Colorful Sights, Hupps Hill

This afternoon I ran an errand in Strasburg and Charlie came along. I decided to stop by the Visitor Center on Hupps Hill to take a picture of the redbud grove. But first, I spotted a painting on the back of a trash enclosure.

Monday Murals

Three years ago, I photographed the front of this box. Since then, it has been exposed to exhaust fumes and dirt from the parking lot, which is just a few yards away.

Some painted critters have appeared, a big caterpillar and a brilliant snail.

Charlie and I walked to the redbud trees. There’s an interpretive trail that goes in front of them. Charlie stopped to investigate the signs.

Here’s a close-up of the sign on the left. You can view the older sign, How Strata Shaped Strategy. on HMDB. It is one in a series telling about the caves here and the role that Hupps Hill played in the Cavil War.

Signal Knob is visible in the distance. I also took a picture of the flowering pear tree in front of the visitor center. 

New Exhibit, New Season at Belle Grove

 Middletown, VA

Saturday was opening day for Belle Grove Plantation after a winter break. I’ve been there many times, but I wanted to see the new quilts on display. These were stitched at community events and venues as part of a project to honor the memories of the enslaved workers who kept Belle Grove flourishing from 1783 to 1851.

Names of 270 people are on the quilts, organized by family groups. Their names were discovered through years of research using local records, news articles, and other sources. 

In the next room is an archaeology exhibit called “Unearthing Enslaved Lives.”  I’ve been following the research here for quite a few years. Historians, archaeologists, and students have done an impressive of reconstructing stories that were almost lost to time.

The property is on the Cedar Creek Civil War battlefield.

Cedar Creek from Bowman Mill Road

 Near Strasburg

I took Bowman Mill Road last week for a change of scenery. It’s a winding country road, so it takes longer. It crosses Cedar Creek on a  low-water bridge. 

The first time I saw that bridge was decades ago on a Civil War field trip. A Confederate army crossed here in 1864 when they carried out an early morning attack on a Federal encampment near Middletown.

Water / Reflections / B&W

Theme: Double

Two Trees on Chestnut Ridge

Today’s theme for City Daily Photo is “Double.” These trees stand above the parking lot on Turner Ashby Lane, Harrisonburg  I stopped there for a few minutes after an appointment on Friday. 

There is a small park there, a forested memorial to Turner Ashby, a confederate general who was killed there in 1862.

Shadow Shot / Mosaic

The Miller House on Cougill Road

 Middletown, VA

I put the name of the road in the title of the post because Miller House is a common place name, plus I have forgotten the name of the road several times when I was trying to find this historic site. It is mentioned in written accounts of the Battle of Cedar Creek (1864). This property is on the corner of Mineral Road and faces a railroad track.

The property was recently acquired by the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, which will preserve it and possibly open it for tours. 

I’ve written about this place before (see the 2009 post about it). The ruins that are close to the road are sometimes referred to as a mill, but they are actually the ruins of a smaller house that was styled similar to the one that still stands. I photographed the smaller house in 1997, and it was still standing, but just barely. I suspect it predated the larger house, but I don’t know when they were built. 

I saw a photo of a lovely painting by artist John Chumley of the smaller house. I’ve seen an exhibit of Chumley’s work (see this post). He died in 1984.

I’ll spare you my rant about how the park service and others keep calling the ruins a mill when it was actually a brick house. Instead, allow me to complain about the update I just downloaded today on my iPad, OS 26.2. Things look different and I’m getting too stubborn to deal with changes all the time! The Photos app doesn’t have the parallax correction in the same way and I’m going to have to view a video to find out how to straighten lines. This probably doesn’t matter to most people, but I tend to take some photos a bit lopsided with my cell phone, partly because I’m trying to walk the dog and take a picture at the same time. So then I straighten them out on the iPad. I may have become picky when I was taking photo classes years ago, and we used medium format and leveled the camera with a bubble like a carpenter uses. It seems extreme now, but I learned a lot from that experience.

On the plus side, the Photos app now has a place to click to open the picture in “Extensions,” and one of them is SKRWT, which I downloaded some time ago. I can modify receding lines in that and then go right back to Photos. I like the ease of Apple’s Photos app, especially since I no longer subscribe to Photoshop. I don’t like paying for subscriptions. They add up, and my income doesn’t go up because I’m retired. Or maybe that’s an excuse and I’m just cheap!

A Stop at the Brawner Farm

Manassas, VA

A few weeks ago, I want to Herndon to buy some groceries that I can’t find here in the valley. On the way back, I varied my route because that something I like to do. Even though I grew up in Northern Virginia, I haven’t seen it all.

