Crossroads | by Priscilla Knight, Contributing Writer

Centreville, Virginia

Centreville, Virginia, thrives today as a fast-paced suburb ofWashington, D.C.

But dotted among landscaped malls,modern office buildings and homes,historic markers indicate somethingimportant happened here years ago.

It did. If land radiating out from its crossroad

center at Lee Highway (Rt. 29), Sully Road(Rt. 28), Braddock Road, and I-66 couldtalk, it would say, “Let me tell you aboutfounding fathers, Civil War battles, spiesin hoop skirts, and electricity.” This“census-designated place” in FairfaxCounty sits at a Virginia-history crossroads, and is worth a visit.

COLONIAL ‘MELTING POT’At a spot on a bluff, with vistas of

mountains and valleys carved by freshwater runs, 17th-century settlers establisheda crossroads village. By the 18th century,landowners, tenant farmers, slaves, andconvicts from English prisons workedtogether from dawn to dusk. Michel Jeande Crevecoeur, a French nobleman whocame to the British colonies in 1755,observed: “Here there are no great lordswith everything and a horde of common

people with nothing. … Here individualsof all nations are melted into a new race ofmen whose labor and posterity will oneday cause great changes in the world.”

FROM COLONY TO COUNTRYAlso in 1755 British Gen. Edward

Braddock led his troops west through thevillage to fight in the French and IndianWar. Mud hampered his military caravan.To lighten the load, legend says Braddock’smen buried two brass cannons and$30,000 worth of gold coins in the village.Braddock died from battle wounds. Noone found the treasure.

Ultimately, the British received Canadafrom France and Florida from Spain, but ata cost England’s King George III thoughtthe colonists should help pay. His“taxation without representation” ignitedthe American Revolutionary War in 1775and caused the colonists to declareindependence in 1776. Despite fewsupplies and funds, Gen. GeorgeWashington’s Continental Army andFrench forces defeated the British atYorktown in 1781.

In 1789 the Virginia General Assemblychartered “Centreville,” where peopletraveling from Washington or Alexandria

CENTREVILLE, VA

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This Fairfax County community is a Virginia-history crossroads.

In 1789 the Virginia

General Assembly

chartered ‘Centreville,’

where people traveling

from Washington or

Alexandria to Leesburg,

Winchester, Warrenton

and other towns stayed

overnight. George

Washington rested there,

as did Thomas Jefferson

on his way from

Charlottesville to

his presidential

inauguration in 1801.

Virginia bluebells bloom in abundance along Bull Run

and Cub Run in spring.

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to Leesburg, Winchester, Warrenton and other towns stayed overnight. George Washington rested there, as did Thomas Jefferson on his way fromCharlottesville to his presidentialinauguration in 1801.

ROLLING THROUGHCENTREVILLE

Centreville grew. The Gazetter wrote in 1835: “Centreville Post Village … iselevated and highly picturesque, affordingone of the best mountain prospects in the state of Virginia. It has always beenremarkable for the salubrity of its air andthe health of its inhabitants.”

Wealth came from exporting crops,including “King Tobacco.” Oxen-pulledrigs rolled tobacco hogsheads through thevillage on Braddock and Union Mill roads,then onto Rolling and Ox roads toPotomac River ports.

EXPLODING INTO CIVIL WAR The American Civil War, 1861-1865,

embroiled Northern Virginia, particularlyCentreville where its high plateau andproximity to Washington, D.C., made itstrategic. Roads that brought travelers alsobrought Union and Confederate troops.

First ManassasIn mid-July 1861, 37,000 inexperienced

federal soldiers headed for Centreville.Union Major Sullivan Ballou wrote to his wife:

My very dear Sarah:… I have no misgivings about, or lack of

confidence in the cause in which I amengaged, and my courage does not halt orfalter. I know how strongly AmericanCivilization now leans on the triumph of theGovernment, and how great a debt we owe tothose who went before us through the bloodand sufferings of the Revolution. And I amwilling — perfectly willing — to lay downall my joys in this life, to help maintain thisGovernment, and to pay that debt. … Sarah,my love for you is deathless, it seems to bindme with mighty cables that nothing butOmnipotence could break; and yet my love ofCountry comes over me like a strong windand bears me unresistibly on with all thesechains to the battlefield. …

After a hoop-skirted spy tipped off theConfederates, guns and cannons startedfiring in Manassas near Bull Run on July 21.

So assured were Washingtonians of aUnion victory that ladies with parasols andgentlemen in top hats watched the firstmajor battle of the war.

The federals overwhelmed theConfederates initially, but when southernsoldiers started to retreat, one soldiershouted to his fellow southerners to lookat Gen. Thomas Jackson, sitting resolutelyon his horse “like a stone wall.” Theyturned and fought with such renewed furythat Union soldiers retreated right intoladies and gentlemen throwing picnicbaskets into their buggies. The Confederateslet out a high-pitched “Rebel Yell” as

they chased scurrying Northerners in “thegreat skedaddle.”

Chaos ensued in Centreville. A Massachusetts soldier wrote: “Thewounded had been gathered and herelikewise the dead were buried. It wouldseem that in a well-known Virginia townon the high road, only miles from thecapital, boards enough might have beenfound to make into rude coffins … butthey could not be; and as it was necessaryto bury them immediately, they werewrapped and covered with their ownblankets, and thus consigned to the earth.”

Major Ballou was one of the Union dead.

EncampmentIn October, 40,000 Confederates

arrived at Centreville about midnight. A veteran wrote: “The boys threw theirtired frames upon the ground and sleptsoundly. … The hills and valleys aroundthe little village of Centreville wereoccupied by Regimental and Brigadecamps. As the darkness increased, theskies above were lighted with the glimmerof a thousand camp fires.”

