Ben Lomond

On July 21, 1861, as elements of the Stonewall Brigade marched to the Manassas battlefield on the road nearby, officers converted the Pringle house, also called Ben Lomond, into a temporary field hospital. Wounded Confederates soon filled the house and surrounding grounds, and medical attendants including E.A. Craighill cared for the large number of injured men. Every available space in the house was used, while later arrivals were forced to lie on the ground and many spent a miserable night in the rain. Once fit for travel, wounded soldiers were sent to general hospitals elsewhere in Virginia, while others died of their wounds there and some were buried on the property. It took a month to transfer all the patients and close the hospital. William F. Lee and Richard Page were among the wounded treated there; Lee’s wife and Page’s father came to care for them, but both men eventually died of their wounds and were taken home for burial. When the Confederates evacuated Manassas in the spring of 1862, Federal forces occupied the house, likely using one room as a headquarters while covering much of the unoccupied space with Union graffiti, then left after a few weeks and left the house unmolested for the rest of the war. Benjamin Tasker Chinn had constructed Ben Lomond in 1832 on a 1,500-acre plantation that primarily raised Merino sheep, and the main house, slave quarters, dairy, and smokehouse are all original.

Sudley, Virginia · United States