An Archaeological Overview and Assessment of the
Main Unit, Petersburg National Battlefield, Virginia

Chapter Five:  A Summary of Historic Sites and Earthworks (Part D)

Central Area Earthworks and Sites

Hare house site: The plantation of Richard Bate appears in the 1782 land tax.  Two Mutual Insurance Society policies—1796 and 1805—were issued to Bate.  A sketch plan of the major buildings on the August 1805 policy (Figure 5.4) provided the following descriptions (Mutual Insurance Society 1805):

The sketch of the dwelling indicated projecting end chimneys, a central doorway, and a projecting cellar bulkhead and porch (dashed line) along one long side.  The distances between the two outbuildings and the dwelling provide particularly useful information.  Further, it is interesting to note that the relative placement of the three buildings on the 1805 policy is closely reflected on the 1863 Campbell map (Figure 4.4).

Otway Hare purchased the plantation in 1837 and resided on the property with his family when the Union Army of the Potomac attacked the Petersburg defenses in June 1864.  As the attack progressed, the Hare house fell behind the advancing Union lines.  The plantation dwellings became a source of amusement for Union soldiers and a target for Confederate artillerymen, as indicated by a veteran of the 17th Maine Regiment:

On the right of the line, was an elegant residence, formerly occupied by Mr. O. P. Hare, a southern sporting gentleman of wealth, who was "not at home" when we arrived.  The men, in their customary style of protecting secesh property, procured some very elegant horse-trappings and equipments from his establishment.  His house and the adjacent building were completely riddled with shot and shell.  His furniture was sadly "demoralized," and soon distributed along the works.  Costly stuffed chairs, and sofas of plush and damask, furnished yankee soldiers luxuriant repose; and a fine rosewood piano, which a rebel-shell had "played upon," was made to do duty in a portion of the works we had thrown up across his garden. (Houghton 1866:203,204)

The noted Civil War illustrator Alfred Waud drew a pencil sketch of the front of the Hare house in the summer of 1864, a sketch that seems to show the effects of both shelling and pillaging (Plate 5.14).  The Michler map (Figure 5.7) indicates that the house stood just behind the Union siege line, between Fort Stedman and the Prince George Court House Road.  The house and adjacent buildings disappeared during the siege, probably shortly after Waud completed his sketch in the summer of 1864.  Hare did not reoccupy the plantation (Plate 5.15), but resided in Petersburg after the war, where he managed a pharmacy that he had owned since 1855.

Dr. John Cotter and Brooke Blades undertook a brief excavation in May 1976 to define the corners of the original Hare house dwelling for the park.  The excavations exposed a portion of the eastern foundation wall (Plate 5.16) and the western foundation with the cellar bulkhead entrance (Blades and Cotter 1978).  The cellar stratigraphy suggested that the building did not burn, but did collapse with a range of household possessions inside.  As such, the contents of the dwelling cellar may be regarded as something of a time capsule of a Southern plantation manor from the mid-nineteenth century.  Further, the abandonment of the property following the Civil War suggests that eighteenth and early nineteenth-century activity patterns reflected in archaeological features and artifact distributions may be largely undisturbed, although the proximity of the Union earthworks undoubtedly disrupted the archaeological deposits to some extent.

Taylor house site: The Taylor house represents an interesting comparison with the Hare house.  The dwelling was constructed in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, possibly by Richard Taylor.  His son George received the house and associated plantation acreage in 1790.  Following George's death c. 1816, various land speculators and farmers owned the property until it returned to the Taylor family in 1848.  William Byrd Taylor owned the plantation and dwelling, which stood on a hill south of the town of Blandford (Plate 5.17), at the time of the Civil War.  The 1863 Campbell map (Figure 4.4) indicates three structures on the property.

The Taylor dwelling lay in the path of the attacking Union army, as did so many other plantation manors and farmhouses.  The Taylor plantation was overrun by Union troops on June 18—as reflected in the following excerpt from the official report of General Wilcox, a Union division commander in the Ninth Corps—and remained behind Union lines for the duration of the siege:

...the division had a severe engagement, lasting nearly all day, moving up to, across, and beyond the deep cut of the Norfolk railroad, in front of the Taylor house, driving the enemy into his new works, not withstanding our very heavy loss, and finally establishing ourselves nearer to the enemy than any other portion of the army. (O.R. Series I, Vol. 40, Part 1:571)

The Taylor dwelling was destroyed by fire at that time or shortly afterward, and the site became known as the "Chimneys" in Union reports and on Union maps (Figure 4.5).  The Michler map (Figure 5.8) indicates the surrounding earthworks but does not mention Taylor.