I found that I was driving next to Manassas National Battlefield Park. I decided to make a quick side trip to one of the sites in the park. When I pulled into the parking lot, it felt very familiar. I have been here before on a field trip, although that was long ago and some changes have been made. 

This sign tells of the beginning of the Battle of Second Manassas. The first Battle of Manassas had taken place nearby in 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War. It sometimes called the Battle of Bull Run.

Late on the afternoon of August 28 [1862], Brig. Gen. Rufus King's division proceeded east towards Centreville. They marched in search of the elusive "Stonewall" Jackson, who was operating behind Union lines with half the Confederate army. As the head of the column passed the village of Groveton, Confederate artillery emerged from the woods and fired upon the unsuspecting Federals. Union troops turned to fight a fierce twilight battle near the Brawner Farm that began the three day battle of Second Manassas.

I did not attempt to walk the interpretive trail. I’m still having knee problems and back problems, plus there could be traffic ahead, and I had to get home by five to pick up Charlie at daycare.

New Market in Letters

This postcard-style mural was recently completed in the town of New Market. The letters show local scenes, beginning with the golf course and ending with Endless Caverns 

The artist is Brooke Barrick-Helsley. She was mentored by Studio Sasquatch.

 I photographed it on a rainy day. Here are a few scenes nearby.

New Market Battlefield looked dreary in the rain, which is appropriate because the 1864 Battle took place on a day so wet that some soldiers lost their shoes in the mud.

Mosaics / Murals

Seeking Freedom

A Presentation at Belle Grove

Last weekend I went to a talk in Middletown. NPS Ranger Anthony told stories of enslaved people at Belle Grove Plantation who escaped from slavery or earned their freedom. There were a couple of men who apparently had help from someone who forged papers for them so that they were able to make their way out of the state.

Brief versions of their stories are available online, at least for now. 

Belle Grove in Middletown (not to be confused with another plantation of the same name that is in King George County) is a beautiful farm that is part of Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park. A Civil War battle was fought here in 1864.

Mt. Zion Church in St. Louis, VA

Loudoun County, VA

This Baptist Church was established in 1885. It is in the village of St. Louis, which was established by formerly enslaved people after the Civil War. 

The parking lot is across the road. The church has a blessing box next to it labeled Free Food Pantry. 

A Loyal Following

On Thursday, I went to the funeral of Charles Poland, a beloved history teacher, who passed away at the age of 90. I wrote about him on Tuesday and have mentioned him many times over the years. The funeral was in Purcellville, not far from where my sister used to live. Then we formed a car caravan and rode out to Ebenezer Cemetery in Bluemont.

The ride felt familiar although most of the territory was new to me. Our field trips with Dr. Poland were carried out in a similar way: car following car down rural roads into the middle of nowhere. We passed homes and farms. At one point I thought I heard goats and glanced over and saw some standing on top of a car in a farmyard! 

Finally we reached a country cemetery, which seemed poetically appropriate. Dr. Poland often ended his tours at a cemetery where Civil War soldiers were buried, where he would discuss the losses of whatever campaign we were studying. Even though he made a career teaching and writing about the Civil War, he made sure we understood that it was a terrible and wasteful war. 

I picked out three more pictures from past tours to show you. The first one amuses me because group members are studying a map after we took a wrong turn near Cold Harbor. That rarely happened because Dr. Poland and his wife Betty drove the routes on a previous weekend to plan all the stops. He’s second from left in the picture.

When I first started taking his classes in 1989, I feared getting separated from the group because we had no cell phones or GPS. We only had small sketched-out maps, not to scale, and verbal directions. I only got hopelessly lost one time and that was in Newport News. 

I took these classes for 23 semesters, typically in the spring. It took eight years to complete all the eastern campaigns, and at that point I thought I was done, but a classmate called me and ask me to go again because he often rode with me and was afraid of getting lost by himself. So I did the whole series again, and then there were additional semesters covering specialized topics like guerrilla warfare and Civil War hospitals.  So I kept going until Dr. Poland retired. I loved these trips.

I wasn’t the only regular. There were people who started the courses before I did and kept on going almost until the end. This sort of travel could be strenuous so adult students sometimes found it became too hard to keep doing. Quite a bit of walking was required, and I remember getting exhausted.

(The CDP Theme is Shadows. Also Sharing with Shadow Shot Sunday.)

Dr. Poland usually wore a hat, and I quickly learned that it was important to have one for sunny afternoons. I also learned to carry sunscreen, water, snacks, and insect repellent. 

