University of Virginia Library

3. Chapter Third
Charlottesville, Va.

Charlottesville is on the Rivanna river, a branch
of the James, and is about 118 miles southwest
of Washington D. C. and 90 miles northwest
of Richmond. The main range of the Blue Ridge
mountains is some 20 miles northwest of the
town but there are scattering spurs of this range all
about the place. The Ragged Mts, as they are called,
lie a little to the west or southwest while Monticello
and some other eminences are near by the town.

The scenery about the place is magnificent beyond
description with the long blue line of the mountains
in the distance, and the wooded giant hills near
by. Sometimes in the early morning the sun
would pour a flood of light upon the green upper
portion of the mountain nearest us, and tinge
with a variety of colors the clouds or mists hovering
about one third of the way below the summit.
Always beautiful, at such times its charms would
be enhanced a hundred fold. No further words

are needed for one to understand that Charlottesville,
as far as locality is concerned must in the nature
of things be a wonderfully beautiful place.

The soil is of a reddish clay which during a
rain forms into a clinging kind of mud, very
unpleasant to travel through. During the years
I was in the place there were very few street crossings
such as we are accustomed to in northern towns.
Instead they had what they called stepping stones
— that is stones of vary ing shape and size placed at
irregular distances across the street. One needed to
be an expert gymnast to accomplish the crossing feat
in safety. Should he happen to slip from the
top of one of these curious conveniences, many
of which would be round and smooth on the upper side,
he would find himself liberally bespattered with a
solution of the "sacred soil of Virginia." This same
soil, however, was rich in nutriment for vegetation
as the fields of corn, wheat, tobacco etc attested.

The climate of Charlottesville is, of course much
milder than that of New England. Still there was
much cold weather in the winters, and the
mercury would sometimes fall below the zero mark

and there would be snowfalls of considerable depth.
But the snow never lasted long — scarcely as long as
the mud it helped to form, and Spring greeted us
quite early. High winds were frequent and
sometimes terrifying. We never remained through
the hottest season — always coming north the last
of June or first of July.

The incorporated town, or rather city of
Charlottesville numbered some 4000 inhabitants
in the late sixties. It was the county seat of
Albemarle. Outside the town limits was a
considerable area of unincorporated land in
Albemarle Co. belonging to Charlottesville township.
Our school was outside the corporation, as was
also the University of Va.

A stranger visiting Charlottesville was likely
to be impressed by the sight of the liberal handiwork
of Nature, and the very meagre assistance she had
received from man. For a town of its size the
place was singularly destitute of municipal conveniences.
There was no adequate water supply, wells being the
sole dependence in this respect, and one well often
had to serve for several families, consequently instead

of being placed conveniently near one house they were
usually arranged so to be inconvenient for all. The
water was very good however, and was brought into
the houses in pails or pitchers by servants, who often
carried these vessels on their heads. I have seen the
woman who worked for us bring three full pails of
water at one time — one on her head and one in each
hand. I asked her once if she couldn't manage to carry
one on each shoulder too.

Aside from the lack of water I think there was
no fire company or any kind of fire apparatus in the
town, so any building that caught fire might well be
considered as doomed, and it is really a matter of
great surprise that during the years that I was there,
there was never a serious conflagration. A IA good many
isolated buildings were burned, but there were no
fires on a large scale. In case of a fire the citizens
turned to and did what they could in carrying
water and other work necessary to subdue the flames
or save property, but it was unorganized work and
very inefficient.

I never learned whether there was any regular
system for taking care of the streets, but all the

highways in and about the town were in a very poor
condition. Outside the more populous part of the town
the sidewalks were usually of plank, and always more
or less broken and dilapidated, and the unpaved
streets after a heavy rain would be a mass of sticky
mud. Wheels would sometimes sink nearly to their
hubs, and the poor horses had a hard time dragging
themselves and their loads through it.

Sometimes the country roads would be impassible
for days at a time, and there would be a famine in
such articles as fuel, fresh meat, poultry, butter eggs and
milk. I remember one time when we could get no wood
on account of the state of the roads caused by a
prolonged rainstorm, and should have suffered
for want of a fire had not some of our boys brought us
wood from their homes in bags slung over their shoulders
There was probably a dealer in wood and coal in the
town, but the business must have been on a small scale,
and when we needed fuel we would have some of the older
boys watch for a load of wood coming in from the country
— make a bargain for it, and have it put in the place
of storage. To a New Englander this seems rather a hap-hazard
way of getting supplies, but it was the best

we could do at that time.

