Laura Ratcliffe

Laura Ratcliffe, a spy for Confederate officers J.E.B. Stuart and John S. Mosby, lived at Merrybrook after the Civil War, the only known remaining house associated with her. During the war, she lived two-and-a-half miles south of here. She first met Stuart on December 21, 1861, while nursing wounded soldiers at his headquarters, Camp Qui Vive, the day after the Battle of Dranesville. Her beauty, pleasant nature, and helpfulness captivated Stuart, who wrote her letters and poems to enlist her aid in providing information for the Confederate cause. A year later, when Stuart was at her house and she complained of the difficulties of living in conquered territory, he told her he was planning to leave Mosby with some men to look after the loyal Confederate people there. Mosby and nine men inaugurated the 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry, or Mosby's Rangers, the next day, December 30, 1862. In February 1863, after a detachment of the 1st West Virginia Cavalry hid in a pine grove near her house to kill or capture Mosby, a Union soldier boasted of the plan to her, and she walked through the mud to Herndon with her sister and warned Mosby. He changed his plans and said that without her warning, his life as a partisan would have closed that day. Laura Ratcliffe lived to the age of 87 and died there in 1923, when she was a local legend and still considered beautiful.

McNair, Virginia · United States