1srelluc
Diamond Member
Hazard Mill is not much more that a spot on a map in my county but it does have some CW history.
It's right much of a stretch to tie anything supernatural into it but it's Halloween time so:
royalexaminer.com
In the ancient world, people placed heavy stones on the graves of the dead so their souls would not wander and afflict the living. I always thought this was simply the practice of superstitious and primitive people. But I have learned that the dead can hover on the edge of our vision with the density and luminosity of living beings, and their claim on this earth can be as legitimate and tenacious as our own.
Halloween clipart from M&C Saatchi in London
‘Death in the Afternoon’ is a fitting name for the cocktail made famous by Ernest Hemingway. In our first years here my wife and I used to enjoy these on afternoons out at Hazard Mill. It is easy to make, effervescent and potent. They are quite tasty but after a few of these you start seeing things – like Civil War era horsemen crossing the river by lantern at night. Smart people would advise giving the libations a rest, so we did that – but the apparitions persisted. Now adays, the unexplained sightings are commonplace, so we live with it.
Picture by David Hollis
We even help it along by erecting civil war skeletons at Halloween. Apparently, our home sits at an intersection between yesterday and today – a portal if you will. There is no better place to parlay with the Illusions of dreamworld – than the George Washington National Forest. I have flirted with the notion of returning to my beginnings in Carolina, but the enchanted forest of Hazard Mill won’t loosen its grip.
Much wisdom has been gleaned over the years from many local story tellers to include Dewey Vaughan of Front Royal and several historians from Loudon and Fauquier Counties. These folks are particularly well versed in the partisan warfare of the 1860s. The Shenandoah Valley is given to all sorts of marvelous beliefs; is subject to strange visions, and its inhabitants speak of the supernatural with frequency. All the western Virginia counties abound with local tales, and haunted spots from the American Civil War but Hazard Mill is particularly known to us. Bushwhackers and Yankee atrocities were in vogue during the September and October months of 1864, and those nightmares still echo in the forests. The following story is an example taken from the many Bushwhacker tales in the Shenandoah Valley that dark autumn.
Photo of The Scarecrow of Hazard Mill by Sonja Morgan
By the fall of 1864, only a handful of the pre-war Southern newspapers still existed. Those still in circulation largely blamed Southern misfortunes on Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early’s disasters in the Shenandoah Valley. Early’s legions were being grounded away in battles at Winchester, Fisher’s Hill and Cedar Creek as the ghost of Lee’s Second Corps had been depleted of its finest leaders. As a result, several hundred men were missing and scattered about the valley – cut off from their battalions and seeking refuge in the surrounding hills as General Early retreated southward. Many of these men evolved into ‘bushwhackers’ and preyed on Yankee patrols and hapless civilians. Together with mounted partisan rangers they comprised part of the black flag antics that permeated the Shenandoah Valley that autumn. Interestingly, the term Bushwhacker was a Yankee term for all Confederate partisan rangers. Both the Bushwhackers and Confederate regulars shared one thing in common and that was a vehement hatred of Federal forces.
The Burning:
Southern hatred was fanned by the North’s torching of the valley which reduced the valley to a howling blackened wasteland. General Sheridan’s lieutenants conducted a brutal and widespread destruction of crops, livestock, barns, homes and anything that could serve the Confederacy. All was put to the torch. Plumes of black smoke smudged the Shenandoah Valley’s fairytale landscape of rolling green hills, and farmland. Banditry prevailed everywhere. The cries of women mingled with the smell of smoke and sound of gunshots as the bluecoats burned everything in sight and shot down the livestock they couldn’t steal. The searing hatred brought on by the burning reached a fever pitch in September and October of 1864.
