Plate 68. Charles City Court-House, Virginia
date: label: date made
content: 1864-06
name: label: maker
content: Gardner, Alexander
notes: label: Description
content: Text and photograph from <i>Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the War</i>, Vol. II. Negative by Timothy H. O'Sullivan, text and positive by Alexander Gardner.
label: Description
content: This place is the county seat of Charles City County, about twenty-five miles southeast from Richmond, and is a fair specimen of many Virginia Court-Houses. This neighborhood was the scene of a number of severe cavalry fights during the war, the Court-House, in 1862, being only three miles from the intrenched camp of Gen. McClellan, whose army marched past the village in its retreat from before Richmond to Fortress Monroe. Gen. Meade's army, in 1864, again occupied this section, and passed over its roads from Coal Harbor to Petersburg, when the building was sacked by the troops, and many of the records were destroyed. There were but two or three dwellings and a church composing the village, and a stranger might pass through the place without dreaming that it possessed a name. Its history dates from the early settlement of Virginia, and the cemeteries round about it contain the names of those who passed away one hundred years ago.
label: Description
content: The return of peace has here failed to quicken the people, and everything is rapidly sinking to decay. The aristocratic families, impoverished by the war, and deprived of the labor of their slaves, barely manage to live, and the whole country along the James is rapidly becoming overgrown with scrub timber and chaparral.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Virginia, Charles City
topic: label: related event
content: Civil War
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Photographic History
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content: Government, Politics, and Reform
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content: Gardner's Sketchbook
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content: Engineering, Building, and Architecture
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content: Photography
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1986.0711.0283.18
label: accession number
content: 1986.0711
label: catalog number
content: 1986.0711.0283.18
objectType: label: Object Name
content: albumen photograph
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 7 in x 9 in; 17.78 cm x 22.86 cm