. Buford, CSA

A couple of weeks ago, I heard a story on NPR about the Marine training program to test women’s ability for combat duty. Next week, April 9 will mark the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. Naturally, from these two tidbits I got to thinking about the history of female combatants. From Boudica to Tomoe Gozen to Sgt. Kelly Brown (one of the Marines in combat training), there have been many visible woman warriors through time. However, others had to disguise themselves as men to enlist, such as Continental soldier Deborah Sampson and other Revolutionary War female fighters who contributed to the folkloric figure of Molly Pitcher. For today, I want to focus on the women who disguised themselves in the Blue and the Gray across five Aprils 150 years ago.

Frances Clayton
aka Jack Williams, U.S.A.

Women served both the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War. How did they hide in plain sight? By cutting their hair, binding their breasts, and putting on loose uniforms, they disappeared into the ranks. If they didn’t shave, they were likely taken as young teenage boys lying about their age, a problem that was often overlooked due to desperation for soldiers to fill the lines. They were able to hide their bodies more easily than they could in the modern military—the army’s medical examinations didn’t require clothing removal, soldiers rarely changed clothes or bathed, and filthy latrines were avoided in favor of private visits to the woods. As for their menses, which could give the soldier away easily, the physical stress of army life was likely to lead to amenorrhea. While enduring the stress of hiding their true identities, women also fought the same battles, suffered the same injuries and illnesses, performed the same duties, and struggled through the same hardships as their male counterparts.

It seems that most women were discovered eventually, often due to wounds or illness and hospital stays. Other women were discovered through their actions, dressing in a feminine manner or possessing an “unmanly” laugh. Practicing manly behavior and habits was vital to the success of their subterfuges. When Minnesota private Frances Clayton was discovered and discharged, the newspaper reported, “While in the army, the better to conceal her sex, she learned to drink, smoke, chew and swear with the best, or worst, of the soldiers” (Hall 28). As one would expect, physical attributes, such as small hands or fair skin, also exposed the deception. In some cases, simply being recognized by an acquaintance could end the ruse. One of my favorite exposé tales involves Sarah Bradbury and Ella Reno, who got drunk on applejack brandy, fell into a river, and were exposed by their rescuers!

George W. Rosenberger: Model farmer of Rosendale

George W. Rosenberger

Model Farmer of Rosendale

Family

            George Rosenberger, an immigrant from Zurich, Switzerland, came to colonial Virginia, , established himself in what is now Page County, and served in the Revolutionary War.[i]  His son, George Washington Rosenberger was born in 1778 and died in 1858 in his eightieth year.  In about 1790, this George acquired the land at the present Rosendale location on which he built a two-over-two log house.  Evidence of the senior George Washington Rosenberger’s success can be deduced from the 1850 Census records in which his real property was valued at $24,000.  He also owned two working-age slaves.

In 1802 George W. Rosenberger married Margaret Zirkle (1780-1836) of New Market.  Their fifth child, also named George Washington, was born on February 23, 1823 at Rosendale and is the subject of the following article.   Fifty-five years later he was described as the “model Valley farmer.”  He added what is now the front face of Rosendale in 1870; the original house became the ell.  In the 1870 Census Rosenberger’s real estate was valued at $12,500, about half the value of his father’s real property twenty years before.  The difference could reflect local conditions after the Civil War.

George Washington Rosenberger married Barbara Ann Kagey in 1845.  They had eight children, five of whom died before 1887 when their mother died.  In 1892, George W. Rosenberger married Barbara’s sister, Amelia (Millie) Kagey, who had been living with the family at Rosendale for several decades.  He was sixty-nine years old and she was fifty-two years old when they married.  Of the three surviving children from the first marriage, one was Arthur Russell Rosenberger, a successful local banker and entrepreneur.  Another son, Charles W., oversaw the Rosendale operation after the death of the father and probably for some years before the father’s death.[ii]

Rosendale during the Civil War

            Documents found in the George W. Rosenberger Collection at the VMI Archives provide a glimpse of Rosendale and, by extension, the local the farming experience during the later part of the Civil War.  When the War began Rosenberger was thirty-seven years old.  Instead of serving in the military Rosenberger purchased a substitute.  From March 1862 to April 1863 Abner Canada was the substitute.   An archival document recounted Canada’s capture in Shenandoah County and his escape that returned him to his comrades.  In the Civil War Rolls found in A History of Rockingham County,[iii] Abner Canada does not appear.  The only Abner Canada listed in the 1860 Census was a sixty-one year old farm laborer in Rockingham County.   G.W. Rosenberger was listed as member of the Company H, 10^th Va. Cavalry.  There is no record that he actually served in combat.

