Fairview

Fairview was a story-and-a-half log house that originally belonged to the Chancellor family and during the Civil War was occupied by James Moxley and his family. Moxley, the overseer of Frances Chancellor's 20 slaves, likely managed most of the physical work on the Chancellors' 800-acre farm by assigning daily labor, maintaining buildings and machines, and seeing that crops reached market, and his position exempted him from Confederate military service. As the Union army approached Chancellorsville, the Moxleys fled to Catharine Furnace two miles south. General Alpheus Williams then made the house his headquarters, and artillerymen built more than 40 lunettes in the nearby fields. On May 3, 1863, the farm became the focal point of one of the most intense artillery duels of the war. Although heavily struck, Fairview survived the battle but burned down a few weeks later, one of three Chancellor houses lost during the war.

Lake Wilderness, Virginia · United States