The markets also seemed to depend upon the
local country supplies for meat vegetables, butter eggs etc.
We could rarely get good beef, and the flesh of the
scavenger swine had no temptation for us, but the
mutton, lamb, and poultry were excellent. We
also had an occasional meal of venison, as well as
some of the smaller wild game, as squirrels, pheasants
etc. I often regret that I made no effort to try a bit
of 'possum, but I did not think much about it while
there. When I first went out it was hard to get butter
fit to eat, but after awhile we learned to watch for country
dealers, and get a supply from them. In those early
years all provisions were very high. I do not recall
the price of butter, but I remember I paid 25 cts a pound
for granulated sugar, and 40 cts for raisins. Milk
was ten cents a quart, and very blue and creamless at
that. I could get no salt pork such as we have in the
north — everything was bacon. Baked beans of New
England style were unknown. One of the colored
women heard me bemoan the fact that I could
have no baked beans, so she set herself to work to
prepare some for me. First she boiled the beans to

a mush and rubbed them through a strainer, then
formed them into small round cakes and baked
them. They were quite palatable but didn't
seem much like the real article. A little experience
with Virginia beans showed me that many of them
were tenanted by a small black bug. This was not
appetizing so I learned to carry beans, salt pork
and bean pot as well as many other articles of
food with me and after that I had my regular
dish of New England baked beans.

I did a good deal of my own cooking as the
Virginia methods were too rich to be healthful for
ones regular diet, but the cooks were masters of the
art in their own way, and I shall never forget their
delicious fried chicken and Sally Lunns.

A good deal of their cooking was done by
an old fashioned fireplace. For baking they
used a large, round, flat kettle with a tight fitting cover,
which they called an oven. As I never witnessed
the process of baking in it, I do not know how it
was managed; but however it was done they usually
made a success of their work.

There were quite a number of grocerys and

dry good stores in town.— two or three druggists
and about the same number of Jewellers. There was
no large city nearer than Richmond so peopledepended
largely upon the local merchants. I never heard
that there was any law regulating the sale of
liquor, so every grocery was a liquor store as well.
The drinking habit was almost universal, and
persons in a state of beastly intoxication a
common sight on the street. There was one
policeman, called the Town Sergeant who was
supposed to keep order in the place, and I think
there were a few others detailed for extra duty, but
street fights and rowdyism prevailed, and even
murders were so common as to have lost the power
of inspiring the horror they would in one of our
northern towns of like size. All this seems the
more remarkable when we remember that
Charlottesville is a town of the highest culture
and great refinement.

In trying to account for this
extraordinary state of things, one must remember
that many different causes have combined to
effect this difference. The very foundations of Virginia
and New England were as different as

possible. There could be little in common between the
earnest, sober, hard working Puritans ofthe northern section,
and the gay, idle, impecunious and extravagant
younger sons of noblemen who settled Virginia. The
climatic influences were different, and more than
all, the habits of thought and feeling engendered by
slavery tended to develope a recklessness of action
among the people which culture scarcely seemed to
soften to any great extent.

The town was not protected from epidemics of
sickness by any very rigid sanitary measures. I understood
that there was a law protecting buzzards, as they were the
necessary scavengers of the streets, and by ways of the
town. Dead dogs, cats, and other creatures were thrown
on to some vacant lot for these loathsome birds to
feast upon. There was very little pretence of effort
to encourage public cleanliness, and all sorts of
refuse matter lay about unheeded. During my
first years there cattle and pigs roamed the streets
at will. Often the only subsistence of the cow of some
poor person, was what she gathered at the roadside,
and on open unoccupied lots. The swine were the
efficient assistants of the buzzards, as scavengers.

The people of the place were professedly religious
and there were a goodly number of churches of the
various Orthodox denominations — Presbyterians
Methodists, Baptists, Carmelites Episcopalian and a
sect called Christians, and I think there was a
Jewish synagogue, as there were a good many
Jews in the town.

Our position as
teachers of the Freedmen was such as to shut
us out of the sympathy and society of the white
people generally, so I can say but little in
regard to them socially except that I have
reason to think they were, in their own way, very
kind and charming people. A few — a very few
met us with some degree of cordiality, and we
found them very agreeable, but we went there
immediately after the close of the war, and it
was too soon for us to expect the feeling of bitterness
to have died out. We ourselves had suffered and
carried the bitterness of that suffering in our own
souls, but these people had witnessed the death of
all they had hoped for and fought for. — and
we were Yankees. It could not have been easy
for them to look upon us as friends so soon

particularly in view of the work we went there
to do, which, to their minds was not a friendly one.