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
Fighting in the Luray Valley:
Southern partisans operating out of the Luray Valley (aka Page Valley) had taken over abandoned farmhouses along the Southfork River and were using them as hide outs and forward operating bases. The partisans were exacting revenge by swooping down on Union wagon trains between Front Royal and Luray, bushwhacking Yankee couriers and scouts, and then melting back into the hollows. Many of these horsemen road with famed partisans like John McNeill’s Rangers or the ‘Gray Ghost’ (John Mosby’s Rangers). Others were merely seasoned soldiers turned bushwhackers – attacking anything that moved and preying on Union supply wagons and at times – vulnerable refugees and homesteads.
Painting entitled, ‘Guerillas’ by Andy Thomas
Bushwhackers often left their calling cards in the form of Union soldiers left hanging by the roads or thrown into a pile with their throats slit. The Union cavalry answered in kind with the most notorious reprisals acted out against several of Mosby’s men in Front Royal in late September.
Meanwhile the two belligerent armies slugged it out along the main valley floor between Winchester and New Market, VA. Each time General Sheridan’s forces pushed southward along present day I-81, he sent cavalry down the Luray Valley Road (current Stonewall Jackson highway) to get behind General Early’s forces and cut them off at New Market. The Southerners were aware and routinely sent Confederate cavalry to intersect them. The Confederate Cavalry often used the Milford choke point as their principal blocking position. That location is where the hills and the bend of the river provide the smallest gap. On the 25th and 26th of October 1864, during one of the last cavalry battles at Milford, (present day Overall), Confederate General Lunsford Lomax’s forces positioned artillery on the eastern hill and barricaded the road with fortifications and dismounted cavalry while awaiting the federals.
[As a side note; Brigadier Lomax was principally responsible for the development of the Confederate Partisan department in Virginia in late 1862 and was the intermediary that relayed intelligence between the Mosby and McNeill partisans and GEN Lee. According to the Gray Ghost, Lomax was Mosby’s superior in other words].
Union General William H. Powell basked in the hatred of most Southerners for his liberal use of both the torch and the noose when disposing of Bushwhackers. He too left calling cards dangling by the roadside, notably one of Mosby’s men left with a placard around his neck near Chesters Gap. General Sheridan sent Powell’s cavalry brigade southward through the Luray valley to harass General Early’s retreat after their Cedar Creek debacle. At Milford, Powell’s forces ran into a shower of artillery fire and dispersed his cavalry brigade across the adjacent hills to answer the Confederates. During the cannonade between the two sides, the Confederates were inadvertently aided by Bushwhackers who attacked the rear of Union General Powell’s location, and road off with about 20 Federal horses. General Powell dispatched patrols and pursued the bushwhackers – engaging in extended shootouts along the heights that ran parallel to the Southfork River.
Excerpt from newspaper describing General Powell in area of Luray, VA October 1864, taken from Wikipedia.
The Union cavalry killed a few of the bushwhackers and pursued the remainder down narrow paths along barns and outcroppings as dusk approached. During the pursuit, Powell’s men found several empty telegraph wire spools along the way and observed telegraph wire stretching from a house on the ledge that ran across the Southfork Shenandoah River. Scouts followed the telegraph wire down into the valley and across the river that led them to a mill in the hollow.
The burning of Hazard Mill:
Union cavalry further observed lantern signals coming from the hidden mill down in the hollow on the other side of the river. They soon discovered that Bushwhackers were signaling the mill from a house on the ridge overlooking the Southfork River bend. As nightfall approached, the Union cavalry patrols dispensed with the remaining bushwhackers along the ridge and descended the hill. The patrols crossed the river via a ford towards the mill with the intent of torching it. The Southerners saw the torches approaching and a firefight ensued resulting in the death of several Union horsemen. The Federals withdrew up the hill east of the Southfork River to General Powell’s camp site and relayed their findings.
