page_title: Ellwood Manor
section_title: Antebellum and slavery
hierarchical_section_title: Ellwood Manor / Antebellum and slavery
caption_attribution_description: English: View of the front of Ellwood Manor - originally built around 1790 by William Jones. During the Battle of the Wilderness this structure, then owned by J. Horace Lacy, was used as a headquarters by Gouverneur K. Warren. Ellwood is the last remaining structure from the Battle of the Wilderness still standing today. According to the National Park Service, "Legend holds that "Light Horse Harry" Lee, Robert E. Lee's father, wrote his memoirs in one of the upstairs bedrooms. In 1825, Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette dined at Ellwood during his triumphant tour of America. Other founding fathers, such as James Madison and James Monroe, may have stopped here, too." Photo by Rob Shenk, http://www.robertshenk.com
context_page_description: Ellwood Manor is the Georgian-style home completed circa 1790 by William Jones, formerly in Spotsylvania County, Virginia but now in Orange County, Virginia. For more than a century, it was the center of a large, thriving plantation not far from the Chancellorsville crossroads on the Plank Road between Fredericksburg and Orange, Virginia which is now Virginia State Route 3. Not long before the American Civil War, J. Horace Lacy married William Jones' younger daughter and inherited both Ellwood and Chatham Manor.
  During the American Civil War, both Lacy brothers became Confederate officers, and caretakers managed the property when it was not being used by the armies fighting nearby. Confederate forces used Ellwood as a headquarters and then hospital after the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. Chaplain Beverly Tucker Lacy buried General Stonewall Jackson's arm in the Jones/Lacy family cemetery at Ellwood. Before the Battle of the Wilderness the following year, Union general Gouverneur K. Warren used Ellwood as his headquarters. It later served as a Union hospital during the ultimately successful drive to Richmond. In subsequent years, Ellwood returned to its prior farming use.
context_section_description: In colonial times, the land was given as a grant to Governor Alexander Spottswood, who did not develop it, but gave his name to the county in which most of the property stood. During the American Revolutionary War, Churchill Jones rose to the rank of Major in the Southern Legion, under the command of "Light-Horse Harry" Lee. After the war, Churchill joined his brother William Jones who had moved to the area known as the Wilderness and begun a farm. Circa 1790, William Jones began building a house which he called Ellwood (as was the surrounding plantation). In 1781 Ellwood hosted troops of the Marquis de Lafayette as he waited for reinforcements from General Anthony Wayne on their way to what became the final campaign at Yorktown. Churchill built Woodville nearby, but in 1806 he acquired Chatham Manor just north of Fredericksburg. According to tradition, "Light-Horse Harry" Lee wrote his wartime memoirs at Ellwood. In 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette visited Ellwood on his triumphal return visit to the United States.
  In 1828, after William Jones lost his first wife, the septuagenarian married his former wife's grandniece, 16 year old Lucinda Gordon. They ultimately had a daughter, who was many decades younger than Jones' other surviving daughter, Hannah, who had successively married and survived Williamson and John Coalter before William died (aged 95) in 1845. He gave Lucinda Ellwood on the condition that she not remarry. However, Lucinda gave Ellwood to their daughter within 2 years so she could remarry, and Betty married J. Horace Lacy. Upon Hannah's death in 1857, Lacy and Hannah's sons from her first marriage contested the provisions in her will freeing more than 90 slaves at Chatham.
  In the 1860 census Horace Lacy had owned upwards of 249 slaves as well as about 49,000 acres of land (including roughly 6000 at Chatham), with the vast majority used at Ellwood, depending on the season. Most worked as field hands or house servants, but Lacy also employed skilled tradesmen such as millers, carpenters, and blacksmiths. Little physical evidence remains to show where slaves lived. National Park Service historians and others continue research, seeking to locate the former slave quarters.
caption: Ellwood in summer
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