Invaded Farmland

In the summer of 1861, Spring Hill Farm, later known simply as Henry Hill, lay fallow and overgrown, with a small vegetable garden and orchard surrounding the frame house where eighty-four-year-old Judith Henry, bedridden and too old to work the land that had been in her family for more than a century, lived with her daughter Ellen while a hired teenage slave, Lucy Griffith, assisted with domestic chores. The Battle of Bull Run culminated on the Henry property, and, unaware that civilians were inside, Federal artillery fired on the house to drive away Confederate sharpshooters. Cannon fire tore through the dwelling and mortally wounded the widow Henry, the battle's only known civilian fatality. By the end of July 21, 1861, the family matriarch was dead, the house was in ruins, and the surrounding landscape had been forever redefined.

Sudley, Virginia · United States