Picture entitled, ‘War to the Hilt’ by US National Park Service
Early the following morning the Federals crossed the river in force and surprised the bushwhackers. A fierce firefight ensued. Several bushwhackers were killed along the stream and others escaped on recently stolen horses along with a telegraph wagon used to power the telegraph system. The remainder woke to the sound of gunfire and immediately joined the melee returning fire from the second and third floors of the mill. The windows on each floor of the mill were ablaze with muzzle flashes as both sides kept up the volume. The Yankees repeatedly tried to torch the mill, but the torch bearers kept getting shot on approach. Gradually, the Union numbers grew larger as Bushwhacker firing waned. Then there was a lull in the Union fire as the Union troopers pulled back from the perimeter. A few minutes later the boom of cannon fire vibrated the morning air. The Federals had posted a field piece on top of the ledge about a mile away and fired at the mill splintering the trees in the vicinity. A few of the bushwhackers tried to surrender but were shot down by the Yankees.
Once the remaining bushwhackers realized no quarter would be given, the resistance continued. The Yankees finally managed to burn the mill, and the remaining Bushwhackers succumbed to the fire as the mill collapsed from the flames.
The dead bushwhackers were left where they lay while black smoke filled the valley from the burning mill and the adjacent trees until mother nature intervened later that day with rain.
The Telegraph revelation:
Scouts followed the telegraph wire into the hills and reported back that evening that the wire stretched from the mill over the hill in the direction of the main valley towards Woodstock and Mount Jackson. General Powell’s telegraph operators tapped into the lines and intercepted Confederate transmissions from vicinity of Woodstock on the other side of the valley. Alas, General Powell was given fresh insight into how the Confederates were always one step ahead.
The Yankees now realized how the Southerners were able to coordinate hit and run operations on both sides of the valley using portable telegraph machines.
Library of Congress photo of portable telegraph machine used by partisans in Shenandoah Valley.
The hasty telegraph wire operations had been set up earlier that summer by General Early’s forces to coordinate communications at various points along both sides of the Massanutten Mountain range. This particular stretch of wire had been recently operationalized by partisans to relay information and assemble riders and escape pursuit when pressed using narrow foot paths to traverse the hills. The winding paths through the Massanutten hills were perfect ambush sites so the Union scouts waved off any further pursuit of the fleeing bushwhackers.
Meanwhile, General Powell’s Federal patrols removed some of the telegraph wire and then rejoined the main body of the cavalry moving north on the 27th of October. According to official records, General Powell ended the engagement at Milford and left a detachment with the ambulance trains before moving back up Page Valley through Front Royal and south again towards Sperryville. General Sheridan’s command was advised of the findings and within a couple weeks, the war moved on from the valley for the last time.
As a side note, there are additional stories from the reconstruction era indicating that bushwhackers and organized bandits continued to use these hidden paths and telegraph operations for years after the war to interdict commerce on both sides of the valley. Local law enforcement eventually shut down the bushwhackers and the piracy ceased.
As you may recall from the article entitled, “Scarecrow of Hazard Mill,” this was not the end of the story at Hazard Mill. A few days later, some of Mosby’s partisans fell upon federal ambulance trains in vicinity of Bentonville and captured Sergeant Willie Cline – who was alleged to have emptied his pistol into the face of young Henry Rhodes, a 17-year-old noncombatant, a month earlier in the streets of Front Royal. The heinous murder of this young citizen achieved further infamy because it was perpetrated in front of Rhode’s mother and many townspeople.
The wounded Sergeant Cline was taken from the ambulance wagon and whisked away by the partisans. After fleeing from Union patrols, the partisans sought refuge in the hidden hollow by the blackened ruins of Hazard Mill. The mill was completely burned down and about a dozen bloated corpses and a few dead horses littered the grounds and stream surrounding the mill.
The Confederate horsemen later hanged the Yankee cavalryman on the hill above the mill ruins. In apparent deference to Rhode’s mother, the hanged man was never taken down and buried – but hung there for years until the rope rotted and the bones crumpled beneath the tree. Interestingly, the date of the hanging may well have been the 31st of October – hence the many apparitions that haunt the place at Halloween.
The hanged man became known as the scarecrow and spawned a legend that pervaded the area until the turn of the century.
