Independent Loudoun Virginia Rangers the Roster of Virginia’S Only Union Cavalry Unit

THE Independent Loudoun VIrgInIa rangers The Roster of Virginia’s Only Union Cavalry Unit Lee stone THE Independent Loudoun VIrgInIa rangers THE Independent Loudoun VIrgInIa rangers The Roster of Virginia’s Only Union Cavalry Unit By Lee stone Waterford Foundation, Inc. Waterford, Virginia ISBN 978-0-9660485-4-4 © 2016 Lee Stone and Waterford Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in written form from the publisher. Manufactured in the United States of America. Contents List of Illustrations .....................................vii Acknowledgments ......................................viii Foreword by Edward W. Spannaus ...........................ix Introduction ............................................1 Abbreviations .........................................7 The Roster .............................................9 Appendix .............................................71 Table 1: Commissioned Officers ...........................78 About the Author .......................................79 Hotchkiss Map of Loudoun County, Va., and parts of Fairfax County, Va., Jefferson County, W.Va., and Washington and Frederick counties, Md., 1860 List of iLLustrations Hotchkiss Map of Loudoun County, VA.......................vi Loudoun Rangers Reunion, Taylorstown, Virginia, 1903 .........xvi vii aCknowLedgments This unit roster would not exist if it had not been for Taylor Chamberlin of Waterford, Virginia. He suggested to the author the initial research effort, engaged in conversations about the target audience and proper for- mat for this roster, answered questions, offered information from his own files about the people and events here presented, and published (with John Souders) a fascinating history of the period: Between Reb and Yank: A Civil War History of Northern Loudoun County, Virginia. Taylor and his wife Cordelia Chamberlin applied impressive collating and editing skills, and not a little patience, to boil down a mass of raw data into something close to the entries presented here. Edward Spannaus of Lovettsville, Virginia wrote a foreword, put together a short history of the Loudoun Rangers’ exploits, and generously supplied his own research about the officers from outside the initial Ranger organization who briefly recruited for the Rangers in the middle of 1863. The staffs of Thomas Balch Library in Leesburg, Virginia, and of the National Archives in Washington, DC, were of irreplaceable help in locating records and providing research assistance. Kathleen Hughes, formerly of the Waterford Foundation, has lent her impressive skills in helping prepare this work for publication and guiding it toward completion in a constructive and supportive manner. The Waterford Foundation itself, with its long and admirable history of local preservation and study of our past, has seen fit to publish this study. Last but certainly not least, the author’s special friend Renée Graham has ably and cheerfully used her superior analytical gifts to make this a better product, and offered her valued encouragement and support during the end process. The author is most grateful to them all, though of course errors or omissions in the roster entries are his own. viii foreword With the compilation of the complete roster of the Independent Loudoun Virginia Rangers, Lee Stone has made an invaluable contribution toward increasing our knowledge and understanding of this enigmatic Civil War organization. The Loudoun Rangers have been alternately praised and reviled—but mostly just ignored—even in local histories. In the 115 years between the 1896 publication of Briscoe Goodhart’s History of the Loudoun Rangers,* and the 2011 publication of Between Reb and Yank,† there was astonishingly little published about this military command, and most histories of Loudoun County and the Civil War referred to them, if at all, en passant. When I moved to Loudoun County in the 1980s, one of my reasons for being attracted to Lovettsville (“The German Settlement”) was because of its Unionist history. Yet there was nothing—no monument or marker—recognizing this distinction. This was first remedied when, with the approach of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, the first Civil War Trails Marker commemorating the Loudoun Rangers was dedicated in December 2009 on the Lovettsville Town Square. In May 2011, both a Virginia histor- ical marker honoring the Independent Loudoun Rangers and a Civil War Trails Marker commemorating the Rangers’ fight at the Waterford Baptist Church, were erected and dedicated in Waterford. Finally, the Loudoun Rangers were receiving some long-overdue recognition.