Hampton Is Burned

On the evening of August 7, 1861, Confederate troops under Capt. Jefferson C. Phillips set Hampton on fire, destroying many structures including a house on this King Street site. As the fire consumed the dwelling, it collapsed into the basement and left a burned layer strewn with molten glass. On the basement floor, archeologists unearthed a blackened pearl-ware pitcher, fractured but filled with ash and charcoal, an artifact that captures how the inferno altered the lives of Hampton’s inhabitants. The rubble was later ransacked by soldiers and contraband slaves seeking building materials, and virtually the entire basement was dismantled and removed brick by brick for temporary shelters, with damaged bricks thrown back into the pit. The basement quickly filled with refuse left by troops and contrabands, including large amounts of shoe leather, fish and animal bones from numerous meals, an inkwell of the type soldiers bought from a sutler, regimental Civil War buttons from Confederate soldiers from Georgia and Union soldiers from New York and Massachusetts, and two Hampton Military Academy uniform buttons found side by side.

Hampton, Virginia · United States