William Taylor returned to the property and constructed a modest frame dwelling on the brick foundations of his former kitchen.  He resided on the property until his death in 1875.  A dairy farm occupied the property in the early twentieth century.  The NPS purchased the former Taylor farm and removed the post-Civil War Taylor dwelling, exposing the brick foundations of the former kitchen and probable slave quarters (Plate 5.18).

Dr. David Orr and Brooke Blades conducted excavations on the Taylor site in the summer of 1978.  The excavations were prompted by Dr. Orr's recognition that the surviving brick foundations, with the prominent center chimney, were those of a quarters-kitchen and that the pre-Civil War dwelling of Taylor was located nearby.  A series of systematically placed test units were excavated north of the standing brick foundations during the summer of 1978 (Figure 5.5).  The units were excavated through plow zone to subsoil; extensive artifact distributions related to occupation from 1760-1950 were recovered, and the remains of two small outbuildings were discovered.  However, the outline of the pre-Civil War Taylor dwelling was not identified (Blades 1993).

Dr. Bruce Bevan, a pioneer in the application of geophysical prospecting technologies to archaeological site identification, undertook a ground-penetrating radar and proton magnetometer survey of the Taylor site in 1979 (Bevan 1979, 1980).  His survey data detected a large rectangular anomaly approximately 60 feet north of the standing foundation.  Blades and Mark Ohno excavated two units (430 and 431 on Figure 5.5) above the corners of the anomaly in June 1981, and confirmed that Dr. Bevan had indeed located the Taylor house (Bevan et al. 1984).  Artifacts recovered from the unit 430 plow zone above the northwest corner of the foundation (Plate 5.19) indicated that the property had been occupied during the period 1750-70.  Excavations within the brick-lined cellar (Plate 5.20) revealed an ash layer and evidence of melted bottle and window glass, which strongly suggested that the dwelling had been destroyed by fire.

Prince George Court House Road: The park tour road west of Harrison Creek overlies the former bed of the eighteenth-century Prince George Court House Road until it reaches the Hare house and Fort Stedman area.  The tour road turns south at Fort Stedman to follow the Union siege line.  The trace of the Prince George Court House Road turns northward toward its former junction with the road between Petersburg and City Point (Figures 4.5 and 5.7).  The road would have provided the Union army with an important route of supply and communication along the main siege line.  This road trace is currently an element of the park hiking trail system and forms a portion of the park boundary.

Farm lane from Prince George Court House Road to Shands house lane: A farm lane extending from the Prince George Court House Road to a lane between the Sussex Road and the Shands house is shown on the 1863 Campbell map (Figure 4.4), Engineer maps of 1864 (Figure 4.5) and 1866 (Figure 4.6), and the Michler map (Figures 5.6 and 5.7).  The frequency with which this lane was depicted on Civil War maps reflects its importance as a means of communication behind the siege line and the access that it provided to Union encampment areas and command centers.  A portion of this road trace is preserved by a section of the park Encampment Trail.

Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad: The bed of the historic Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad is currently utilized by the Norfolk and Western Railroad.  Although the railroad bed falls outside of the park boundaries, it is a major landscape feature of historic importance.  The railroad was created in the mid-1850s; William Byrd Taylor sold 23 acres of his plantation to the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad in 1856 to provide the railroad with a right-of-way through his property (PG Co. Land Tax).  This railroad, when combined with the 1830s railroad from City Point and others that approached Petersburg from the south and west, was a major factor contributing to the strategic significance of the city to Richmond and to the Confederate military.

