tl;dr — Considered at their smallest levels, rival Confederate and Federal maps of Difficult Run reveal superior Rebel place knowledge and multiple Yankee discrepancies
THEY WERE LOST
Consider the privilege of our age. We walk the world with super computers in our pockets that carry satellite-charted maps with finely-detailed knowledge of the earth’s surface that references our location every second. Even the robust accuracy of the old physical edition Thomas Guides seems arcane by comparison.
It can be difficult to relate to the Civil War from this perspective. Especially when you stop to consider that we have trained our awesome bevy of cartographic resources on documenting the War of the Rebellion.
It can fairly be said that we know where the soldiers were better than they themselves knew.
The armies were often lost in a landscape of unfamiliar hills and little known creeks laced with ad hoc roads and paths that were frequently mistaken for other such avenues. In this sense, the mapmaking efforts of each army are wondrous epics in their own right. Engineers and topographers on both sides mapped the American landscape in detail with a necessary thoroughness that surpassed any previous effort to do so.
When the armies of the Civil War fought one another, they groped across an American landscape that was in the process of being truly mapped for the first time.
The resulting body of cartography is imperfect in the best of ways. Each flaw is a hint at the methodologies used to integrate specific place knowledge with a rarely reliable collection of existing maps.
A TALE OF TWO MAPS
Among the rich assortment of maps in the Library of Congress’ collection are two compelling renditions of Northern Virginia, one Confederate and one Yankee.
The Confederate map is a sprawling 1864-vintage conglomeration attributed to the Topographic Bureau of the Army of Northern Virginia.1 Its Federal counterpart is the 1862 “Map of Eastern Virginia,” better known as the McDowell Map in deference to the general tasked with its completion.2
Both maps chart the same area of operations on the same massive scope. Each served the same function—to facilitate large scale strategic operations in the war’s eastern theatre. Nearly identical in substantial details, these maps were products of massive work executed by similar teams using similar methodologies.
Yet, when it comes to depicting the Upper Difficult Run Basin in Fairfax County, Virginia, the Confederate map is far superior. In this thirteen square mile pocket of ox cart paths, mill roads, and winding muddles, three roads that do not appear on the yankee map reveal themselves exclusively via southern cartography.
Modern Oaktonians might recognize the trace of today’s Fox Mill Road and Bennett Road as well as a defunct byway connecting Vale Road to Waples Mill Road via Lyrac and Willow Green Court.
The presence of these three roads on a Confederate map and not a Yankee map reflects privileged place knowledge. They are etchings of the bridle path phenomenon by which the know-how and recollections of friendly locals turned partisans became tactical assets for John Mosby.
When men of Difficult Run enlisted in Mosby’s Rangers, they integrated their internal compass into a collective navigational instinct that was eventually formalized into an official piece of cartography.
ALL ROADS LEAD TO MOSBY MEN
A week after John Mosby’s famed March 1863 raid into Fairfax Courthouse, the Federal Provost Marshal cleaned house in the vicinity of Fox’s Mills. Yankees arrested southern sympathizers living in and around the milling community in Upper Difficult Run and charged them with “acting as Confederate videttes.”
Among them were prominent future Mosby Rangers Albert Wrenn, Frank Fox, and Philip Lee. Also included in the haul was Richard Johnson, who never appeared on Mosby’s roster.3
A native of Fauquier County, Richard Johnson was the third husband of Jane Fox. Mother to two Mosby rangers, including Frank Fox, Jane was the widow of Gabriel Fox, whose father founded Fox’s Mill in 1787.4
William Summers, Jane’s son from her first marriage, administered the lower of Fox’s Mills, a fulling and carding operation set back on a particularly narrow defile of the Difficult Run valley adjoining the property of John Fox, who not only kept sheep, but had also taken William Summers’ sister (Jane Hervey Summers, Jane Fox’s daughter from her first marriage) as his second wife.56
After William died from Bright’s Disease in 1853, Richard Johnson assumed administrative duties of the lower mill, which came to bear his name.
Though he married Jane Fox in 1848, Richard Johnson’s connection to the Fox Family dated to the marriage of his younger sister, Mariana Johnson, to Jane Fox’s son, William Summers in 1844.7
Anyway you slice it, Richard Johnson came to be a fixture of the neighborhood. In 1860, the slave schedule of the U.S. Census records his ownership of twelve slaves ranging in age from one to fifty years old.8 This was a substantial estate for Fairfax County in the antebellum era.
