Walls That Talk

Scores of soldiers passed through Brandy Station during the Civil War, and the Graffiti House preserves signatures, sketches, and messages scrawled on its walls by soldiers from both sides. Confederate cavalry patrolled this region during the first six months of 1863, when most of the Southern signatures were likely made, including an inscription that reads, "Battle of Beverlys Ford, April 16th, 1863, Yanks caught hell." Three cousins in Company E, 12th Virginia Cavalry, each named for their grandfather James Markham Marshall, served there, and one wrote "Capt. J. Marshall" on an upstairs wall. Much of the Union graffiti was written by members of the Army of the Potomac's Third Corps, and maps indicate that Third Corps division commander Gen. Henry Prince may have used the house as his headquarters. Among those who signed the walls were regimental commander Col. J. Egbert Farnum and ordnance officer Capt. B. Weller Hoxie. Farnum, of the 70th New York, had been arrested in 1860 for bringing an illegal cargo of 400 enslaved people from Africa to the United States aboard the ship Wanderer, but a hung jury led to a mistrial and the charges were eventually dropped. Near a detailed drawing appears the message, "I am turned over to Lieut. Gale," raising a question about the writer's relationship to Lt. Lyman Gale of the 10th Vermont, who camped nearby. Captain James Marshall of Company E, 12th Virginia Cavalry, was also one of 16 cadets in the Virginia Military Institute's first graduating class of 1842.

Brandy Station, Virginia · United States