‡ Formation of the Loudoun Rangers Northern Loudoun County was strategically important during the Civil War. On the north side of the Potomac River, in Maryland, were key transportation and communications lines, including the B&O Railroad * Briscoe Goodhart, History of the Independent Loudoun Virginia Rangers, 1896. Reprinted by Old Soldier Books, Gaithersburg, Md. 1976 (?) † Taylor M. Chamberlin and John M. Souders, Between Reb and Yank: A Civil War History of Northern Loudoun County, Virginia. McFarland & Co., Jefferson, N.C. and London, 2011. ‡ The effort to virtually obliterate the Loudoun Rangers from local history was a function of not just war-time hostilities, but of what took place after the war. Even though North Loudoun was, for the most part, Unionist, former secessionists had gained control of the county government by 1866, and loyalists were isolated and often ostracized; see Between Reb and Yank, pp. 349-357. As a consequence, many of the Rangers moved away from Loudoun after the war, to Washington, D.C., Maryland, West Virginia, or to the Midwest—Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois in particular—as is shown in the pension applications summarized in this volume. ix x The Independent Loudoun Virginia Rangers and the C&O Canal. Immediately to the south, on the Virginia side, the Loudoun Valley consisted of highly productive farm land between the Blue Ridge and the Catoctin Ranges; indeed, Loudoun was the most prosperous agricultural county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. For good reasons, it was important to try to prevent Confederate forces from occupying this area, or from having a free hand therein. Furthermore, north Loudoun was historically and culturally distinct from southern and eastern Loudoun County. Most of the population in north Loudoun—being German, Quaker, and some Scotch-Irish—had migrated from Pennsylvania, via Maryland, beginning in the 1730s, in contrast to the rest of the county, most of whose population had migrated from the Virginia Tidewater. Thus, the population of north Loudoun tended to be anti-secessionist and anti-slavery and, in the majority, was loyal to the Union and its preservation. With the outbreak of the Civil War, many north Loudouners fled Virginia and sought exile in Maryland, where a number of them joined the Union Army. But, Virginia being a secessionist state, it was no simple matter to actually form a military command within its borders, and in fact the Loudoun Rangers would be the only Union cavalry command established from within the bounds of present-day Virginia. Its formation in June 1862 had been preceded by earlier efforts to form a “home guard” to protect the Unionists in north Loudoun. On July 17, 1861, Armistead J. Everhart of Lovettsville, Captain of Co. G of the 56th Regiment of Virginia Militia (known as “Everhart’s Company” or the “Lovettsville Company”), marched 50 men of his company to Harpers Ferry under the Union banner, and volunteered to aid the Union cause. About a week later, Lovettsville farmer Luther H. Potterfield, a member of Everhart’s Company, wrote to Maryland Congressman Francis Thomas, who had sponsored the Potomac Home Brigade, asking for arms and assistance in forming a Union company in Loudoun. Similar defections from the militia companies in Waterford and other communities in north Loudoun occurred that summer, swell- ing the exile population in Maryland to as many as 1,000, by one esti- mate. Immediately, these exiles began guiding Union forces into Virginia. In October 1861, Waterford miller Samuel Means, already serving as a scout for Union forces, proposed to organize a cavalry company for service to the United States. Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks informed the Secretary of War on Oct. 31, 1861 that Means “has now sufficient men ready for his Company.”* However, Means’ offer was declined by the War Department due to a shortage of cavalry horses. * Maj Gen. Nathaniel Banks to Secretary of War Simon Cameron. NARA R.G. 94, Records of the Office of the Adjutant General, Volunteer Service Branch, W 463, Box 153. Foreword xi In late 1861 the War Department and the Unionist Government of Virginia, headed by Governor Francis Pierpont in Wheeling, began plans to set up a brigade of Virginia refugees (most of whom had fled to Maryland). Hoping to include in this so-called “Eastern Brigade” the 100 men that Means had already assembled, Gov. Pierpont signed commis- sions in February 1862 nominating Means as Captain, and Armistead J. Everhart as Lieutenant, in the 12th Virginia Infantry (USA). This effort never got off the ground, due in large part to the War Department’s belief that the hoped-for success of Gen. George McClellan’s Richmond cam- paign would obviate any need to organize Virginia’s exiles.

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