Virginia Vignettes

The Wilderness is associated with scenes of fire. During the Civil War battle, exploding shells sparked flames that burned the wounded. “It is not supposed that many lives were lost in this terrible manner,” a witness wrote, “but there were some poor fellows, whose wounds had disabled them, who perished in the dreadful flame.” In [...]

The Wilderness was a tightly forested area nearly 12 miles wide by 6 miles long and located south of the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers, ten miles west of Fredericksburg in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. During the Civil War, two major battles were fought there: Chancellorsville in May 1863, where Stonewall Jackson famously outflanked Union forces under [...]

John Fox Jr. was one of Virginia’s best-selling writers in the first decade of the 20th century. He chronicled in popular fiction the customs and characters of southern Appalachia and produced two of the first million-selling novels in the United States. Though he enjoyed enormous commercial success, especially with The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come [...]

Private Wesley Culp of the 2nd Virginia Infantry was killed on or near Culp’s Hill at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. Culp was born in Gettysburg in 1839. A relative of his, Henry Culp, owned Culp’s Hill and the adjacent land, which the family had farmed since 1787. An apprentice carriage maker, [...]