Witness to Atrocities

By Chris Graham

Historian Peter Carmichael has studied the local memory of the Stony Creek Raid through Sussex County, Virginia and has discovered that few, if any, people in that place remember it.

In the cold December of 1864, during the siege of Petersburg, United States General in Chief Ulysses Grant determined to probe the strength of the Army of Northern Virginia after General Jubal Early’s divisions rejoined it following their disastrous turn in the Shenandoah Valley. Along the way, if the probe could disrupt one of the remaining supply lines— the Weldon Railroad—that sustained Lee’s army, so much the better.

Major General Gouverneur K. Warren led one cavalry and three infantry divisions directly south toward the Virginia-North Carolina border. After passing through Sussex Court House and over the Nottoway River, Warren’s soldiers began tearing up railroad track. They eventually destroyed 17 miles before they began a judicious retreat in the face of General A.P. Hill’s rapidly approaching Confederate infantry force that had been dispatched to obstruct the Federal advance.

Wood-cut illustration. "General Warren's raid–Soldiers making a Greek Cross (the Fifth Corps badge) out of the heated rails of the Weldon Railroad." Published in Harper's Weekly, 1864.

Library of Congress

A map detail of Sussex and Southampton counties, Virginia. 1863.

Library of Congress

Not mentioned in official reports, but revealed through sometimes cryptic references in personal correspondence, was the fact that the lines of advance and retreat were marked by rampant drunkenness of U.S. soldiers, the guerrilla murders of U.S. soldiers by Confederate partisans, at least one rape by a U.S. officer, if not more, and the burning of numerous homes. These sort of events were common in frontier places like Missouri or in smaller scenes in Kentucky or the North Carolina mountains. But murder and rape on the battle lines between the Confederate and United States premier field armies in Virginia? On this front, supposedly, two noble armies had been locked in a gentlemanly, if bloody, fight. Only recently has the killing of Black soldiers by their Confederate captors in the eastern theater become common knowledge. But instances of brutality are still rare in public memory. Perhaps it’s for this reason that folks in Sussex don’t remember the Stony Creek Raid.

But one witness, if mute, survived.

This doll, manufactured in Germany by J.D. Kestner, belonged to Anne Brown Mayes, the nine year old daughter of Irvin and Martha Ann Mayes of Sussex County. Irvin Brown had started as a planter in Sussex before becoming a merchant there in 1850. After his marriage in 1853 and the birth of Anne Brown, the family relocated to Petersburg in 1860; although, they may have maintained a family home and business in Sussex. If so, they possibly retreated there when the siege enveloped their adopted home town in the summer of 1864.

See “General Beauregard” on exhibit in A People’s Contest at ACWM-Tredegar in Richmond, Virginia.

John Dixon, ACWM

According to Betty Mayes Tredway—Anne Brown’s sister who donated the doll to the museum (and who had not yet been born at the time of the events she narrated)—Anne Brown taunted U.S. soldiers on their line of march with this doll, calling out “hurray for General Beauregard,” the name Anne Brown had given the figurine.

Betty Mayes Tredway claimed that the Mayes home itself had been “destroyed by fire, by the ruthless hands of the Yankees.” Another document in the item history file suggests that the doll had been the sole survivor of the fire and that the doll itself had been burned. Though that claim is not supported by the physical evidence (the doll showing no signs of having been through a fire), it is entirely possible that the Mayes home was one of the residences burned.

Following the war, the Mayes family lived in Petersburg. Anne Brown died in 1880, unmarried and of unknown causes. Betty Tredway eventually moved to Hicksford, now known as Emporia, and became a member of the Greensville Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She donated this doll to the Confederate Museum in 1925, “hoping this will serve as a relic, from the ‘Land that Used to Be,’ and that it may find a permanent dwelling in our museum…”

Artifacts such as this doll—along with documentary research—can often be witness to what people so easily forget.

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First-hand Account

Ben Del Fel Hagenbuch

Andrew Hagenbuch

Benjamin “Ben” Del Fel Hagenbuch was a private in the U.S. Army, Company C of the 210 th Pennsylvania Infantry. He wrote several letters to his wife throughout years of service. Below is an excerpt from one letter dated December 13, 1864 detailing his experiences in the Stony Creek raid:

"… [We] continued our march until we reached the Weldon Road about 8 o'clock and commenced tearing it up until 12 at night then we rested until morning then at it again until 12 o'clock that night. We tore up about 40 miles of railroad then turned to come back with the rebs in hot pursuit. We burnt every thing on our way: mansions, granaries, courthouses, churches, and fences, nothing but destruction. Oh, but it was awful to hear the poor women begging of the soldiers to leave their cattle, pigs, and poultry. But no, not anything that was made to eat escaped, and I do not believe there is many chickens or cattle on the road."

"God being my helper, I never was off the road after anything, nor was I in a house, nor could I have the heart. Many of them payed for it with their lives, for on our road back there was 15 of our men found with their throats cut. Some shot all stragglers that were behind. The rear guard fell in the hands of the [Confederate] Bushwhackers and guerrillas…"

Transcript of the letter provided by Andrew Hagenbuch. Letters from Ben Del Fel Hagenbuch are housed at Auburn University Library’s Civil War Diaries and Letters Collection: https://content.lib.auburn.edu/ digital/collection/civil2/id/27555

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Chris Graham is the ACWM Curator of Exhibitions

Dr. Peter Carmichael’s report on his Stony Creek Raid research can be found at https://tinyurl.com/Stony-Creek-Raid.