This wealth translated into a certain prestige. Johnson served as executor for a number of wills and was elected justice of the piece for the sixth district of Fairfax County in 1860 and again in 1865.9
Prominent as he was, Richard Johnson’s social credentials don’t quite explain the curious disposition of Johnson’s Mill on the 1862 McDowell Map. Yankee cartographers apparently
deemed the wool-processing operation significant enough to be included on the map at its location on a narrow choke deep within Difficult Run, three quarters of a mile north of the Old Ox Road (today’s Waples Mill Road).
However, Johnson’s Mill was rendered on the Federal map without the benefit of any roads that connected it to the larger world. If you were to believe the yankee chart, Johnson’s Mill was just something that one stumbled upon while walking deep in the woods and thickets of Difficult Run.
More curious still is the fact that Johnson’s Mill—the lesser of two mills included in the catch-all place name “Fox’s Mills”—appears on the map, while Fox’s Upper Mill does not. Established long before the lower mill and much more economically productive as a gristing and sawing operation, the upper mill was a roadside landmark that hosted an entire regiment of Federal cavalry in June of 1863.10
The knowledge and representation of Johnson’s Mill can be explained through the lens of Federal counter-insurgency efforts. Richard Johnson was on the proverbial radar of Yankee authorities. However, the Federal McDowell Map’s lack of a road connecting this bastion of Confederate thought and deed with the main road is an important omission.
During the war, the road to Johnson’s Mill worked south from its intersection with Old Bad Road. At the point where the modern Fox Mill Road makes a sharp ninety degree turn before weaving along the western bank of Difficult Run, the wartime iteration of the road tucked across the creek east of the mill dam and wove south on the opposite side of Difficult Run.11
Missing on the Yankee map, this route is patently obvious on the Confederate variation.
Subject to inconsistent conditions beholden to environmental stimuli, the road to Johnson’s Mill was known to travel through heavy marsh and ford Difficult Run at a point known to be frequently washed out.
More importantly, the point at which this road forked from the Old Ox Road that dipped out of the Federal base at Jermantown sat on land owned by a Mosby family. Ranger Thomas Lee was the son of the school teacher at the Fox’s Mills School, for which Jane Fox was the patron.12
In 1867, Thomas Lee bought twelve and a half acres of land off of the mills’ new owner, Henry Waple. That land was the subject of a many-decade long legal battle regarding unpaid debts between Lee and Waple. Critically, we know from the chancery file that the land on which the Lee’s resided—that section of valley floor just north of the main road and east of Difficult Run where the wartime road from the lower mill cut into the Ox Road—was stripped of trees in the late 1860s. This is a valuable hint in determining that the area surrounding the road was forested.
Today, all the remains of the Lee family is a untended family cemetery plot behind the modern home at 11306 Waples Mill Road.13 In 1862, this land would have hosted the first stretch of roadway that sliced up the eastern bank of Difficult Run to its junction with Johnson’s Mill.
Because of the proximity of the Lee farm, there’s a strong likelihood that the turn off for Johnson’s Mill could have been mistaken for a private driveway.
A mile above the lower mill, the road to the fulling facility intersected Old Bad Road at James O. Wrenn’s farm. This Wrenn was a first cousin once removed to the father of prominent Ranger Lieutenant Albert Wrenn, the very same man who was arrested with Richard Johnson on the charge of being a Confederate vidette.14
Obscured on either end by less than ideal road conditions and potentially perplexing home dispositions, the vital road that the Federals failed to identify was also anchored on properties that enjoyed very close kinship ties to Mosby’s Rangers.
Similar ownership dynamics can be attributed to a curious dotted line on the Confederate map that darts up from the Old Ox Road just west of Fox’s Upper Mill before joining with Old Bad Road. Today, no such thoroughfare connects Waples Mill Road to Vale Road. However, solid hints suggest that the dotted line marked the position of a farm lane composed of modern Willow Green Court, Lyrac Street, and Wayland Street.
Those three roads represent cherry-picked sections of a longer historic access point, which the Fox family used to travel between their mills and their family home.
Today, a discernible divet on Wayland bears quiet testimony to the former road trace connecting the Fox family estate with Old Bad Road.15 To the south, the cul-de-sac on Willow Green Court is host to yet another tell tale cemetery, in the form of the long-neglected Fox plot.16
These roads no longer connect, but a simple satellite view highlighting the trajectory of all three is a nearly identical match with the dotted line on the 1864 Confederate Map. Tellingly, the Federal map marks this area with the name “Fox.”
