Alexander Davis, a pro-Union homeowner who had moved with his family from Connecticut in 1852 and settled in the community, became a target after Virginia’s May 1861 secession. One of only five voters in the Aldie Precinct to support remaining in the Union, he was ostracized as “Yankee” Davis and arrested several times on false charges, even though his son-in-law served in the Confederate infantry. On the morning of June 17, 1862, more than 30 armed Confederate sympathizers swarmed onto his property and beat him nearly to death. His suffering drew wider notice in October 1862, when Union Gen. Julius Stahel wrote in the New York Times that Davis had perhaps suffered as much as any other man in Virginia for his persistent loyalty. Davis later volunteered as a determined guide for Union cavalry regiments pursuing Confederate guerilla Col. John. S. Mosby. During the war, his wife Eliza and daughter Josephine remained at the home, where Eliza wrote in February 1865 of living on a battlefield for four years, seeing dead and dying around her, fearing that guerillas and Union troops might clash within yards of the house, and recalling that one man who died in the barn was buried with two others behind it.
