The Pritchard House

The Pritchard House was a large brick dwelling built by Steven C. Pritchard, Jr. and his son Samuel R. Pritchard, and during the Civil War Samuel, his wife Helen, and their two small children lived there. Fighting swirled around the home during the First and Second Battles of Kernstown and during smaller engagements on June 13, 1863, and August 17, 1864. Whenever combat raged across the farmstead, Samuel sheltered his family in the cellar. After the fighting subsided, the home served as a field hospital, and Helen Pritchard, a Unionist from New York, personally cared for many wounded Union soldiers there. After Second Kernstown, Confederate soldiers brought the mortally wounded Colonel James A. Mulligan of the Union army into the house, where a Confederate surgeon gave what little care he could and a priest from the Louisiana Tiger Brigade administered his Last Rites; two days after the battle, Mulligan died peacefully as Helen Pritchard cradled his head in her arms. As armies moved up and down the Shenandoah Valley throughout the war, the Pritchard family endured property loss and damage. After the First Battle of Kernstown, Union Colonel Nathan Kimball impressed seven of Pritchard’s horses to replace artillery horses killed in the battle. During the winter of 1864-1865, Major General Philip H. Sheridan’s Union army occupied the Lower Shenandoah Valley, taking crops and harvesting timber from Pritchard’s property to build and supply the army’s large winter encampment near Kernstown. After the war, the federal government refused to reimburse the Pritchards for their losses because Samuel Pritchard could not prove his loyalty to the United States during the war, although many former Union officers supported his effort.

Winchester, Virginia · United States