March 27, 2024 • 21 mins
Step back in time to the Civil War era as you learn about Ben Lomond Historic Site’s transformation from a plantation to a Confederate hospital, complete with tales of hauntings and Civil War graffiti. Your guide, historian and author Kevin Pawlak, leads the way through this hidden gem nestled near Manassas Battlefield National Park, just outside of Washington, D.C. Marvel at the resilience of the Pringle family, who witnessed the turmoil of battle from their home turned hospital. Learn about the lives of the enslaved people who called Ben Lomond home and delve into the complexities of their daily existence. Step into a world where history resonates not just through sights and sounds but through smells, as podcast creator and PBS TV host and producer Darley Newman takes you to discover the past in Prince William County in Northern Virginia.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Have you ever been to a historic location where you step back in time with the sounds,
(00:05):
sights, and smells of the era?
So where do you buy the barn yard smell?
So there was a company...
I'm not trying to get it from my house for the holidays or anything.
You probably don't want it.
While many museums and historic homes have living history, this next stop in Northern
Virginia attempts to take you back in time by enlisting all five senses.
I have a very acute sense of smell, so this is like a lot.
(00:29):
It can be overwhelming.
We're heading back to Civil War times at the Ben Lomond Historic Site, less than a ten
minute drive from Manassas Battlefield National Park in Prince William County, Virginia.
Many people visit this National Park, but may not know about this hidden history gem
just nearby.
In this episode of The Travels with Darley Podcast, we're taking you inside this home once
(00:54):
a Civil War hospital and also home to enslaved people from the colonial era to the Civil War.
Historian and author Kevin Pawlak is guiding us, and what you learn may surprise you,
including stories of hauntings, Civil War era graffiti, and where exactly they get the smell
of gangrene.
(01:18):
An anti-bellum farm that served as a Confederate hospital during the Civil War's Battle
of First Manassas, travelers can tour the grounds of the Ben Lomond Historic Site, home to
a garden of antique roses, and the main home and outbuildings, each with their own distinctive
story.
Kevin Pawlak and I walk alongside a white-picket at fence, enclosing a garden, and up a sidewalk,
(01:42):
outside of the two-story, red sandstone Manor home, with its gable roof.
So you're here at Ben Lomond Historic Site, and we are a site owned and operated by Prince
William County's Office of Historic Preservation.
We've got six acres here, five historic outbuildings, including our smokehouse and dairy, that
are here on our right, the historic 1832 slave quarters that you can see in front of us,
(02:02):
and then of course here the main house as well.
We have over two centuries of history here at Ben Lomond
Well today it's just a six-acre site that's owned and operated by the county.
This was actually once a 6,000 acre plantation owned by Robert Carter III.
It was originally known as Cancer Plantation, certainly an offsetting name, but Carter
(02:22):
and family named all their plantations after Zodiac signs, so the name here stuck.
It wasn't until 1832 when Carter's grandson Benjamin Tasker Chinn actually built the house
here, and then a few years later he married his wife Edmonia, and according to family tradition,
she came in and didn't like the name of Cancer Plantation, you could only wonder why.
And so she gave it the name we know it as today, which is Ben Lomond, which is not a person,
(02:46):
a lot of people will come to our site and think that they're going to learn about who Ben Lomond
was, but instead Ben Lomond is a Scottish term that means beacon mountain.
And so it's hard to see today from here because of the development, we are a cool historic
site mixed in with all of this development, but we do sit up on top of a hill, so an
Manassas National Battlefield just off to our right would have been visible from here in 1861
(03:09):
when it wasn't the Chinns who were living here, but instead the Pringle family as well.
So they would have been able to see all of the fighting of the first major battle of the
American Civil War going off to our north.
They would have been able to see the fighting and then the house would get turned into hospital
for Confederate soldiers.
Yes, that's correct.
So Confederate soldiers took a road that ran through the property here on their way up
(03:30):
to the battlefield and as they passed by it, of course this house just stick out like a sore
thumb on top of this hill.
So it was a perfect landmark for Confederate surgeons to use to bring wounded soldiers back
here, while the house was literally shaking from the sounds of cannon fire off to the north
and the windows were rattling, we're far enough away from the battlefield that wasn't likely
going to come under fire.
(03:51):
And so for all of those reasons, initially it was just the grounds that were converted
into a hospital.
And then the night after the battle of First Manassas or First Bull Run, it began to rain,
thunder and lightning.
Nobody wants to be outside in those elements, even today.
And so the Pringle family was informed that their house was now going to be taken over
and used as a hospital.
(04:11):
So all the hospital operations would have been moved inside at that time and into any of
the buildings that were here on the property in July of 1861.
The Pringle family who was living here in the house at the time, a family of Scotsman,
it was his father, Andrew Senior and his two sons, they would have been able to see the
battle going off in the distance.
(04:32):
And thousands of Confederate soldiers passed right by this house on their way, ultimately
to one of the bloodiest portions of the First Manassas battlefield.
It became known officially as the Pringle House Hospital.
Now initially, the way hospital operations were done, everything would have been set up
outside.
It allowed for better ventilation when anesthesia was being used.
And also it was believed nobody knew what germs were in 1861.