There were no public schools in Charlottesville
when I went there, but these came in with the
new state constitution. There was a young
ladies school, or seminary, but if I ever heard how
it was managed I have forgotten. There was a school
for boys taught by a Mr. Williams. The school was
within a few rods of our own, and as I think of
it now its seems remarkable that there was never
a clash between the boys of the two schools. There
were probably other private schools in the place, but
I either never heard of them, or have forgotten them.

I never saw any snuff dipping while there,
although tobacco in other forms was universally
used by the men, and not unfrequently by the
women. It was quite common for little boys to
both smoke and chew tobacco, and it was necessary
for us to take a firm stand against its use in
school, or the boys would have chewed during school
hours. However when they found it must be no
tobacco, or no school they submitted with such grace
as they could.

Another rather alarming habit of the
male population was carrying pistols. Even the
colored boys soon acquired the habit, and several
times I found it necessary to take pistols from boys
who had brought them to school. A stranger coming
into my school-room might have thought I had to
resort to desperate measures to govern my school
seeing one or two revolvers lying on my table. But
the boys soon learned that pistols like tobacco were
not allowed in school, and I ceased to be annoyed
by them which was no small relief.

A little way to the west of Charlottesville, among
the Ragged Mts. lived a class of people known as "poor
whites." They were exactly as one sees them represented
in pictures or on the stage — long, lank, with straight
unkempt locks, and nondescript clothes. I
would often see a whole family — man, woman
and several children come up the railroad
track together on a Saturday morning each with
a pail of meagre looking strawberries to sell. These
they would dispose of for a small sum, and lay
out the proceeds in a little bacon and corn meal,
the larger part going for whisky and tobacco. If we

walked down the street a little later in the day we
would be likely to find them sitting contentedly on
the curbstone, smoking their pipes and talking over
the incidents of the day. Thus the whole family would
spend the entire dayin doing what one bright boy could have
done in half the time, except, perhaps the amount
of smoking accomplished. I was told that some
of these people lived in a kind of hut with only
the bare earth for a floor, and that they generously
shared these primitive accommodations with their
pigs and fowls, as well as their dogs.

There seemed to be no very extensive manufacturies
in or about Charlottesville. All that I can now recall
are the Charlottesville Woolen Mills —(the extent of
which I never learned), and a brick yard which
occupied the lot next our school. The land being
a red clay was particularly suited to this purpose.
The works were not extensive — there being only a
small number of kilns. I fancy all the bricks
made there found a market in the town or vicinity
but I may be mistaken.

Travelling about the vicinity was largely done
on horse-back, two or three person after riding

together on one horse. I once saw a man riding
with a harrow fastenedin some way upon the back of the horse
behind him. It was probably much easier getting
over the rough roads on horseback than in a carriage.
An omnibus used to run between the town and
the University with some attempt at regularity.

Railroad accommodations were not very
good at that time. The Orange & Alexandria
R. R. extended from Washington through the town
to Lynchburg. (How much, if any farther, I do not know)
and the Virginia Central fromRichmond through Charlottesville
to Staunton — perhaps farther. These roads formed
a junction near our school, and I think used
the same track to Gordonsville where the lines
separated again. There were only two passenger
trains per day each way on either road passing
through both ways near noon and midnight.

The dwelling houses, as far as they came under
my observation were not generally constructed with aneye
to convenience in the same degree as houses
of the same class in the north. The kitchens were
usually small separate buildings in the rear
of the main house, and very little thought seemed

to have been given to the idea of making one's labor light.
That would naturally be a remote consideration
to people who had no practical knowledge of household labor
themselves, and who with their numerous slaves could
see no occasion for labor saving conveniences: and
so the work was done, in what seemed to us a very
hard as well as slip-shod way.

There was no law for the protection of dumb
animals, and there seemed to be a deplorable lack
of feeling in regard to their sufferings from the
thoughtlessness and cruelty of their owners. No doubt
there were many of the citizens whose feelings like
our own were outraged by the barbarities inflicted
upon the lower creatures, but there was little that
could be done, with no law, and no visible
public sentiment on the side of kindness. Cows
would wander about on the outskirts of the town all
winter, nibbling the dead grass by the wayside or getting a slender feast from the sides of an
occasional haystack. Mere skeletons they seemed
scarcely able to drag themselves about — without
shelter in the coldest storms of winter. Spring
must have seemed doubly beautiful to them.

Horses were overloaded, overdriven and beaten
without the slightest show of mercy. Slavery had
hardened the hearts of both master and slave, and
all animals had to suffer in consequence. Of
course there were exceptions, but brutality was such
an ever present habit that we came to regard it
as the hard unfailing rule.