           

Civil War in Virginia Exhibit

The Civil War In Virginia exhibit opens today, Monday August 27, 2012.  Five boxes arrived last Tuesday and we spent Thursday putting the panels together.  There are 5 large two sided panels and 10 small pull up banners.  It was like putting large sleeping bags over frames.  Come and see if you can figure out how we did it.  The panel exhibit has ten themes that go beyond the experience of the soldier.   In addition to the panels there are QR codes on several of the panels that will allow visitors to view additional educational videos, 360-degree renderings of Civil War objects and additional content.    

Visitors are encouraged to enter a drawing for the box set The Civil War Experience which contains the following set of books:

Hardtack and Coffee by John D. Billings

Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant

Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee by his son Captain Robert E. Lee

From Manassas to Appomattox by James Longstreet

The winner will be drawn September 10^th.  Visit and enter as many times as you like.   

We will also have a picture from our local photograph collection of a Confederate Reunion held in Harrisonburg in 1933.  Come and see if you can identify anyone!

We hope to see you soon at the library.

The Art of Quilting

This October 20th, at 7 pm, the Massanutten Regional Library’s Deyerle series offers its third program. Judith Shuey, the Director of the Virginia Quilt Museum (VQM), will discuss Depression Era Quilting.



The VQM is a wonderful resource for those interested in quilt making and the history of quilts. For the curious visitor, the dazzling display of quilted colors and the showcase for the women who made them provide a satisfying experience. In keeping with the 150th Civil War anniversary observances, and as an alternative to a battlefield tour, the museum has a permanent exhibit dedicated to quilt making in the Civil War era.

Civil War Commemorations

Now that the first salvos have been fired to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, one wonders what memories were being provoked fifty years after the conflict when some of those who participated were still alive.  The few available newspapers for April 1911 in Rockingham and Page Counties seem nearly mum on the subject of the battles.  A typical concern focused on the assembly of memories of comrades.  The Page Courier printed on April 6, 1911 an open letter by C. W. Finter to members of Company D, 7th Regiment Va. Cavalry. CSA.  In the letter Mr. Finter requested a “muster roll” call of the first company from Page County, which reported for duty on June 1, 1861.  The Company began with 93 men in the ranks, at times increased to over 100 men, and near the end of the war had less than fifty men in this company who were incorporated into the Laurel Brigade. 

The Finter letter listed over 190 names of men who may have mustered with the company at one time or another.  The letter concluded with an invitation to a reunion on July 21, 1911 “for old confederates” before the “taps for lights-out will sound for the last of us.”

Do you have a relative who answered this “muster” in 1911.  Please, share your memories or knowledge in the box below.

If you want more information, the Main Library Branch has The Rockingham Register and the Page Public Library has The Page Courier on microfilm.  Also, the Main Library Genealogy room has materials on many of the names listed in the letter. 

Ordinance of Secession of Virginia

On February 4, 1861, the county electorate chose Samuel A. Coffman, John F. Lewis, and Algernon S. Gray as their representatives to a state convention on Virginia secession from the Union. The Rockingham Register described the elected as conservative men who hoped to preserve the Union, but “they were not submissionists.[1] The delegates embodied the local mixed feelings abut the purpose of the convention and they surely had an awareness that less than 75 years ago illustrious representatives of the State were creators of the nation.

With the scent of spring in the air, three men from Rockingham County rode eastward, propelled by the ominous, encouraging events at Fort Sumter, South Carolina between April 12th and 14th, 1861. On April 17, the convention met at the State Capital in Richmond where 143 delegates adopted the Ordinance of Secession by a vote of 88 to 55. Only John F. Lewis in the Rockingham delegation refused to sign. The Ordinance declared “the Federal Government having perverted its powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States…that the union between the State of Virginia and other States under the Constitution, is hereby dissolved….” [2]

Ratification of the Ordinance of Secession required a vote of the people of Virginia, which was held on May 23, 1861. Attributed to patriotic fervor, coercion, and physical intimidation, an unusually large turnout of the citizens in Rockingham County voted 2,499 for the referendum; 593 opposed. Six days later on May 29 Richmond became the Capital of the Confederacy and over the next four years Virginians endured over one-third of all the bloody engagements of the Civil War. [3]

The Library of Virginia in Richmond will be displaying Virginia’s Signed Ordinance of Secession this Saturday April 16, 2011 in the Library Lobby from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Check out their website for more information. To find resources at Massanutten Regional Library check out our latest Readers Resource Guide, or search for books under United States Civil War. 

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[1] John W. Wayland. The History of Rockingham County Virginia. p. 131.

[2] www.csawardept.com/documents. secession/VA

[3] NPS Battle Summaries

DNR Reference Blog 11 April 11, 2011