what’s in A enigma?: martha stevens

Walking along the Sunken Road by the Stone Wall, you'll come upon a simple arrangement of granite blocks that trace the outline of a historic home, the Martha Stevens House. Here, visitors pause to reflect on the life and times of its owner, a true enigma in Fredericksburg's history.

Her story resonates with different people for different reasons: diversity and equal rights, the horrors of slavery, the Civil War and its "lost cause" retelling. Prior to Emancipation, a large proportion of city residents were enslaved persons, and some of our city residents today are their direct descendants. Even now, we still feel ideological divisions about our past, present and future.

Fredericksburg is awash in a complicated social history. Emblematic of our struggles to accept and understand one another, is the question of how we interpret the wording on the monument erected on the site in 1917 which reads: "HERE LIVED MARTHA STEVENS FRIEND OF THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIER 18611865" .

She remains the only woman of Fredericksburg to have a Civil War monument erected in her honor. But what, exactly, are we honoring? As historian John Hennessy puts it, "to most

What’s in An Enigma?

Martha Stevens & the stevens house

Fredericksburgers, she would have been near the bottom of the list of prospective heroines, for Martha Stevens lived an unconventional life on the edges of Fredericksburg society."

If you could travel back in time and visit the Fredericksburg Battlefield in the 1880s, when the house was still standing (it was destroyed by fire in 1913), you might happen upon its owner, the legend herself, Martha Stephens (aka Martha Stevens, d. 1888). Her house sat at ground zero during both battles of Fredericksburg. Ever the businesswoman, she would later sell off parts of her bulletriddled house to souvenir seekers, and frequently regaled visiting veterans of both armies with her colorful tales of the battle.

A fiercely independent businesswoman who never married, she owned several parcels of real estate … at a time when that was a rare thing. She could neither read nor write, and signed her name with a simple "X". She smoked a pipe, was rumored to associate with AfricanAmerican men, and ran afoul of the law for dispensing alcohol out of her house. History has been both kind and condescending to this remarkable person.

Before the Civil War, her reputation was sullied: "a woman of abandoned character and an outcast of society", wrote one man. Her friend John Goolrick described her as "uneducated, too free and too outspoken in what she said and how she said it." She was thought to have run a brothel, but that has since been mostly debunked. Her activity as a saloon-keeper may have contributed to her questionable reputation in the community.

Martha never married. Evidence indicates that she lived with one Edward Stevens for nearly 30 years. She even took on his last name (aka Stephens). Under Virginia law, real property owned by a woman would promptly pass to her husband upon marriage. Perhaps she stayed single to retain ownership and control over her real estate holdings.

Oddly, by the time of her death in the late 1880s, her status had swung dramatically, from town nonconformist to beloved heroine. By the time the monument was erected in 1917, it was believed that she had tended to wounded soldiers during the December 13th 1862 battle, although there are no wartime

By jon gerlach

accounts of this ever happening. Perhaps the genesis of the legend came from her own story-telling to veterans who visited the battlefield, as suggested by John Hennessy in his Wordpress article Martha Stevens Redeemed: Pariah to Heroine - a Matter of Faith or History?

Martha Stephens was often shunned, misunderstood, and beloved, so the enigmatic view we have of her today is not surprising.

So what's in an Enigma? Here, a true maverick who history remembers in starkly different ways.

An attorney and retired archaeologist, Jon Gerlach serves on Fredericksburg's City Council, Ward Two.

photo: Stevens House postwar photo courtesy of npsfrsp.wordpress.com

The Central Rappahannock Heritage Center is a non-profit, all-volunteer archives whose mission is to preserve historically valuable material ofthe region and make it available to the public for research

900 Barton St #111, Fredericksburg, VA www.crhcarchives.org contact@crhcarchives.org 540-373-3704

Volunteers Wecome! Contact us about donating collections of documents and photographs