Tour shows area Civil War sites

By Elisa Glushefski

Published: August 31, 2008

Not everyone sat poolside to commemorate what is at least the last weekend most pools are open.

Certainly not the group of eight men and women who chose to spend nearly all day Saturday, and $80 each, walking and driving Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s marching route that led to the largest battle in Prince William County and Northern Virginia that resulted in more than 18,000 casualties.

Staff members of the Prince William County Historic Preservation Division, which sponsored the tour, took the group out in a 15-passenger van, starting in Jeffersonton and touring through Orlean,
Marshall, Thoroughfare Gap and Bristoe Station.

One of the stops was at Waterloo Bridge that Jackson and his force of roughly 25,000 soldiers marched across before ultimately reaching Brawner Farm to position for attack.

“We try to give them something they wouldn’t usually see,” said Robert Orrison, one of the tour guides.

By 2 p.m., the group had made its way to Manassas Battlefield — where on Aug. 30, 1862, Union forces were defeated in a flanking attack.

And several weathered the August heat to take a roughly hour-long tour of Deep Cut at the battlefield led by historian John Hennessy — part of the commemoration of the 146th anniversary of the Battle of Second Manassas.

The tour, he said, would allow them to see exactly Union forces did as they closed in on Jackson and then when they were caught in a trap sprung by Confederate Maj. Gen. James Longstreet.

“We’re going to walk the footsteps of those Yankees,” Hennessy said to a group of more than 50 people. “Use the environment to inform you about how difficult it was for them.”

Others went with the van tour guides to other spots at the battlefield including Brawner Farm, where       encamped re-enactors were set up, and Dogan House.

“It’s been a good tour,” said Henry Cirbee, who was taking the tour with his wife. “We were the neophytes and everyone else in the van were experts.”

“We moved to Nokesville a year and a half ago and we wanted to know what happened in our backyard, front yard and side yard,” his wife, Carolann Cirbee, said.

Ron Mayer already knows a great deal about the Civil War and teaches a class at Heritage Hunt Golf and Country Club, but said that tours like the one he was on always have something new to offer.

After snapping a few pictures of the Dogan House, Mayer said that one of the most valuable things he has taken from the tour were locations of some of the Confederate Army’s camps the year of the Second Battle of Bull Run.

“I like to show maps and pictures,” he said, “And it’s kind of nice to be able to point [the camp sites] out.”

Money made from the tour will go to the organization’s preservation fund, Orrison said.