It's right much of a stretch to tie anything supernatural into it but it's Halloween time so:
“BUSHWHACKERS” — This Week in the Civil War: The 160th Anniversary of the Burning of Hazard Mill
In the ancient world, people placed heavy stones on the graves of the dead so their souls would not wander and afflict the living. I always thought this was simply the practice of superstitious and primitive people. But I have learned that the dead can hover on the edge of our vision with the...
royalexaminer.com
In the ancient world, people placed heavy stones on the graves of the dead so their souls would not wander and afflict the living. I always thought this was simply the practice of superstitious and primitive people. But I have learned that the dead can hover on the edge of our vision with the density and luminosity of living beings, and their claim on this earth can be as legitimate and tenacious as our own.
Halloween clipart from M&C Saatchi in London
‘Death in the Afternoon’ is a fitting name for the cocktail made famous by Ernest Hemingway. In our first years here my wife and I used to enjoy these on afternoons out at Hazard Mill. It is easy to make, effervescent and potent. They are quite tasty but after a few of these you start seeing things – like Civil War era horsemen crossing the river by lantern at night. Smart people would advise giving the libations a rest, so we did that – but the apparitions persisted. Now adays, the unexplained sightings are commonplace, so we live with it.
Picture by David Hollis
We even help it along by erecting civil war skeletons at Halloween. Apparently, our home sits at an intersection between yesterday and today – a portal if you will. There is no better place to parlay with the Illusions of dreamworld – than the George Washington National Forest. I have flirted with the notion of returning to my beginnings in Carolina, but the enchanted forest of Hazard Mill won’t loosen its grip.
Much wisdom has been gleaned over the years from many local story tellers to include Dewey Vaughan of Front Royal and several historians from Loudon and Fauquier Counties. These folks are particularly well versed in the partisan warfare of the 1860s. The Shenandoah Valley is given to all sorts of marvelous beliefs; is subject to strange visions, and its inhabitants speak of the supernatural with frequency. All the western Virginia counties abound with local tales, and haunted spots from the American Civil War but Hazard Mill is particularly known to us. Bushwhackers and Yankee atrocities were in vogue during the September and October months of 1864, and those nightmares still echo in the forests. The following story is an example taken from the many Bushwhacker tales in the Shenandoah Valley that dark autumn.
Photo of The Scarecrow of Hazard Mill by Sonja Morgan
By the fall of 1864, only a handful of the pre-war Southern newspapers still existed. Those still in circulation largely blamed Southern misfortunes on Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early’s disasters in the Shenandoah Valley. Early’s legions were being grounded away in battles at Winchester, Fisher’s Hill and Cedar Creek as the ghost of Lee’s Second Corps had been depleted of its finest leaders. As a result, several hundred men were missing and scattered about the valley – cut off from their battalions and seeking refuge in the surrounding hills as General Early retreated southward. Many of these men evolved into ‘bushwhackers’ and preyed on Yankee patrols and hapless civilians. Together with mounted partisan rangers they comprised part of the black flag antics that permeated the Shenandoah Valley that autumn. Interestingly, the term Bushwhacker was a Yankee term for all Confederate partisan rangers. Both the Bushwhackers and Confederate regulars shared one thing in common and that was a vehement hatred of Federal forces.
The Burning:
Southern hatred was fanned by the North’s torching of the valley which reduced the valley to a howling blackened wasteland. General Sheridan’s lieutenants conducted a brutal and widespread destruction of crops, livestock, barns, homes and anything that could serve the Confederacy. All was put to the torch. Plumes of black smoke smudged the Shenandoah Valley’s fairytale landscape of rolling green hills, and farmland. Banditry prevailed everywhere. The cries of women mingled with the smell of smoke and sound of gunshots as the bluecoats burned everything in sight and shot down the livestock they couldn’t steal. The searing hatred brought on by the burning reached a fever pitch in September and October of 1864.
