The Clinedinst-Crim House

Around 1800, the original house on this property was built, and during the Civil War it was the home of the Clinedinst family. At the time of the Battle of New Market, 26-year-old Lydie Clinedinst lived here with her parents and watched artillery exchanges and hand-to-hand fighting from her window during the early stages of the battle. When the fighting moved north of town, she went out with others to care for the fallen. Among the wounded was 17-year-old VMI Cadet Thomas Garland Jefferson, a great grandnephew of Thomas Jefferson, who had been shot in the chest. His friend and fellow cadet Moses Ezekiel found him in an outbuilding on the Lightfoot Farm and brought him here, where he was placed in Lydie's mother's bed. On the evening of May 17, two days later, Jefferson died with Lydie, her mother, her sister Anna, Moses Ezekiel, and VMI Cadet Sgt. Oliver Evans beside him. In 1881, Lydie's brother John, a Confederate veteran, built a new house on the site of their childhood home and later sold it to Lydie's son. As she aged and needed more care, Lydie moved in with her son here. In the postwar years, she and the house became a rallying point for VMI cadets, other veterans, and their families returning to the battlefield, and she became known as the "mother of the VMI Cadets," Mother Crim. Lydie died in this house in 1931 at age 93.

New Market, Virginia · United States