Civil War History
According to a letter from the United States Department of the Interior and the National Park Service about the Roxbury Estate, On at least three occasions, Union and Confederate soldiers fought at the Telegraph Road crossing on the Po River. Although no troop-movement maps of these encounters apparently exist, they assume that the combats involved deployment on both sides of the Telegraph Road, and therefore, that soldiers (Confederate during the first encounter and Union during the latter two) probably fought from positions on that portion of the Roxbury Estate lying east of the road and north of the river.
The first engagement at the crossing occurred on August 6, 1862. Elements of General Fitzhugh Lee's Confederate Calvary Brigade, moving south from Massaponax Church, attacked elements of General John Hatch's Union Infantry brigade at the Po River. It is unclear whether the Confederates crossed to the south bank during the fighting. They disengaged and withdrew when Hatch received reinforcements. The second engagement occured on May 17, 1864. Two battalions of the Fifth New York Calvary Regiment attacked the First Confederate Engineer Regiment, entrenched along the south bank of the Po. It is again unclear whether the attackers crossed to the south bank. The New Yorkers withdrew after they were counterattacked by two squadrons of the Tenth Virginia Calvary Regiment. The third engagement occurred on May 21, 1864. The First Confederate Engineer Regiment- which by now had extended the lenght of its fortification line along the south bank-was again attacked, this time by some or all of the six regiments in Colonel John Curtin's Union Infantry brigade. The engineers withdrew at dusk, and their positions were occupied by Confederate Calvary. Curtin's troops remained on the north bank and withdrew before dawn on May 22nd. Any Civil War earthworks extant on the north bank of the river were probably erected during the May 1864 engagements. The area north of the river and east of the Telegraph Road was also the site of at least one Confederate Camp. By May 19th, 1863-and probably as early as May 10th-the Confederate Washington Artillery Battalion (a Louisiana Unit) was bivouacked on Stanard's Farm a few miles below Massaponax Church. Some of the members of that famous unit may have occupied the long row of Stanard dependencies prominently featured on Jeremy Gilmer's 1863 map of Spotsylvania County. The battalion abandoned the camp on June 4th 1863 at the onset of the Gettysburg Campaign.
Given its accessibility and location, Stanard's Farm probably was a campsite for other units during the winter of 1862-1863, when the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia bivouacked around Fredericksburg in villages of huts and reinforced tents. |
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