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
Fighting in the Luray Valley:
Southern partisans operating out of the Luray Valley (aka Page Valley) had taken over abandoned farmhouses along the Southfork River and were using them as hide outs and forward operating bases. The partisans were exacting revenge by swooping down on Union wagon trains between Front Royal and Luray, bushwhacking Yankee couriers and scouts, and then melting back into the hollows. Many of these horsemen road with famed partisans like John McNeill’s Rangers or the ‘Gray Ghost’ (John Mosby’s Rangers). Others were merely seasoned soldiers turned bushwhackers – attacking anything that moved and preying on Union supply wagons and at times – vulnerable refugees and homesteads.
Painting entitled, ‘Guerillas’ by Andy Thomas
Bushwhackers often left their calling cards in the form of Union soldiers left hanging by the roads or thrown into a pile with their throats slit. The Union cavalry answered in kind with the most notorious reprisals acted out against several of Mosby’s men in Front Royal in late September.
Meanwhile the two belligerent armies slugged it out along the main valley floor between Winchester and New Market, VA. Each time General Sheridan’s forces pushed southward along present day I-81, he sent cavalry down the Luray Valley Road (current Stonewall Jackson highway) to get behind General Early’s forces and cut them off at New Market. The Southerners were aware and routinely sent Confederate cavalry to intersect them. The Confederate Cavalry often used the Milford choke point as their principal blocking position. That location is where the hills and the bend of the river provide the smallest gap. On the 25th and 26th of October 1864, during one of the last cavalry battles at Milford, (present day Overall), Confederate General Lunsford Lomax’s forces positioned artillery on the eastern hill and barricaded the road with fortifications and dismounted cavalry while awaiting the federals.
[As a side note; Brigadier Lomax was principally responsible for the development of the Confederate Partisan department in Virginia in late 1862 and was the intermediary that relayed intelligence between the Mosby and McNeill partisans and GEN Lee. According to the Gray Ghost, Lomax was Mosby’s superior in other words].
Union General William H. Powell basked in the hatred of most Southerners for his liberal use of both the torch and the noose when disposing of Bushwhackers. He too left calling cards dangling by the roadside, notably one of Mosby’s men left with a placard around his neck near Chesters Gap. General Sheridan sent Powell’s cavalry brigade southward through the Luray valley to harass General Early’s retreat after their Cedar Creek debacle. At Milford, Powell’s forces ran into a shower of artillery fire and dispersed his cavalry brigade across the adjacent hills to answer the Confederates. During the cannonade between the two sides, the Confederates were inadvertently aided by Bushwhackers who attacked the rear of Union General Powell’s location, and road off with about 20 Federal horses. General Powell dispatched patrols and pursued the bushwhackers – engaging in extended shootouts along the heights that ran parallel to the Southfork River.
Excerpt from newspaper describing General Powell in area of Luray, VA October 1864, taken from Wikipedia.
The Union cavalry killed a few of the bushwhackers and pursued the remainder down narrow paths along barns and outcroppings as dusk approached. During the pursuit, Powell’s men found several empty telegraph wire spools along the way and observed telegraph wire stretching from a house on the ledge that ran across the Southfork Shenandoah River. Scouts followed the telegraph wire down into the valley and across the river that led them to a mill in the hollow.
The burning of Hazard Mill:
Union cavalry further observed lantern signals coming from the hidden mill down in the hollow on the other side of the river. They soon discovered that Bushwhackers were signaling the mill from a house on the ridge overlooking the Southfork River bend. As nightfall approached, the Union cavalry patrols dispensed with the remaining bushwhackers along the ridge and descended the hill. The patrols crossed the river via a ford towards the mill with the intent of torching it. The Southerners saw the torches approaching and a firefight ensued resulting in the death of several Union horsemen. The Federals withdrew up the hill east of the Southfork River to General Powell’s camp site and relayed their findings.
