Boulders and Quartz Stone

The boulders and quartz stone beside this fence mark the place where Union General Isaac Stevens fell with the flag of the 79th New York “Highlanders” during the initial Union assault, after his troops threw down the fence and drove Hay’s Louisiana brigade back through the woods. In 1883, Hazard Stevens, the general’s son and adjutant, and Charles Walcott of the 21st Massachusetts returned to this field and identified the places where Generals Stevens and Kearny were killed. The farm was then owned by Confederate veteran John Ballard, who marked the spot where General Stevens fell with a mound of boulders and later added a white quartz stone. In 1915, Ballard’s son said of his father and this stone that an ex-Confederate maimed in that great struggle, with weak hands but with a heart strong in respect for a brave fallen foeman, planted that stone to mark that spot with no services other than the reverence one brave man has for another.

Fair Oaks, Virginia · United States