Confederate Harrison Creek line: After the loss of the northern portion of the Dimmock line, Confederate reinforcements from Bermuda Hundred constructed a line of earthworks on the western bluff above Harrison Creek on the evening of June 15-16:

But just then (after the fall of the Dimmock batteries) very opportunely appeared, advancing at double-quick, Hagood's gallant South Carolina brigade, followed soon afterward by Colquitt's, Clingman's, and, in fact, the whole of Hoke's division.  They were shown their positions, on a new line selected at that very time by my orders, a short distance in the rear of the captured works, and were kept busy the greatest part of the night throwing up a small epaulement for their additional protection. (Beauregard 1887:541)

The Harrison Creek line was abandoned two nights later as the Confederates retreated to another line of works behind Poor Creek.  The line was discontinuous, as indicated on the Union Engineers map of 1864 and the Michler map.  The southern portion (Figure 5.6) ran northward from the Shand house road into a fork of Harrison Creek, while the northern portion (Figures 4.5 and 5.7) ran northward from the Prince George Court House Road to the Petersburg and City Point Railroad.  No trace of the northern line was observed during the field surface survey.  Very slight remnants of the southern portion have survived (Plate 5.21). (I am particularly indebted to Chris Calkins for pointing out this remnant.)  Given the hurried manner of preparation for these entrenchments, it is hardly surprising that the earthworks have nearly eroded away.

Confederate Poor Creek line: The main Confederate defense line throughout the siege began as a line of works located for the most part on the western bluff above Poor (also called Taylor's) Creek:

Anticipating the inevitable result of such a pressure upon our weak defenses, and knowing that at any moment they might be irrevocably lost to us, I had—accompanied by Colonel D. B. Harris, of the Engineers—selected the site of another and shorter line, near Taylor's Creek, at a convenient distance toward the rear.  I caused it to be carefully staked out during the battle, and shown to the adjutants, quartermasters, and other staff-officers of Hoke's and Johnson's divisions...so that each command, at the appointed hour, even at the dead of night, might easily retire upon the new line with order and precision, and unperceived by the enemy....

Then, at about 12:30 A. M., on the 18th, began the retrograde movement, which notwithstanding the exhaustion of our troops and their sore disappointment at receiving no further reinforcements, was safely and silently executed, with uncommonly good order and precision....The digging of the trenches was begun by the men as soon as they reached their new position.  Axes, as well as spades; bayonets and knives, as well as axes, —in fact, every utensil that could be found —were used. (Beauregard 1887:542,543)

This position was essentially the line occupied by the Confederates until Petersburg was abandoned in early April 1865, although the works were considerably strengthened and secondary lines were constructed.

Colquitt's Salient: The main Confederate defense line was anchored by a series of concentrated artillery positions known as salients.  Colquitt's Salient (Figure 5.7) was a complex of earthen trenches and artillery positions east of Poor Creek.  The salient was noted as "Ransom" on the Union Engineers map of 1866 (Figure 4.6).  The Confederate attack on Fort Stedman in late March 1865 commenced from this position.  The earthworks are presently very eroded (Plate 5.22), due in part to the attention of visitors during the early part of the twentieth century when an NPS tour road looped around the salient works.  The graded bed of this road is still visible on the surface.

Gracie's Salient: The Confederate artillery position known as Gracie's Salient was emplaced on a bluff between Poor Creek and the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad (Figure 5.7).  The site was labeled "Wright's Batty" on the 1866 Union Engineer map (Figure 4.6).  The location is wooded at present and the works are more well preserved than those associated with Colquitt's Salient (Plate 5.23).  Rifle pit trenches extend southward from Gracie's Salient and cross the western boundary of the park.

Union earthworks: Virtually all of the Union earthworks in the Main Unit are located within the central area, i.e., between Harrison and Poor creeks.  By late July 1864 the main siege line was emerging as a series of artillery concentrations connected by rifle pit trenches, as indicated on the Engineer map of 1864 (Figure 4.5).  As eventually constructed, the main siege line consisted of artillery batteries and larger artillery and infantry forts.  The remains or sites of Batteries X through XVI and of Forts Stedman, Haskell, and Morton are located within the Main Unit (Figures 5.7 and 5.8).  Various linear earthworks and isolated artillery lunettes are located in the woods between the siege line and Harrison Creek.

Fort Stedman:  Union Fort Stedman began as a collection of Ninth Corps artillery guns and mortars, as shown on the Engineer map of July 1864 (Figure 4.5).  By late in the siege, the fort had become a major artillery concentration between Batteries X and XI (Figure 5.7) and was the focal point of the last offensive of the Army of Northern Virginia in March 1865.  The position has been cleared of trees today, but is severely eroded due to heavy visitation (Plate 5.24).  Earthworks extend southward toward Battery XI and Fort Haskell.

