Leesburg’s Glenfiddich House Has Some History

Leesburg’s Glenfiddich House Has Some History

By Joe Motheral

Glenfiddich House on King Street in Leesburg.

At noon on September 4, 1862, a horsedrawn ambulance pulled up in front of Harrison Hall on North King Street in Leesburg.

According to early records in the files of what was later known as Glenfiddich House, “A soldierly figure with both wrists in splints, walked up the long box (woods) bordered brick path and was welcomed.”

That was General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate armies. He had come to Leesburg— passing through on his way to his headquarters in Frederick, Maryland—to initiate the “Maryland Campaign” that included the battle of Antietam.

Lee reportedly was injured when a messenger, his horse in full gallop, came to a screeching halt. Lee’s horse, Traveller, spooked, and Lee fell, breaking one wrist and spraining the other.

The Harrisons of Harrison Hall, were friends with General Lee. The original part of the house was built circa 1767, with a larger section added in 1840 in an Italianate style. There was a succession of owners until around 1980 when a fire destroyed much of the home and town officials considered tearing it down.

Lou LeHane, founder of Miles, LeHane Consultants, decided to buy it from David Trone and restore it. They did salvage a trunk in the attic with a diary dated 1861-62 written by then 19-yearold Virginia Miller, a niece of the Harrisons. It also contained Confederate $5 bills and a Confederate uniform.

A copy of Virginia Miller’s diary offered a glimpse of daily life at the outset of the Civil War. For example:

Wednesday, February 19, 1862….Yesterday Llall and I started on a shopping expedition and after he left, we went back to Hattie’s. Uncle Matt had a large dinner party, we stayed until quite late.

Harrison Hall became a temporary hospital during the Battle of Ball’s Bluff. Miller wrote:

Entry on Thursday night, November 21, 1861… We were startled early in the morning by a sharp and brisk cannoning, but it had been common for us to hear firing…About there was a great cry that the Yankees were within a mile of town. We saw several wounded prisoners taken by, some wounded frightfully, one poor man with the blood streaming from his face, some with arms and legs wounded and another with his jawbone crushed.

She had gotten word that Col. Erasmus Burt from a Mississippi unit had been wounded seriously. She wrote:

He was wounded in the right hip. Most anxiously and carefully did we prepare his room for him…and as I stepped forward to take his sword and belt from the doctor, can I ever forget the gentle, kind way in which he called my name and held out his hand. They took him upstairs, but a mark of his suffering remained behind in the blood which stained the floor.

And how did Harrison Hall become Glenfiddich?

Author James Dickey and his family rented the house from 1966 to 1968 when he wrote the final draft of Deliverance and was serving as Poet Laureate of the Library of Congress. The name Glenfiddich originated with the LeHanes, who owned a farm in Loudoun County named Glenfiddich.