Historic Harrisonburg: The Quilt Museum

The Virginia Quilt Museum is located in a house built in 1856 for Edward Warren and his bride Virginia Magruder. Warren was killed in the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864. Yet a ghost that has been reported standing at the top of the staircase is not thought to be Warren, but another Confederate soldier, Joseph Latimer, who was wounded at Gettysburg and died of gangrene in the house. See a history of the house on the Quilt Museum website

The building stands on Route 11 Northbound at Franklin Street. In front of the house is a Civil War Trails Marker entitled Warren-Sipe House — Home and Hospital.

Many other homes and buildings were used as impromptu hospitals during the Civil War. Just a block away stood the Confederate General Hospital in a building that once housed the Harrisonburg Female Academy. That building was demolished in 1879, but reminders of it's past stand in front of the municipal building that is now on the site: a cannon and a Civil War Trails marker about the hospital.