Page News & Courier
Heritage and Heraldry
History, a researcher, and one of many spooky ironies
Article of November 5, 1998
In 1995 I wondered upon a military record for cousin James Draper Moore. A native of Washington County, Maryland, James had served in Co. B of Cole's 1st Potomac Home Guard Cavalry. After combing the record for extensive details, I found that the redheaded twenty-three year old had died at Andersonville. It wasn't until April 1997 however, before I finally had the opportunity to visit him at grave #7273. What awaited me was a genealogist's nightmare, but a personal challenge to a historian. Imagine my surprise when I realized that the stone bore the name of another soldier.
Now for someone with five direct Page County Confederate ancestors, this lone Maryland Yankee was quite impressive. So far he had been captured in a fight with Mosby's men, ended up in one of the war's infamous POW camps, and offered this historian a mystery to solve. But from one mystery springs another. While I have been concentrating on efforts to convince Andersonville that the grave had been mis-marked and that my half 1st cousin 4 times removed actually lies quietly in grave #7273 (which I have finally succeeded in doing and am awaiting a new tombstone to reflect the same), a native of Page County COULD have had the responsibility in saving young James Moore's life. But more on this in a little while. . . .
The events that led to young Moore's unwanted trip to Andersonville began on January 10, 1864. Just before dawn on that freezing morning, Mosby and his raiders struck Cole's Battalion on Loudoun Heights. Moore was in fact stationed with the ill-fated picket along the Hillsboro road, where Piney Run crossed. Mosby had to make certain that this picket was taken out in order to free a path for his escape from the night assault.
By the time that Mosby had decided to withdraw, he had suffered severe losses, including the wounding of his younger brother "Willie". In addition to the six captured Federal troopers, Cole's battalion had lost six killed and fourteen wounded. However, the men lost from Mosby's command were deemed by one ranger as "worth more than all Cole's Battalion." Considering all of this, a truce was made later that morning and Captain William Henry Chapman, a native of Page County and one-time captain of the county's own Dixie Artillery, dispatched a messenger into the Federal camp with an offer for an exchange. For the recovery of his men, Mosby would return the six captured Federal troopers. Cole refused to receive the offer, sealing Moore's fateful journey to Andersonville.
Had Chapman succeeded in his attempt to negotiate an exchange, Moore might have survived the war. However, this author has to sit back for a minute to appreciate a personal irony in all of this. True, it might have been purely coincidental that Chapman, a Page County man, had nearly been responsible for sparing a distant Maryland relative. However, little did I know that two totally separate personal "crusades"would ever meet at a crossroad. For you see, years before the "discovery" of my Yankee cousin, in my research to publish a book about the Dixie Artillery, Chapman was a main focal point of research. I contacted several of his descendants, sought out his personal papers with a very insatiable hunger, and emerged from it all with a never before published photo of this right-hand man to Mosby. Was it all purely coincidental, or did I unknowingly attempt to return a good gesture extended a distant relative over 133 years ago? Goose bumps are in order here, but it isn't the most haunting aspect of my research nor the first instance, and I feel certain that it won't be the last . . . . I hope.
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