Fort Haskell: Union Fort Haskell was initially a modest position with 2 mortars and 1 field gun in July 1864 (Figure 4.5).  The fort was created as a major artillery position between Batteries XII and XIII (Figure 5.8), slightly to the south of and opposite the Confederate position at Gracie's Salient.  The earthworks are wooded at present and the parapets and ditches are more well preserved than those at Fort Stedman (Plate 5.25).  Earthworks extend southward toward Battery XIII; south of Battery XIII these works cross the tour road and continue in the woods until disappearing above ground north of the site of Fort Morton.

Fort Morton (site): Union Fort Morton was erected behind the Taylor ruins on commanding high ground.  The Engineer map of July 1864 shows 14 guns had been placed within the earthworks, and that a zig-zag communication trench headed eastward toward the Union secondary defenses (Figure 4.5).  The position stood opposite Elliott's Salient, later the Crater (Figure 5.8).

The remains of Fort Morton were obliterated by postwar plowing as William Taylor reconstructed his farm and a later dairy farm occupied the property.  Dr. Bruce Bevan conducted preliminary remote sensing survey on the site in 1979 at the same time as his survey of the Taylor site (Bevan 1979).  Bevan continued extensive remote sensing survey of the Fort Morton site, utilizing various technologies during all seasons of the year throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.  He ultimately published the results of these survey experiments in a major monograph that has widespread theoretical and methodological value for archaeological geophysicists (Bevan 1996).  A team of National Park Service archaeologists directed by Dr. David Orr conducted preliminary excavations on the site in the summer of 1999 to uncover some of the trenches and features located by Bevan's remote sensing.

Battery XVI: A Union artillery battery south of Fort Morton and its connecting trenches are well preserved.  Battery XVI lies on the southern boundary of the park, south of the trace of the former Sussex Road (Figure 5.8).

Union encampments: The Knowles map (Figure 5.2) indicates that encampments of regiments in the First Division, Ninth Corps of the Army of the Potomac are located behind the Union siege line.  This distribution of encampments represents those from the last days of the siege of Petersburg, when the Ninth Corps held the northern portion of the siege lines.

Three regiments occupied the line between the City Point Railroad and Fort Stedman: 20th and 2nd Michigan (Second Brigade) and 57th Massachusetts (Third Brigade).  The encampment sites of the 2nd Michigan and 57th Massachusetts were located between Prince George Court House Road and Harrison Creek within the Main Unit.  As discussed below, this area was impacted by twentieth-century activities and the consequent extent of disturbance is unknown.

The section of the Union siege line between Prince George Court House Road and Battery XIII was occupied by the following regiments of Third Brigade, from north to south: 14th New York Heavy Artillery (Fort Stedman), 29th Massachusetts, 100th Pennsylvania, 14th New York Heavy Artillery (Fort Haskell), and 3rd Maryland, with 59th Massachusetts and Third Brigade headquarters in the rear of Battery XIII.  Three regiments of the First Brigade—8th Michigan, 51st Pennsylvania, 109th New York, and 27th Michigan—occupied the line from Battery XIII to the modern park boundary south of the Sussex Road (Hartranft 1887, Kilmer 1887, Hodgkins 1889).

The regimental encampments between Prince George Court House Road and the southern boundary of the park are probably the most well preserved such sites in the Main Unit.  Chris Calkins directed the survey crew in January 1999 to an area along Encampment Trail in the rear of Battery XIII that had a number of shallow surface depressions.  A Union earthwork oriented north-south stood east of the trail and then crossed to the west side (Plate 5.29) to continue northward in the general direction of Fort Stedman.  These shallow depressions (Plate 5.26) were numerous in the area north of the east side earthwork and south of Encampment Trail as it turned eastward to cross an unnamed tributary stream of Poor Creek.  The distance from the turn in the Encampment Trail to the unnamed tributary was approximately 140 feet; seven shallow depressions lay roughly in a row between the trail and tributary, while numerous other ones were found to the north.

The distance between the area with the shallow depressions near Encampment Trail and the main Union siege line at Battery XIII is approximately 1000 feet.  The Knowles map (Figure 5.2) suggests that this area would have fallen within the encampment locations of either the 3rd Maryland and or the 59th Massachusetts regiments in the late winter and early spring of 1865.  Further, the earthworks may have been created to serve as a secondary line of defense and to provide a measure of protection for encampment areas.

