Researchers Probe Virginia Churchyard : Confederate Soldier’s Coffin Discovered

On a summer’s eve nearly 127 years ago, a small band of Confederate soldiers sifted through a battle-scarred Virginia churchyard, determined to give their slain comrades a proper burial.

Working by the light of a fire, they quickly dug shallow graves and placed the dead in caskets crudely fashioned from eight-foot-long church pews, according to a firsthand account of the event.

Recently a team of Smithsonian researchers working at the site near Brandy Station in Culpeper County, about 60 miles southwest of Washington, unearthed one of the makeshift coffins, which contained a fairly complete skeleton of a rebel soldier buried in his boots.

The coffin also held the man’s clay pipe, glass shirt buttons and metal buttons apparently from a double-breasted jacket.

‘Significant Find’

“It’s a truly exciting discovery,” said Douglas Owsley, the forensic anthropologist who led the excavation. “It’s probably one of the more significant Civil War finds in recent years.”

Owsley, who has helped police identify murder victims from skeletal remains, estimated that the soldier was at least 30 years old when he died, based on the condition of his teeth and other factors. With the help of some historians, he said, researchers might be able to determine the man’s identity.

The soldier belonged to the Washington Artillery unit from New Orleans, which on Aug. 23, 1862, was caught in cross-fire between Union troops and Confederates under the command of Gen. James Longstreet. The fighting, a prelude to the Second Battle of Manassas, occurred near Beverly Ford on the Rappahannock River.

“The discovery is consistent with much folklore about the site,” Owsley said.

Lt. William Owen, a participant in the skirmish, recorded the burial scene in a book titled “In Camp and Battle with The Washington Artillery”:

“At night a burial detail performed the last sad rites to our dead comrades by the flickering light of a blazing fire of logs and rails, having made rude coffins of the pews of St. James Church, which, meaning no sacrilege, were appropriated for that purpose.”

The church, built on the Fredericksburg-Winchester road in 1842, was destroyed by Union troops later in the war.

Smithsonian researchers were invited to the two-acre site by a descendant congregation, Christ Episcopal Church of Brandy Station, which wished to learn about its roots.

Additional Discovery

Besides the soldier’s body and coffin, the team found 55 military and civilian graves that remain to be excavated, some bullets, a harness, food-ration cans and the ruins of the original church.

The unearthed coffin was buried about three feet underground and had no top or bottom, apparently for lack of time and tools, Owsley said.

“It was amazing to see the reaction from the members of the church when we discovered the grave,” Owsley said. “They were ecstatic.”

The soldier was “one of the last things we found” during the two-week expedition, Owsley said.

He said he would like to go back to the site for further excavation, but noted that by the end of the recent trip most of the 27 members of his team, some of them college students, were “so busy scratching from poison ivy they were ready to leave.”

The researchers plan to recommend that the site be included in the National Register of Historic Places.

Owsley said the remains of the Confederate soldier eventually will be returned to the church.

Clark B. Hall, director of the Fredericksburg, Va.-based Assn. for Preservation of Civil War Sites Inc., said the densely wooded area where Owsley’s team worked was the site of the largest cavalry fight of the war, the Battle of Brandy Station, on June 9, 1863, a month before Gettysburg.

More than 9,000 troops clashed “saber to saber and stirrup to stirrup” at Brandy Station, Hall said. “The battle was a watershed event in Civil War history in that as a result . . . Union cavalry began their ascendancy over their counterparts in gray. . . . At Brandy Station they proved that they could fight.”

1,400 Casualties

More than 1,400 casualties, many of them near St. James Church, were recorded.

Hall and other preservationists are in a fight with a developer who plans to build a shopping center, office park and houses on about 5,000 acres nearby. “We’re hoping (the developer) works with us to ensure that the significant sites where heavy fighting and heavy casualties occurred can be protected,” said Hall, who accompanied the team during the excavation.

He said he was “thrilled” with the recent discoveries. “It makes someone like myself doing historical research extremely excited. It’s a very important find.”