It was the custom in Charlottesville to keep a
great many dogs,— partly for hunting and partly for
protection from marauders. If a man were in
moderate circumstances he might content himself
with two or three, but if he werevery poor indeed he would
perhaps have five or six. These dogs were usually ferocious
and when one had occasion to call at a home he was
likely to be met by three or four yelping, snarling
canines. People usually waited at the gate for
some one to come and call the creatures off, but
never having been accustomed to savage dogs, I at
first paid no attention to their apparent ferocity
and would go right on up to the door through the
snarling pack, supposing that this was their
eccentric way of welcoming a stranger. I wonder
now that I am here to tell of it, but I really had

no idea that they were dangerous until I witnessed
the surprise of people at what they looked upon
as my temerity. Perhaps the fact that I showed no
fear, held the savage brutes in awe.

Through the early years of the Civil War,
Charlottesville escaped the ravages of the marching
armies, and became a rendezvous for the sick and
wounded. The spacious buildings of the University
of Va. were putto hospital uses along with the three
storied Mudwall or Delevan House, which was our
home for a time. There were also five or six rough
wooden hospital buildings erected near by the
largest of which was 140 ft long by about 70 ft
in width and two stories high. The sick
and wounded Confederate soldiers and a
few Union prisoners in like condition were
cared for here. Among the latter was Major
Savage, a brother of the wife of Prof. Wm. B.
Rogers who, with some other 13 or 14 Union
prisoners died here, and were buried in the
cemetary attached to the University grounds
where, in after years we would go occasionally
to lay our offering of flowers in memory of

those whose graves were beyond our reach. Later
on their remains were removed to the national
cemetary at Culpepper. Many were the delicacies
these poor Union soldiers received from the
hands of the colored people, conveyed to them
in various secret ways.

When Sheridan made his famous raid
through this part of Virginia the people of this
place got their first taste of what war meant
at their own door. As there were no troops to
oppose them the town escaped the ruin which
is the usual fate of places where battles are fought.
Sheridan soon moved on, and many of the
slaves followed in the wake of the army — refugeed
they called it.

Among the most noted men of Charlottesville
was Judge Alexander Rives whose residence
— Carlton — was on the outskirts of the town. If
my memory serves me correctly he was a brother
of the Hon. Wm. C. Rives at one time minister
to France, and early lover of Eugenie who
afterward married Napoleon 3d Judge Rives was
a cultured high-bred gentleman — one of whom

Virginia could well afford to be proud. I understand
from the colored woman who had been the nurse
of his children that he graduated from Harvard
College. He was a large slaveholder, and keen
sighted enough to see that secession meant
the death of this peculiar institution, consequently
he cast his vote against the measure. This
roused the ire of the hot blooded young secession
element, and a party of young men— presumably
mostly students from the University — went out
to his place one night, and cut off the tops of
two rows of young shade trees which had
recently been planted on both sides of the
long avenue leading up to his house. It is
gratifying to be able to say that this act of
vandalism failed in its object as the cutting
only served to make them take on a more
symmetrical form.

However Judge Rives might oppose secession
he was a true Virginian rather than a true
American, and went with his state. After
the war was over he wisely accepted the situation
and gave his hearty support to the U.S. government.

It was my good fortune to hear him deliver an
elequent address before the delegates to the
Constitutional Convention at Richmond.
He became one of the trustees of the Hampton
Normal school at the solicitation of Gen.
Armstrong who came to Charlottesville for
that purpose, and called on us while there.
He also became one of the trustees of our school
at Charlottesville, and in doing so became a
member of the same board as one of his ex-slaves
Paul Lewis, his one time body servant.

Another noted citizen was Col. Jefferson
Randolph, a grandson of Thomas Jefferson.
He with several other gentlemen of the place
addressed the colored people on the grounds
in front of our school house previous to the election
of delegates to the constitutional convention.
He was a white haired old man at this time
and began his address by telling the colored
people that many years before he had favored
emancipation. Perhaps the words of his
distinguished grandfather rang in his ears.
"I tremble for my country when I remember

that God is just."

There were several other men of considerable
note of whom I can now recall only the names
like Judge Cochrane, Profs Miner and McGuffy
of the University and many whose
names even have escaped me.

I have tried to make as correct and faithful
a picture as possible of Charlottesville as I knew
it, and if some things seem exaggerated I can
only say that I have written without prejudice,
and have told all things as I found them to
the best of my recollection. I often regret that
I took no notes when there — but never dreamed
I should have occasion to use them, and was too
much absorbed in my daily work to give any
thought to such matters.