It should be emphasized, however, that great caution must be exercised in evaluating such shallow surface depressions and subsurface features in forested woodlands.  Researchers have focused upon the manner in which natural phenomena such as tree falls may generate "features" that may be interpreted as cultural in origin.  It has been argued that the characteristic oval, round, and D-shaped pits created as tree root masses are pulled out of the ground when a large tree falls result in shallow surface depressions that become refilled through erosion and eventually reburied.  Such surface depressions or buried pits may be mistaken for archaeological features.  Research related to this problem has been undertaken within the context of Mesolithic studies in Europe (Newell 1980; Langhor 1994), and those some studying late prehistoric occupation of the coastal plain in Delaware and New Jersey have considered natural tree fall pits as the origin of supposed prehistoric pit houses (Mueller and Cavallo 1995).

Fallen trees in various states of decay with uprooted root masses are common occurrences within forests in the eastern United States, and the wooded portions of the Main Unit are certainly no exception.  Since one falling tree may cause adjacent ones to also topple, it is quite possible to have multiple such tree root pits appearing to align, as observed in the woods near Battery XIII (Plate 5.27).  Further discussion of this important issues will be offered in Chapter Six, but the image of the shallow depression in Plate 5.28 and the related question of whether such a depression represents a small earthwork, a hut feature, or a natural tree pit remains a difficult one.

Secondary earthworks behind Union main siege line: Field survey revealed a wide range of earthworks in the wooded area behind the Union main siege line and west of Harrison Creek.  Some of these works appear on the Michler map, but most do not.  The 1942 Master Plan map, Sheet No. 6, contained the following statement:

Earthworks—in addition to the earthworks here shown, there are numerous remains along Harrison's Creek and elsewhere—not shown on war maps. (NPS 1941)

Traces of the V-shaped earthworks shown on the Michler map behind Fort Morton (Figures 5.6 and 5.8) remain visible in the field.  An earthwork parapet running for approximately 4000 feet from the rear of Fort Morton to the park tour road near Fort Stedman was not illustrated on the Michler map, but was drawn on Sheet No. 6 of the 1942 Master Plan map (Figure 4.14) and is clearly visible in the field at present (Plate 5.29).  The view illustrated in Plate 5.29 was taken in the vicinity of the probable Union encampment area behind Battery XIII.  This long earthwork would appear to be a secondary line of defense behind the main siege line.

Several U-shaped earthworks were observed between the Union siege line and Harrison Creek.  These apparent lunettes for a single artillery piece were at times paired, as seen in the two works illustrated in Plate 5.30; these works lay behind the secondary earthwork in the rear area between Battery XII and Fort Haskell.  None of these small positions appear to have been illustrated on the Michler map.

Nineteenth or twentieth-century boundary? marker: A short granite pillar with the numeral "34" carved into the west face stands near the Encampment Trail west of Harrison Creek (Plate 5.31).  This stone pillar is tentatively identified as a boundary marker, since an early boundary between NPS and private property ran through the area.  The boundary of the World War II military reservation of Camp Lee was located in the same area, but it seems unlikely that a World War II era boundary would have been marked in such a manner.

Twentieth-century developments: Several roadways, ditches, prepared level areas, and other remains are visible in the portion of the Main Unit bounded by Harrison Creek (east), Prince George Court House Road (south and west), and the park boundary (west).  Various Civil War era elements were once located in the same area, including the northern portion of the Harrison Creek line and Union regimental encampments.  No trace of the Harrison Creek line earthworks were observed during the field survey, and it seems likely that twentieth-century era activities disrupted the encampments.

These twentieth-century activities are documented to a certain extent on the 1942 Master Plan map No. 6 (NPS 1941) that shows an abandoned "World War" sand and gravel road resulting from the Camp Lee occupation.  The road ran between the northern extension of Prince George Court House Road and a road that ran between the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp and the northern boundary of the park.  The World War I road is currently a portion of the Friend Trail in the park hiking trail system.

A series of roads oriented north-south and prepared low earthen platforms were found between the CCC road and Harrison Creek.  A form-poured concrete structure (Plate 5.13) lay north of the tour road (Prince George Court House Road) immediately west of Harrison Creek.  It was not determined whether these features related to World War I or CCC activities.