Mount Bleak Farm

In the early morning of July 19, 1861, thousands of campfires burned in the camp of Col. Thomas J. Jackson's brigade in the fields around nearby Paris as the First Battle of Bull Run was only two days away, bringing the reality of war to Abner and Mary Kyle Settle at Mount Bleak and raising the prospect that they might lose a son. Their oldest son, Dr. Thomas Settle, whose mother Isabella had died when he was very young, was serving in Turner Ashby's militia troop and would soon go to war. In December 1859, he was present at the execution of John Brown after Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and as a physician he was called to feel for Brown's pulse and declare him legally dead before Brown was cut from the gallows, hearing Brown's prediction that "the sins of this guilty land can only be purged with blood." During four years of service as regimental surgeon for Ashby's 7th Virginia Cavalry and for the 11th, 12th, and 13th cavalries, Thomas witnessed much of the bloodshed Brown had foretold. His brothers, especially Isaac and Abner, also looked toward Confederate service and both would serve under Col. John S. Mosby, while the younger Settle children, and their family and neighbors, would spend the next four years enduring war's deprivations, losses, and shattered illusions of glory.

Virginia · United States