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Eastern Stafford sites vital to Union effort
Volunteer surveyors and excavators uncover secrets of ridge-top quarters where Union troops bunked down for the winter
Date published: 8/2/2005 By Clint Schemmer At the Union Army 12th Corps site in eastern Stafford County, seven diverse volunteers have logged 140 man-hours mapping, measuring, researching and excavating the soldiers' winter camp. Just a few weeks ago, it was easy for a passer-by to miss the place, cloaked as it was in fallen leaves, laurel bushes and beech forest. Now, its features are fully described and dozens of its artifacts are tagged, bagged, identified and cataloged. The volunteers have confirmed it was occupied by New York troops, and can even tell a few things about its residents' habits. What's more, the Friends of Stafford Civil War Sites organization has created a detailed map of the camp's hut sites, drainage trenches, latrines, trash dumps and grave sites that ties into the engineering survey for a yet-unbuilt section of SYG Associates' Brookeridge subdivision. The group's labors, accomplished on brutally hot summer days, will enable SYG to place signs and set aside easements so subdivision residents can appreciate the history in their midst. SYG, for its part, postponed its residential development for a month and a half to give the friends group more time to investigate. Thousands of Union troops camped for many months between Chatham Heights and Aquia Landing, an area where houses sprout up today like toadstools after a summer rain. Some of the camps existed to house the soldiers who manned the earthen redoubts defending the railroad line--the route for much of today's Brooke Road--and the strategically important Aquia Landing against any Confederate move. The landing, where Aquia Creek flows into the Potomac River, was a supply base that kept the Union Army supplied with men, food and equipment for the battles in and around Fredericksburg. It hummed with activity until a new depot was established in 1864 at City Point on the James River. Steamboats and sailing ships docked by the dozens at the busy port, and trains from Fredericksburg and Richmond were loaded from their tracks onto barges for shipment upriver to Washington, and the reverse trip. Protected by the men and the forts on the ridges above them, thousands of troops passed through Aquia Landing as President Lincoln pressed his commanders to advance upon the Confederate capital to the south. --Clint Schemmer
Date published: 8/2/2005
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