By 1862, the Fox family was no longer connected to the area around the Wyland/Lyrac/Willow Green axis. However, local knowledge would have been indelibly marked with the family’s association to the land and its signature home—Squirrel Hill.
Built in 1705, Squirrel Hill was an impressive piece of vernacular architecture for its time.17 Steadily built up with more significant additions, the original log home form built from stacked and daubed chestnut timber bears tell tale signs of professional carpentry work.
Roman numbers marking doweled roof rafters and hand hewn floor joints express a more professional skill set and time/cost investment than the rough structures typical of its time and place on the Virginia frontier.
Acquired by Amos Fox in the late 1700s, Squirrel Hill grew to become the center of family life for Gabriel Fox, his wife Jane, and their many children. After his passing in the 1840s, Gabriel’s son and future Mosby Ranger, Frank Fox, and his sister, Mary Barnes, along with her husband Jack Barnes, future Mosby scout, briefly held title over Squirrel Hill before selling to the Cross Family.18
Today, the original Squirrel House structure has been lovingly restored and integrated into a larger home at 3416 Lyrac. Prior to being renovated, the new owner, Jason Hampel, hired a videographer to interview Joe Reeder, a former Army photo analyst who owned the structure since 1957. These tapes represent an invaluable piece of contemporary place knowledge tying one of the last known 18th century structures in Fairfax County to its current use.
Included in these interviews are unsubstantiated and tantalizing rumors that have followed Squirrel Hill since the Civil War. Lore has it that the home was used by John Mosby as a temporary headquarters.
True or not, the home’s role as a personal landmark and the tactical advantage offered by its farm lane would more than merit inclusion on a Confederate map.
In similar form, the farm lane connecting the Poplar Vale farm to the Ox Road also appeared on the Confederate map without gracing its Union counterpart. The road reached its terminus on today’s Fox Mill Road two miles northwest of Johnson’s Mill. This section of road was a very early thoroughfare used from earliest colonial days to denote the eastern boundary of King Carter’s Piney Ridge Tract.19
This extended section of the road to Fox’s Lower Mill/Johnson’s Mill from Lawyers Road roughly follows the path of modern Fox Mill Road. However, both the main thoroughfare and the Poplar Vale cut-off appeared only on Confederate maps. As far as Yankee cartographers were concerned, this area was roadless.
One possible explanation comes from a post-war account placing three young friends, Thomas Clarke, James Gunnell, and John Saunders, who lived in the area and volunteered their services to John Mosby beginning in the summer of 1863. Clarke’s grandson reported that the three men lived on adjoining properties. Clarke the elder at 11801 Stuart Mill Road, John Saunders at 11825 Stuart Mill Road, and James Gunnell on today’s Fox Mill Manor Drive.20
Adjoining properties would have presented a valuable asset for Mosby and his command who staged and bivouacked on friendly farms.
If this plot of conjoined properties wasn’t incentive enough, the land above the road to Poplar Vale was in the possession of Elzey Thompson and Austin D. Thompson. These two were the father and brother, respectively, of prominent early Mosby enlistee Minor Thompson.21
The privilege of place knowledge that Confederates enjoyed with these roads that paralleled and punctured known Federal thoroughfares can be directly correlated to men in Mosby’s command who lived along them and likely brought this knowledge into their units.
No account directly ties these individual soldiers to the appearance of their driveways and favorite cut-overs on Confederate maps, but a review of mapmaking methodology in Virginia during the war shines light on a culture of cartographic opportunism.
Years of neglect from professional mapmakers delivered unwelcome consequences in the first months of active campaigning in Northern Virginia. Irwin McDowell’s bold plan to destroy Confederate forces at Manassas Junction in July of 1861 came to grief in no small part because of inadequate and inaccurate maps.22
In the aftermath of First Bull Run, McDowell found himself tasked with providing more rigorous cartography to ensure future Federal success. His mapmakers started on the wrong foot by tracing from existing maps that were erroneously considered to be reliable.
The prime culprit was a 1:314,000 scale map of Virginia, which was commissioned in 1816 and released in 1826. A nice stab at suitable cartography, the 1826 Virginia map that came to serve as foundation for Civil War maps of Northern Virginia was fundamentally flawed from its very inception, as Major David Nettesheim records in his Masters Thesis from the US Army Command and General Staff College.
