The Breakthrough at Hart Farm

On the morning of April 2, 1865, Union troops of the Third Division, Sixth Army Corps, under Brigadier General Truman Seymour attacked the Confederate trenches that ran across the Hart Farm. Seymour’s division, made up of brigades commanded by Colonel William Truex and Brevet Brigadier General J. Warren Keifer, struck earthworks defended by the 28th North Carolina of Brigadier General James H. Lane’s Brigade and the 11th and 52nd North Carolina of Brigadier General William MacRae’s Brigade. After Union soldiers overran the Confederate line at the Boisseau Farm and quickly outflanked the 28th North Carolina, that regiment retreated toward the Boydton Plank Road. At about the same time, men of Seymour’s division crossed the parapets near the Hart house, and a small two-gun battery near Arthur’s Swamp and a large six-gun redoubt near Duncan Road, along with all their cannons, fell to the Federals. Most of the soldiers of MacRae’s regiments became prisoners of war. According to family tradition, after the fighting shifted toward the southwest, Mary Hart and an unnamed slave emerged from the house’s basement, tended a mortally wounded Union officer, and buried him in their garden, after which Mrs. Hart wrote to the officer’s family and they later came to Dinwiddie County to retrieve his remains.

Virginia · United States