Lansdowne, Fredericksburg, VA
Barbara and Curtis Backus, current owners
Lansdowne, Fredericksburg, VA
"A White House on a Hill"
As Curtis Backus recalls, his mother always wanted a white house on a hill. And so in 1948, after years of driving past an old 18th century farm house associated with the 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg, she and her husband purchased the unoccupied farm. After his parents died Backus, who grew up on the farm, returned in 2010 to the house. The only major change his parents had made to the farm house, called Lansdowne and built about 1740, was the addition of kitchen in 1950 in what had been a rear porch. Two story clapboard house with attic, dormer windows, and English basement.
Curtis and his wife Barbara are collecting and sharing information about their old house. We invite you to do the same. (send comments/info to info@oldhouseauthority.com)
The Battle of Fredericksburg, Dec 11-15, 1862
The battle, was one of the largest and deadliest of the Civil War. It featured the first major opposed river crossing in American military history. Union and Confederate troops fought in the streets of Fredericksburg, the Civil War's first urban combat. And with nearly 200,000 combatants, no other Civil War battle featured a larger concentration of soldiers.
Burnside's plan at Fredericksburg was to use the nearly 60,000 men in Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin's Left Grand Division to crush Lee's southern flank on Prospect Hill while the rest of his army held Longstreet and the Confederate First Corps in position at Marye's Heights.
The Union army's main assault against Stonewall Jackson produced initial success and held the promise of destroying the Confederate right, but lack of reinforcements and Jackson’s powerful counterattack stymied the effort. Both sides suffered heavy losses (totaling 9,000 in killed, wounded and missing) with no real change in the strategic situation.
In the meantime, Burnside's "diversion" against veteran Confederate soldiers behind a stone wall produced a similar number of casualties but most of these were suffered by the Union troops. Wave after wave of Federal soldiers marched forth to take the heights, but each was met with devastating rifle and artillery fire from the nearly impregnable Confederate positions. Confederate artillerist Edward Porter Alexander’s earlier claim that "a chicken could not live on that field" proved to be entirely prophetic this bloody day.
As darkness fell on a battlefield strewn with dead and wounded, it was abundantly clear that a signal Confederate victory was at hand. The Army of the Potomac had suffered nearly 12,600 casualties, nearly two-thirds of them in front of Mayre's Heights. By comparison, Lee's army had suffered some 5,300 losses. Robert E. Lee, watching the great Confederate victory unfolding from his hilltop command post exclaimed, "It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it."
Personal Diary of Resident
Dr. Robert Rennolds owned Lansdowne during the Civil War, which led to its use as a field hospital during the war. His daughter, Elizabeth Gordon Rennolds , recorded her memories of the Battle of Fredericksburg, during which Lansdowne harbored refugees from Fredericksburg. Although no slave quarters, barns, ice houses, or other outbuildings remain, her diary provides important details about the property along with a powerful description of her personal experience.
Letter retrieved from File number: MSS 5:1R2955:1
VA Historical Society
I am writing a few recollections of our country life before and during the Civil War, as they may be of some interest & our home was typical of many of that period. The farm was eight-hundred acres three miles from Fredericksburg, Va. A simple frame house with a porch across the front & dormer windows, a terraced hill with lovely flowers & shrubs The servants quarters were a short distance back where they had their little gardens & chickens & where we children delighted to visit & where on summer nights they sang their wonderful songs – My mother & our gouverness went to their cabins on Sunday afternoons & read the bible & taught the children. A room in our house was devoted to the servants clothes, shelves were built on one side where rolls of cloth, & cotton was stored & Aunt "Silvia" our coloured seamstress sat in her high bright colored turban constantly at work discouraging childrens visits When we went to town or to church we went in the carriage drawn by two fat horses at a leasurly pace with Uncle Harry in the box where he often, a great contrast to the auto of today. Occasionally dinner parties enlivened us when the guests came early & stayed late.
This was the life until the war. Our home being near the battle line & often between the lines we suffered greatly. When the town was shelled by the "Yankeys" as we knew them, the refugees flocked to us & our house & out houses were crowded until the poor sufferers could return home. We children experienced great delight when the Female Charity School arrived, twelve girls to play with us, but this was only a two days treat. Straglers from the camp robbed us from time to time. Our own poor troops when their camp was near were helped by our parents in every way possible. At last the Yankeys had possession. They burned our barns, carried off horses & all cattle, setting the house on fire & smothering the flames with my fathers books, thus saving the house. It was well known that my father although too old for the service, was deeply interested in our cause & our men so he was arrested with other gentlemen of the town & carried as a prisoner to Fort Deleware & my mother our governess & we three children were left alone. The soldiers crowded in, led by their captain who was intoxicated, he carried his pistol in his hand and demanded of my mother her keys & himself examined all locked places.
His men slashed and cut into the beds and upholstered furniture as many people hid their silver in such places. Ours had been found. Women had been searched for things concealed about their persons, for that reason my mother had stitched valuable papers into tight with ribbon attached & hid them around my sisters neck & mine. She was eight years old & I ten so we would not be suspected. The packages were slipped under our dresses & we wore sacks although the day was warm, for fear that our plump backs might be suspected. At the soldiers returned to camp & as night came on, we took a few clothes and walked a mile or more to a neighbour, one of our faithful servant men carrying my brother a boy of twelve who had cut his foot badly. The sticking plaster that my father had put over the cut had been torn off by the drunken captain, saying, he believed the boy was a soldier. We remained with our good neighbours until we could cross the line & reach our grandfathers home in the town where we stayed until the war neared its end. When we returned to our wrecked home & our father was released we found our furniture in the town where it had been taken from the deserted house. Kind friends divided their with us. We found a box of our books packed ready to send off to Massachusetts. Directed in the fly leaf of our family bible to his mother by an officer, & stating that the books had been captured from the Rebels, the word captured did not suggest bravery to us. In looking over our home my mother noticed in the yard, the seat of an upholstered chair, in which she had hidden my fathers watch. There was the watch intact the frame of the chair gone. In these days our food was scarce no sugar in coffee or tea. I remember my first tooth brush costing five dollars in Confederate money & bought in Richmond Va. The farm was useless, without barns cattle or servants so we gathered together what we could & moved into town. The lights at night from the neighbours houses were a comfort to my mother as she was very nervous from all our trials. How we hated the Yankeys but I have had to forgive & forget.
Lizzie Gordon Rennolds
Fredericksburg, Va
Click here to download a spread sheet of deeds associated with Lansdowne Farm.
Want to leave a comment? Please fill out the form below and we will post your comment.
|