“The accuracy…was questionable. The surveyor got his initial information from county courthouse maps, if any were on file. He then made a rough ‘survey’ of county roads using an odometer to measure distance and a magnetic compass for direction. Compared to a trigonometric survey using instruments, this method was only a gross estimate. On the outline, he sketched the approximate local road network, and from ‘personal observation’ added the landscape. This normal procedure resulted in considerable inaccuracy. In addition, some surveyors were unscrupulous and compounded inaccuracies geometrically. Since they were paid by the amount of area ‘surveyed,’ they used shortcut methods. Some completed the map of an entire township in less than three days by dispensing with the magnetic compass and odometer, which were themselves only approximation techniques. The surveyor merely guessed general directions and estimated distances by buggy speed. The entire ‘survey’ was conducted without leaving the buggy.”23
Confederate mapmaking suffered from a similar bias with availability trumping accuracy. An excerpt from famed southern Cartographer Jedediah Hotchkiss’ memories hints at a methodology of copying existing maps with some verification.
“Monday, August 10th (1863). Worked at a map of Spotsylvania and verified some other maps. The weather is very warm, almost suffocating. Mrs. Ewell and her daughter went away today.
Tuesday, August 11th. Worked at map of vicinity of Winchester, until P.M. then went down to General Lee’s to see Col. Smith and obey an order of General Ewell’s to obtain a map of our line of defense, and also see what COl. Smith wished me to do. He gave me a portion of the country to map carefully for General Lee. It was very warm and we had rain in the night. All quiet.”24
Revered for his ability and activity, Hotchkiss was not above tracing. Nor were his companions in gray. Evidence of cartographic borrows is clear in the 1864 map, which obviously utilized elements of either Federal-produced maps or the very same base layers which were grafted into Federal maps.
The resulting situation found elements of both armies getting lost routinely throughout the war in Northern Virginia. Even John Mosby with his roster of elite local scouts got lost trying to cross Seneca Falls into Maryland on June 12, 1863.25
Behind the scenes, a silent knowledge race pitted Confederate and Yankee cartographers against one another in hard fought attempts to render the landform of Northern Virginia with accurate maps.
The general balance of cartographic advantage fell principally to Confederates, who enjoyed substantial existing place knowledge and a home field advantage that made traveling through the seat of the war substantially easier.
Men like Jedediah Hotchkiss worked existing maps into a plastic medium which they were eager to manipulate with firsthand observation or the help of patriotic locals. In his rich history of the bitter Yankee defeat at Chancellorsville, General Edward Stackpole hangs Rebel success on the ability to rapidly integrate volunteer road information into battle strategy.
“The bold Confederate plan to turn the Federal right flank has been variously attributed to both Lee and Jackson, but more likely it was a joint conception, arrived at independently. While the decision of course rested with the commanding general and his was the major risk, it was a triple play from Fitzhugh Lee (via Stuart) to Robert E. Lee to Stonewall Jackson that set the stage. For it was the cavalry brigadier whose thorough reconnoitering first discovered Hooker’s exposed right flank; while Jackson’s staff officers, Tucker Lacy and Jed Hotchkiss, made a vital contribution when they ran down the local resident who provided the intelligence as to the available road, without which the ‘concealed’ march would have been impossible.”26
Similar efforts beneath the stars and stripes were equally valiant, but understandably less successful. Robert Knox Sneden, who famously mapped the Chantilly battlefield and adjacent stretches of Upper Difficult Run without having ever inspected the terrain firsthand, offered an account of Federal officers scrounging up details for the McDowell map.
One such anecdote involves German-born Captain Heine who “has all this section of country under his supervision, and by constant scouting with map in hands extends information as to roads, bridges, Rebel earthworks and forces, while every house is marked on the map where rabid secessionist live or congregate. A [southern civilian] scout regularly employed by the secret service goes with him on nearly every adventure.”27
For those wondering about the efficacy of scouting enemy territory in Northern Virginia with the expertise of a German officer, try this exercise: fly into Dulles Airport and attempt to weave your way to the library in Fairfax City without using major roads or maps. Sketch your route on a pad of paper including directions and distances. If you feel inclined to slow down, imagine there are one or more armed people in the woods who would sooner kill you than look at you. When you eventually arrive at your destination, compare your work to a satellite map.
Ordinary navigational challenges, an atmosphere of terror, and a sunken landscape poor in horizons and rich in confusion made mapping a place like Difficult Run an appropriately complex task.
Comparing Confederate and Federal maps over one and a half centuries after the fact provides a wealth of information about allegiance and information dynamics in the Difficult Run basin. The divide between invading a place and fighting on one’s own farm congealed into a disparity in maps.
These designed documents reflect very real operational advantages and express better than any artifact the salient fact that Confederates knew and communicated particulars about this advantage amongst themselves.