The Battle of Waynesboro

The Battle of Waynesboro occurred in my hometown on 2 March, 1865. In an area today known as the "Tree Streets", (Upper left of this image) Confederate forces were defeated in what is considered the last Civil War battle in the Shenandoah Valley.

Having been born in 1958 in a hospital that was built upon ground that had served as the battle of Waynesboro, I grew up with a natural admiration for my ancestors who willingly sacrificed all they possessed to defend hearth and home. I had two great-great grandfathers who fought in that battle, both serving with the 51st Virginia infantry. My great-great-grandfather, John W. McGann, defended land during this battle that his son, Charles L. McGann, my great-grandfather, would come to own. That land first became apple orchards and, later, the residential area known as the Tree Streets. Charlie McGann's home - located in the center of the battlefield - would pass to my grandmother, then to my father, and then to my brother and me. As a young boy, my father fed the horse of an old Confederate veteran who lived nearby and who taught at Fishburne Military School in Waynesboro. That is how close our generation is to the Civil War. Like my father before me, I spent many hours playing and roaming the ground that held the blood of those brave soldiers; the blood of my ancestors. My great-grandfather is buried on a portion of that battlefield. Today, John McGann rests in a family plot on top of a wind-swept ridge in the Blue Ridge mountains - his grave marked with only a simple field stone. None of these ancestors owned slaves. They were poor dirt farmers and, for the most part, they died paupers. Part of my family's oral tradition, and local lore, is that the McGann's donated a portion of their old farmstead for burial plots for Nelson County blacks after the war, though no one seems to be able to locate this graveyard.

My interest in the WBTS has a real and, at times, emotional connection. Those of us who have this connection have heard many of these stories from our fathers and grandfathers who knew those veterans, who saw their wounds, touched their old uniforms, gazed upon their medals. Persons with no such attachment are studying the conflict from the outside and are sometimes puzzled at this emotional connection. Those who have a direct attachment to the bloodiest and most unfortunate episode in American history have much to add to the war's study.

“A man that would not love his father's grave is worse than a wild animal.” ~ Chief Joseph