American Civil War Battlefields

Ellwood Manor House

Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, VA

Ellwood on Wilderness Battlefield, part of Fredericksburg & 

Spotsylvania National Military Park

If Ellwood Manor, the home of the Jones/Lacy family, were simply a late 18th Century structure in Orange (formerly Spotsylvania) County, VA, it would deserve attention. Add to that  its use as a field hospital after the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville, as a staging site for Union troops during the Battle of the Wilderness, and the headquarters of Army Corps Commanders Generals Gouverneur Warren and Ambrose Burnside, and it becomes even more deserving. 

But I suspect it's lasting fame is that its cemetery contains the burial location of Stonewall Jacksons amputated left arm.  From NPS.gov:

"On May 2, 1863, Jackson was wounded by the mistaken fire of his own troops at Chancellorsville. Surgeons removed the injured limb at nearby Wilderness tavern. The following day, Jackson's chaplain Beverley Tucker Lacy, carried the amputated arm across the fields and buried it in his brother's graveyard. It remains here to this day, the only marked grave in the cemetery."

During and after these battles, Ellwood did not fare well and stood empty until 1872, when the Lacys returned from their primary  home, Chatham Manor. The cemetery and grounds were used for soldiers' burials, both CSA and USA. Those remains were transferred after the war. 

Ellwood was sold in 1907,  donated  to the National Park Service in 1971 and then officially acquired by the NPS in 1977. 

Announcing Our 549th Meeting
Saturday, February 15, 2020           

 Civil War to World War: The MacArthurs and the Buckners

   Presented by Chris Kolakowski

Christopher L. Kolakowski was born and raised in Fredericksburg, Va. He received his BA in History and Mass Communications from Emory & Henry College, and his MA in Public History from the State University of New York at Albany.

Chris has spent his career interpreting and preserving American military history with the National Park Service, New York State government, the Rensselaer County (NY) Historical Society, the Civil War Preservation Trust, Kentucky State Parks, and the U.S. Army. He has written and spoken on various aspects of military history from 1775 to the present. He has published two books with the History Press: The Civil War at Perryville: Battling For the Bluegrass and The Stones River and Tullahoma Campaign: This Army Does Not Retreat. In September 2016 the U.S. Army published his volume on the 1862 Virginia Campaigns as part of its sesquicentennial series on the Civil War. He is a contributor to the Emerging Civil War Blog, and his study of the 1941-42 Philippine Campaign titled Last Stand on Bataan was released in late February 2016. He is currently working on a book about the 1944 India-Burma battles. 

On January 6, 2020, Chris became Director of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, after serving as MacArthur Memorial Director from September 16, 2013, to December 6, 2019.  Chris is a past member of our Round Table and a Past President.  He has also led 3 field trips for our group.
         
Chris will have copies of his books The Civil War at Perryville: Battling For the Bluegrass and The Stones River and Tullahoma Campaign: This Army Does Not Retreat and Last Stand on Bataan at the meeting.

Announcing Our 548th Meeting
Saturday, January 18,2020
The 25th Annual Frank Rankin Lecture

The Civil War: Kentucky’s Mercurial Path

Presented by Kent Masterson Brown 

We welcome back Kent Masterson Brown who will deliver the 25th Annual Frank Rankin Lecture. Kent was born in Lexington, Kentucky on February 5, 1949.  He is a 1971 graduate – and in 2014 named a distinguished graduate - of Centre College and received his juris doctor degree in 1974 from Washington and Lee University School of Law.  Kent has practiced law for forty-four years with offices in Lexington and Washington, DC.  Kent has published six books, all on the Civil War, including Cushing of Gettysburg: The Story of a Union Artillery Commander, Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics and the Pennsylvania Campaign, and One of Morgan’s Men: The Memoirs of Lieutenant John M. Porter of the Ninth Kentucky Cavalry; they have been selections of the History Book Club and Military Book Club.  All of them have received rave reviews and numerous national awards.  He is currently writing George Gordon Meade and the Gettysburg Campaign, which will go to press in the summer of 2020.

Kent has also written, hosted, and produced eight award-winning documentary films for public and cable television, including: Bourbon and Kentucky: A History Distilled, Henry Clay and the Struggle for the Union, Unsung Hero: The Horse in the Civil War, Daniel Boone and the Opening of the American West, and “I Remember The Old Home Very Well:” The Lincolns in Kentucky. All Kent’s films have been widely broadcast throughout the United States, Canada, and overseas. Two of his films, Daniel Boone and The Lincolns in Kentucky, won the regional television ratings when they were premiered on Kentucky Educational Television. All have won Telly Awards; Unsung Hero was nominated for an Emmy Award.

A nationally known speaker and Civil War battlefield guide, Kent was the first chairman of the Gettysburg National Military Park Advisory Commission and the first chairman of the Perryville (Kentucky) Battlefield Commission, a seat he held for eleven years overseeing the expansion of the Perryville Battlefield.  He served on the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and is now a member of the Kentucky Film Commission.  He has also been a director of the Gettysburg Foundation.  Kent is now the President and Content Developer for the Witnessing History Education Foundation, Inc.  Kent lives in Lexington with his wife, Genevieve, and their three children, Annie Louise, Philip and Thomas.

The Civil War: Kentucky’s Mercurial Course

At the time of the secession crisis in the winter and spring of 1861, Kentucky had all the indicators of joining her sister slave States in seceding from the Union but did not.  Instead, Kentucky became, for all practical purposes, a Union State, even though 35,000 Kentuckians joined the Confederate armies.  By War’s end, Kentucky, as a State, believed it had embraced the wrong side, and, in the years after the War, became as ardently “Confederate” as its sister southern States.  It remains so all the way through the mid-twentieth century.  This is that story.