Today’s final photo is from 2009. It was a pleasure to see some of my old classmates at the funeral, and they were in this Appomattox photo: Jon and Sheryl W., Pam, John B., plus Martha and Betty. 

Notes: My Civil War Field Trips website was about these tours. Eventually I gave it up for the easier task of blogging.

I also wrote book reports for homework and turned them into reviews on Amazon, which was known mostly as a bookstore in those days. This started my hobby of writing reviews, which I still do.

Dr. Poland recently completed a book on Animals in the Civil War. I have ordered a copy.

A Respected Teacher, a Caring Friend

 Charles Preston Poland, Jr.
1934 - 2025

Dr. Poland was an enthusiastic and caring teacher. I first took one of his history courses 35 years ago and enjoyed it so much that I kept taking his classes until he retired. Mostly, they were summer or spring field trip tours. I was fortunate that the first one I signed up for covered the beginning of the American Civil War. We followed the war chronologically for the most part. It took eight seasons to cover the entire war, and we only concentrated on action in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Much of the time was spent traveling by car, following the routes of the major campaigns. 

Some of my classmates had completed the series before and were doing it a second time. Well, I wound up doing the same thing. The trips were never exactly the same though, for Dr. Poland was always learning new things and leading us to new places. 

He and his wife were some of my favorite people. We continued to exchange Christmas cards after he retired. It hurts to lose him. 

New Interpretive Trail at New Market

I’ve been in New Market battlefield many times. It’s a beautiful place, with an interesting but tragic history. On a single rainy day in May 1864, over 1300 men were killed or wounded, and the battle really didn’t change anything. Some of the casualties were cadets of high school age.

On Tuesday I was driving past on the interstate and I saw that a new section of the battlefield was open to the public. Just a few years ago, it was part of a farm and cattle were grazing here. This land looks bucolic and peaceful, as it did before the war reached it. This is true of many Civil War sites.

The sign is about the casualties and how people wrote about them at the time. A newspaper article from North Carolina is included.

“Give us a speedy, an honorable, and a lasting peace.” Yet almost a year passed before peace would come.

The First Integrated Church in the County

New Market, VA

Manor Memorial Methodist Church was integrated in 1965. I was surprised to see a marker about this story that was erected by Shenandoah Valley Battlefields organization because they usually stick closely to Civil War history. It turns out that this church was in existence during the Civil War and was probably used as a hospital, like every public building and many homes. The valley saw many battles in 1862 and 1864, and a significant battle raged through the town of New Market.

I’ve submitted the sign and complete text to the Historical Marker Database and it should be available there in a few days. There’s a QR code on the sign for an audio description and here are some excerpts, transcribed by software.

The Methodist congregation in New Market built their first church, a log building, on Lee Street around 1831. In 1857, they purchased this lot to build their new church, completing the original wooden part of the structure in 1861, the first year of the Civil War. That original structure stood here during the Battle of New Market on May 15, 1864. While there is no known account of the church during the battle, it no doubt experienced the same trauma as other buildings: Artillery shells exploding around it with thunderous ear-shattering concussions, and musketballs rattling off the walls.

After the war, an African-American Methodist congregation was formed in New Market by African-American ministers who visited the area to serve recently freed slaves and local black communities. In 1873 the congregation opened Asbury Methodist Church on Cadet Road.

The African-American population in New Market declined in numbers over the years and by 1965 the congregation of Asbury Methodist was too small to remain in operation. Historically black Cavalry Methodist Church in Mount Jackson faced the same challenges so in that year, both churches merged with Manor Memorial Church here.

A Wooden Mill and a Log Home

The town of Mount Jackson began as a settlement where the Great Wagon Road crossed Mill Creek. The original gristmill existed before 1746, and the current building replaced it in 1872. Until recently, this mill had fallen into disrepair, but it has been fixed up and painted.

The road eventually became the Valley Pike and is now US 11. In Mount Jackson, it is known as Main Street.

Across the road from Mount Jackson Mill is a log home built in 1751. Additions have been built on to the back, but the front of the home still displays the original logs.

I took these pictures on a rainy day and the house is reflected on the street. The picture looks lopsided because the street runs downhill to Mill Creek, but the foundation was built up so the house would be level. You can see where the roof to the front porch was, but the porch was removed when the road was widened in the 1930s.

Local lore says that George Washington visited this house. A better documented story tells us that it was used as a Civil War hospital, which was true of many buildings in the Shenandoah Valley since multiple battles were fought in the region.