The soldiers spent the harsh winterbuilding one of the largest militaryearthworks ever constructed. They fooled Union scouts by placing Quakerguns — logs shaped like cannons andpainted black — in embrasures. Soldiersbuilt 1,500 log huts and scrounged forfood and firewood.

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Above: Color lithography of the First Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861; Right: Fife and drum bandat the Manassas National Battlefield Reenactment.

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In spring 1862 the Confederatesdeparted. They left behind what aPennsylvania soldier described as “onevast barren waste.” He wrote, “The timberwas all cut off last winter and used for fuel.”

Second ManassasThat summer, U.S. forces prepared to

march to Richmond. Antonia Ford, a beautiful 23-year-old, overhead Unionplans in her parents’ Yankee-occupiedFairfax home. With Ford’s alert, the Rebelsrushed to Centreville to stop PresidentAbraham Lincoln’s army.

More than 120,000 soldiers from bothsides made camp in or near the villagebefore the Second Battle of Manassas began on Aug. 28. Two days later, the South won again after the blood of 17,500dead, dying and wounded soldiers soakedthe battlefield.

Several months later, William Knight, a U.S. soldier, wrote:

Centerville Dec 14th/62Dear wife, We started from Fairfax Court

House yesterday at eight o’ clock and movedtowards Centerville. The road all along wefound strewn with broken muskets,knapsacks &c. ... The men on our sideappared to be buried well but those thatappeared to be on the rebel side were scerselycovered up. …

This looks rather hard to a green Vermonter.… I tell you Jane when I think of those oldfarmers up there in Vermont sitting in theireasy chairs beside a comfortable fire &grumbling about the hard times I wish theycould take our places through one marchsuch as we have just had. A march of 26miles in two days, half fed … seventy lbs. ontheir backs through mud & mire & then letthem talk about hard times.

Mosby’s RangersJohn S. Mosby and his band of

Confederate “rangers” harassed, sabotagedand captured Union soldiers throughoutthe war. They hid in Centreville and inLoudoun and Fauquier County dens.Mosby’s tactical brilliance, speed and coolbravery earned the University of Virginialawyer the moniker “the Gray Ghost.”

Donald C. Hakenson and Charles V.Mauro describe in A Tour Guide andHistory of Col. John S. Mosby’s CombatOperations how five “New Yorkers attackedMosby’s party” in Centreville in 1864. Therangers shot the horse out from under aU.S. private. While trapped under hishorse, the private returned fire. Hisrevolver’s bullet glanced off Mosby’s pistoland into the ghost’s groin. The rangersescaped. Mosby returned to bullyraggingUnion soldiers two weeks later.

Civil War Reenactment in Manassas — the 150th Anniversary

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CENTREVILLE’S DEATHAfter four brutal years Confederate

Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to UnionGen. Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox,Virginia, on April 9, 1865. More than600,000 Americans had died; so hadCentreville. An observer wrote:“Centreville is even more of a desert. Once a village of rare beauty, … its ruinslie about, invested with all the saddeninginfluences of perfect desolation.”

Fighting destroyed so many trees that even in the late 1880s people inFairfax could see the newly completedWashington Monument.

Not much improved 50 years after thewar. The Washington Sunday Star wrote in 1914:

Centreville is not a stirring place. It does not feel a single busy throb. … Some men say “it’s dead.” If ever a village was killed in war it was Centreville. Perhaps it was choked by smoke of burning powder or smothered bythe sulphurous gas from guns; perhaps itwas blighted by the rain of shell orovercome by the horrors that it saw. Today it bears wounds and scars. ... Its scars are sunken graves and vine-veiled redoubts.

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Scenic

Centreville

Sites

Attractions In and Around Centreville • Centreville Historic District — Old Braddock Road, near Rt. 28/

Rt. 29 intersection. • Cub Run Stream Valley Park — Near Rt. 29 and Stone Road, Centreville.

See miles of bluebell-lined woodland trails. • The Winery at Bull Run — 15950 Lee Highway, Centreville.• Manassas National Battlefield Park — 6511 Sudley Road, Manassas. • Ellanor C. Lawrence Park — 5040 Walney Road, Chantilly.

Includes 18th-century Cabell’s Mill and Walney Visitor Center.• Sully Plantation — 3650 Historic Sully Way, Chantilly.

1799 home of U.S. Rep. Richard Bland, Gen. Robert E. Lee’s uncle. • Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center | National Air and Space Museum —

14390 Air and Space Museum Parkway, Chantilly.

Sources include: Fairfax County Office of Planning, Centreville, Virginia: Its History andArchitecture; Netherton, Nan, Ross, Fairfax, Virginia: A City Traveling Through Time;Burns, Ken, The Civil War; Robison, Debbie, The History and Significance of Centreville,Virginia; Cooperative Living thanks Greg E. Mathieson Sr. for contributing his photos.

St. John's Episcopal Church

Fall at The Winery at Bull Run

Mt. Gilead House

Old Stone ChurchThe Winery at Bull Run

REVIVED BY ELECTRICITY AND AUTOMOBILES

Centreville remained a farming villagelargely removed from the rest of the worlduntil Tri-County Electric Cooperative — a predecessor of the Northern VirginiaElectric Cooperative — brought electricityin 1941.

That same year, the U.S. entered World War II. The federal governmentneeded more workers. With automobilesand new roads, Centreville workers couldcommute to Washington. In time,developers pulled out the village’s ruralroots and planted suburban houses,schools, churches and businesses.

Today, approximately 72,000 people live in Centreville’s 12 square miles. Andbecause of beautiful trees that have grownsince the Civil War, the village is — exceptduring allergy season — “remarkable forthe salubrity of its air and the health of its inhabitants.” � �

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