Point of Rocks

Point of Rocks, named for a sandstone cliff on the Appomattox River, marked the southern end of the Union defensive line across the Bermuda Hundred peninsula. In May 1864, the Union army seized property east of the present-day park from its owner, the Rev. John Alexander Strachan, and built a field hospital there, using the Strachan house as surgeons’ quarters and establishing a cemetery on the property. Early in 1864, Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant ordered advances throughout the Confederacy, and on May 5 Union Gen. Benjamin F. Butler landed his Army of the James on Bermuda Hundred to operate against Richmond, Petersburg, and Confederate lines of supply. Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard countered Union advances against the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad, Drewry’s Bluff, and Petersburg, and in June 1864 effectively bottled up Butler’s army behind Confederate and Federal fortifications across the peninsula for the rest of the war. In June 1864, the first attacks on Petersburg were launched from Point of Rocks over a pontoon bridge across the Appomattox River. During the siege of Petersburg, Clara Barton served at the Point of Rocks hospital as superintendent of nurses. On March 27, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, accompanied by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia Grant, visited the hospital fewer than three weeks before Lincoln was assassinated. After the war, the remains from the cemetery were removed to City Point National Cemetery and a freedman’s village for newly freed African Americans was established on the property. Strachan appealed for the return of his land, writing that it was his homestead and birthplace and that all his other property had been destroyed, and the government retained possession until he proved his title in U.S. District Court. Strachan and his family returned to Point of Rocks in 1866, and he spent the rest of his life there.

Virginia · United States