Randon Billings Noble (Now, that is a Southern name!) commemorates the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Chancellorsville and Stonewall Jackson’s accidental wounding and death by searching for the internment site of General Jackson’s amputated arm.
I was walking through a cornfield in search of a cemetery in the middle of Virginia. A fox trotted across the path in front of me and disappeared in the forest of stalks with barely a rustle. I was searching for Stonewall Jackson’s lost arm. …
In Chancellorsville, 150 years later, the story of this arm is surprisingly well documented. A large quartz boulder marks the place where Jackson fell and signs along Route 3 mark the “Wounding of Jackson†and “Jackson’s Amputation.†But the cemetery in which the arm was buried is not marked. I knew that an aide had taken the arm to his own family graveyard, and I learned from one of the markers that the cemetery was called Ellwood, but I didn’t know where it was—only that it was nearby.
I drove through Chancellorsville National Military Park with my eyes open for anything that looked like it might lead to a cemetery. Late in the day, in a gray misty rain, having already given up, I pulled into a driveway to turn around and stopped short at a rusty iron gate with soldered block letters, E L L W O O D.
I hesitated. It was clearly a locked gate, but a faint trail led around it and continued through dense woods. While I didn’t want to trespass, I didn’t want to retreat either. The mystery of the arm was too great; I left the car in the driveway.
Read the whole thing.
Hat tip to Fred Lapides.
George Fink
My wife & I went to Chancellorsville to be there May 3, the day 150 years ago my Great Grandfather was wound while serving with the color guard of the 23rd Va Regiment, to walk where he walked as one of Jackson’s foot cavalry. We visited Ellwood where very knowledgeable volunteers describe the medical care he would have received. I was most deeply moved upon entering the NPS visitors center & discovering a display of the uniform of a man from my Great Grandfather’s unit, Company E, who died from wounds received during the battle. They enlisted the same day in Halifax County.
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