Picture entitled, ‘War to the Hilt’ by US National Park Service
Early the following morning the Federals crossed the river in force and surprised the bushwhackers. A fierce firefight ensued. Several bushwhackers were killed along the stream and others escaped on recently stolen horses along with a telegraph wagon used to power the telegraph system. The remainder woke to the sound of gunfire and immediately joined the melee returning fire from the second and third floors of the mill. The windows on each floor of the mill were ablaze with muzzle flashes as both sides kept up the volume. The Yankees repeatedly tried to torch the mill, but the torch bearers kept getting shot on approach. Gradually, the Union numbers grew larger as Bushwhacker firing waned. Then there was a lull in the Union fire as the Union troopers pulled back from the perimeter. A few minutes later the boom of cannon fire vibrated the morning air. The Federals had posted a field piece on top of the ledge about a mile away and fired at the mill splintering the trees in the vicinity. A few of the bushwhackers tried to surrender but were shot down by the Yankees.
Once the remaining bushwhackers realized no quarter would be given, the resistance continued. The Yankees finally managed to burn the mill, and the remaining Bushwhackers succumbed to the fire as the mill collapsed from the flames.
The dead bushwhackers were left where they lay while black smoke filled the valley from the burning mill and the adjacent trees until mother nature intervened later that day with rain.
The Telegraph revelation:
Scouts followed the telegraph wire into the hills and reported back that evening that the wire stretched from the mill over the hill in the direction of the main valley towards Woodstock and Mount Jackson. General Powell’s telegraph operators tapped into the lines and intercepted Confederate transmissions from vicinity of Woodstock on the other side of the valley. Alas, General Powell was given fresh insight into how the Confederates were always one step ahead.
The Yankees now realized how the Southerners were able to coordinate hit and run operations on both sides of the valley using portable telegraph machines.
Library of Congress photo of portable telegraph machine used by partisans in Shenandoah Valley.
The hasty telegraph wire operations had been set up earlier that summer by General Early’s forces to coordinate communications at various points along both sides of the Massanutten Mountain range. This particular stretch of wire had been recently operationalized by partisans to relay information and assemble riders and escape pursuit when pressed using narrow foot paths to traverse the hills. The winding paths through the Massanutten hills were perfect ambush sites so the Union scouts waved off any further pursuit of the fleeing bushwhackers.
Meanwhile, General Powell’s Federal patrols removed some of the telegraph wire and then rejoined the main body of the cavalry moving north on the 27th of October. According to official records, General Powell ended the engagement at Milford and left a detachment with the ambulance trains before moving back up Page Valley through Front Royal and south again towards Sperryville. General Sheridan’s command was advised of the findings and within a couple weeks, the war moved on from the valley for the last time.
As a side note, there are additional stories from the reconstruction era indicating that bushwhackers and organized bandits continued to use these hidden paths and telegraph operations for years after the war to interdict commerce on both sides of the valley. Local law enforcement eventually shut down the bushwhackers and the piracy ceased.
As you may recall from the article entitled, “Scarecrow of Hazard Mill,” this was not the end of the story at Hazard Mill. A few days later, some of Mosby’s partisans fell upon federal ambulance trains in vicinity of Bentonville and captured Sergeant Willie Cline – who was alleged to have emptied his pistol into the face of young Henry Rhodes, a 17-year-old noncombatant, a month earlier in the streets of Front Royal. The heinous murder of this young citizen achieved further infamy because it was perpetrated in front of Rhode’s mother and many townspeople.
The wounded Sergeant Cline was taken from the ambulance wagon and whisked away by the partisans. After fleeing from Union patrols, the partisans sought refuge in the hidden hollow by the blackened ruins of Hazard Mill. The mill was completely burned down and about a dozen bloated corpses and a few dead horses littered the grounds and stream surrounding the mill.
The Confederate horsemen later hanged the Yankee cavalryman on the hill above the mill ruins. In apparent deference to Rhode’s mother, the hanged man was never taken down and buried – but hung there for years until the rope rotted and the bones crumpled beneath the tree. Interestingly, the date of the hanging may well have been the 31st of October – hence the many apparitions that haunt the place at Halloween.
The hanged man became known as the scarecrow and spawned a legend that pervaded the area until the turn of the century.
