A Revealing New Variant of a Familiar Panorama

A slightly different angle reveals some buildings before unseen

The Huntington Library has a fabulous collection of materials related to the Civil War. Among their items, recently posted online, is this image.

You can find a hi-res, zoomable version of the photograph here. I suggest you open that image in a separate window as we take a deep dive into what the image reveals.

Those of you familiar with Mysteries and Conundrums may recognize this as similar to a panorama we took a look at years ago. The Huntington variant, above, is taken from north of the railroad bridge. While there are some unfortunate blurry spots within it, the image does reveal some buildings not otherwise visible, or not seen as clearly as in other of the many panoramas of Fredericksburg. Let’s take a look.

This photo offers us the clearest and closest wartime view of Shiloh Baptist Church (often referred to as the African Baptist Church) on Sophia Street. The congregation still resides on this site.

In this excerpt, Shiloh stands at right, a simple brick building that until 1854 served as the primary Baptist church in town for residents both white and Black. To the left of it, unfortunately blurred out, is the community ice house. This site (and others in this view) was excavated in preparation for the construction of Riverfront Park. Still farther to the left is the rest of the 700 block of Sophia Street. Note that fencing lines the riverfront at the water’s edge, suggesting that many of the residents maintained some livestock or animals on their lots. The jumble of primary residences, outhouses, fences, and outbuildings in the 700 block of Sophia is hard to decipher, but includes buildings that have become familiar by virtue of later photographs. All are now gone–indeed most have been gone for decades. Today, this area is the new Riverfront Park.

709 Sophia Street, visible at far left of the panorama.

709 Sophia Street

And this famous image of 725-727 Sophia, taken by Frances Benjamin Johnston in 1927.

Looking upstream to the right of Shiloh Baptist, this photo reveals a number of buildings not clearly seen in others. Most obviously, at far right in the excerpt below, is the stone warehouse, which still stands at the end of the Chatham bridge.

Just left of the warehouse is a block of shambly buildings that reflect how many residents of Fredericksburg lived. They all look a bit saggy in this view, and it’s no surprise that none of the four buildings shown in the photo here survive.

If you look just above these buildings–look closely–you can see the burned-out shells of several buildings on the 1000 and 1100 block of Caroline Street. About half the buildings on these blocks were destroyed in the bombardment of December 11, 1862. Today, only two antebellum buildings survive on the river side of the 1000 block.

To the left of the low row of buildings next to the warehouse is the 800 block of Sophia. Most of these buildings stood in what is today the parking lot at the foot of George Street. Of these, only the “Silversmith Shop” at 816 Sophia survives; it’s slightly blurred in this photo, but distinguishable because its gable end faces the street. Just to the right of it are three substantial houses, among them Mills house. This was once the home of Retta Mills Merchant, a great-grandmother of present Mayor Mary Katherine Greenlaw. A veteran of the US army left a memoir of his time in this house in December 1862, and decades afterwards paid Mrs. Merchant a visit–later publishing a photo of the house. The “X” marks where a shell crashed into the house as the soldier slept.

Heading upstream from the stone warehouse…..

Scott’s (or Brown’s) Island looks a good deal more tidy than we know it to be. Indeed, after the war it would serve as a venue for a Confederate veterans reunion in 1884 and as an annual site of a carnival for many years afterward. As late as 1960, city officials pondered using the island for parking (a bad idea never adopted). To the right of that are a few of the abutments to the Chatham Bridge, burned by the Confederates in 1861, wiped out by a flood in 1862, and then burned again by the US army in August of that year, not to be rebuilt till after the war.

Above Scott’s Island loom the four large chimneys of the Union House, the town’s largest boarding house in 1860. It stood in front of what is today the library on Caroline Street–and indeed it served as the precursor to the Lafayette School that would eventually become the library.

At the extreme right of the excerpt is the woolen mill, which stood between Princess Anne and Caroline Streets, immediately adjacent to the Heritage Trail as it goes up the hill. Part of the wheel well of this is still evident.

The Woolen Mill in 1864.

Poke around the image yourself. You may spot some things I missed.

More lost buildings–the view from St. George’s #2

From John Hennessy (read the first post on the St. George’s steeple shots here; download the entire panorama, stitched together, here [patience, it’s a large file]. Pardon the imperfections in the Photoshop work–there are gaps in the images that I stitched together to create this panorama):

Last week we introduced the series of panoramic photographs taken from the steeple of St. George’s in 1888–as well as my attempt to stitch the images together into a single image. After looking into the heart of the town last time, let’s turn our attention westward, between George and William Street, for what I think is the most interesting part of the series, for here are two of Fredericksburg’s most important lost buildings.

To the left is George Street, off the camera to the right is William, and in the far distance is Marye’s Heights The roof immediately below the camera is what was during the war the Farmer’s Bank–the home of the slave John Washington and perhaps the most important Civil War building in Fredericksburg, which we have written about here. Beyond, easily seen, is the Masonic Cemetery, certainly the moodiest burial ground in town and an important landmark during the Battle of Fredericksburg.

There are two supremely important lost buildings in this view worth pointing out–indeed, for one of them, this is the only clear image of it I know about.  In the upper left edge is a church standing on the SW corner of George and Charles.

This is the Methodist Church South, during the war one of two Methodist churches in Fredericksburg. The building gains significance for two reasons.

President visits Shiloh Baptist in DC, founded by former Fredericksburg slaves

Across the wires this morning is the news that President Obama visited D.C.’s Shiloh Baptist Church yesterday.  The church was founded by former Fredericksburg slaves who trekked to freedom in 1862.

You can find the story here.

A church divided over slavery, and Fredericksburg’s first house of worship for African Americans

From John Hennessy:

One of the great things about Fredericksburg’s history is that local stories often reflect vividly on the national experience.  More than most communities, our local history reverberates across a national landscape. The battles fought here are obvious examples, but so too are more subtle, obscure stories (all of which we’ll write about in the future): the activities in Fredericksburg of the American Colonization Society, the constant quest for the mainspring to economic success, the slave trade as practiced by Aler and Finnall, and the turmoil in the Methodist Church hereabouts. The experience of the Methodist Church here in the decades before the Civil War is a vivid reflection of a nation and community in upheaval.

The three Methodist Churches of Fredericksburg.

Two obscure facts about Methodists in Fredericksburg:

– At various times between 1841 and 1860, there were THREE Methodist congregations in Fredericksburg whose churches stood within a four-block area of town.

– The first exclusively black church in Fredericksburg (at least so far as I have been able to determine) was not the African Baptist Church on Sophia Street (today Shiloh Old Site), but a Methodist Church located at what is today 523 George Street.

Therein lies a story or two.