(04:54):
So everybody thought it was bad air that caused sickness and best way of avoiding that bad
air is to get fresh air.
So the hospital operations would have been established all on the grounds of the house.
And then the night of July 21st, 1861, after the battle came to an end, it began to rain,
thunder and lightning, forcing pretty much everybody inside the house.
And forcing Confederate surgeons to inform the Pringles, notice not asking them or anything
(05:19):
like that, they just told the Pringles were taken over your house and using it as a hospital.
And so most of the wounded and all the hospital operations would have been moved inside of the
Pringle's home.
And the Pringle family ultimately decided to stay and remain in the house, but they just
had their living space shrunk down from the five rooms that it was to what it ultimately
or to just one room that they had there in the house.
(05:40):
Do we know what the Pringle family, how they reacted, what they did day to day, while
this is being used as a hospital?
Not day to day.
So unfortunately all of this information comes from claims that the Pringles filed after
the war.
And they don't talk much about the hospital because what they were trying to do is get
money back from the federal government for damages done to their property, not from
(06:01):
the Confederate government.
But they did at least say that they were here while the house is being used as a hospital,
which is pretty common because the greatest question they would have asked is where else
would they have gone?
Every other house in the area is being used as a hospital and so they really had no other
place to go.
But the Pringle family were farmers.
They were renting from the Chien family that initially built the house in 1832.
(06:22):
And the main thing that they had here were sheep.
There was a herd of about 500 marino sheep that were here on the property.
So that was how they were making all of their money at that point at the time of the Civil
War in 1861.
Kevin and I have made our way to one of the outbuildings, just a stone throw from the main
home.
The original quarters for the enslaved people is a small one-story cottage made of stone.
(06:45):
This is one of only three original slave quarters that still stands in Prince William County.
In 1860, the last year that a slave census was taken in the United States, we estimate
there were probably based off the population of enslaved people here in the county, probably
over 400 buildings of this kind, not all made out of stone, but today there's only three.
And this is the only one open to the public that you can still find.
(07:07):
So still has a lot of the original fabric of the building.
One of the unique parts about it is it doesn't sit though in its original location.
It actually used to sit on the other side of the house.
And then in 1980, as a way to save it as development was encroaching on Ben Lomond.
This building was actually saved.
It was literally jacked up onto the back of a truck and driven over here and so now it
sits a sort of a mere image to where it once sat in relation to the main house.
(07:31):
But you can see it was divided up into two rooms.
So when the chin family was living here, they owned anywhere from eight to twelve in slave
people.
And this is the only quarters that we know of that existed on the property.
So as far as we can tell, there probably would have been five or six people perhaps living
inside each of these rooms.
And that was there everything.
It was their home, it was their kitchen, their living room, their dining room, their bedroom,
(07:55):
all mixed into one spot here at the slave quarters here at Ben Lomond.
Kevin, what was life like for the enslaved people who lived here at Ben Lomond?
So unfortunately we really don't have a lot of information.
We do know based off studies done throughout the American South of what daily life was
like for enslaved people typically.
But here at Ben Lomond we don't know a lot of the names of the people who were here for
(08:18):
slave schedules that would have been taken every ten years, every start of each new decade
in the United States history.
Really all you typically see is the gender of an enslaved person and their age.
And that was it.
So unless there are other documents like newspapers, recording slaves running away or court
documents or anything like that, we really don't have a lot of information at all.
(08:41):
So the exhibits that we have in here, we've based off of some of the information that we
do know.
And Robert Carter III owned cancer plantation as well as 16 other plantations throughout
Northern Virginia.
He actually in 1791 freed over 450 of his slaves.
And in that document, thankfully he did provide us with the names and the ages of each of
(09:01):
the enslaved people that would have lived here at cancer plantation itself in 1791.
Then later on the documents sort of fade a little bit more if you will.
With the chin ownership in the 1830s and 1840s, again all we have is just that information
about the ages and genders.
And then when the Pringle family moved in in the 1850s, we get some more information just
(09:22):
a little bit more about these people because the Pringles being Scots did not own any slaves.
Instead they rented all of their slaves that would have been here.
So in 1857, there were 12 enslaved people living here.
And thankfully the Pringles, thankfully for the historical record I should say, the Pringles
were notoriously bad at paying the rent for all of these people that they were renting.
(09:43):
So we have a lot of the court documents showing the names of the enslaved people who lived
here, where they lived prior to coming here for the year 1857 and what the Pringles were
supposed to provide them.
So most of that information is standard food clothing, which was usually one set of summer
clothing, one set of winter clothing, a pair of boots, and then how much money those
(10:06):
rental fees would have been in 1857.
So for example, we know one of the ladies who lived here in enslaved person named Rachel
that's really all we know about her.
Unfortunately we don't have much more information about her than that.
She was here for $25.
Was the rental fee paid from the Pringle family to Mrs. Meshett out of Noakesville just a
(10:26):
few miles down the road where Rachel had spent most of her life until she spent the year here
at that moment.
$25 for what time period?
A year or month or...
$25 for a year.
For a year.
How much would that equate to in today's thought or currency?
The average American worker in 1860 made about a dollar a day.
So that's about a month's wages.
(10:47):
The average slave in 1860 cost anywhere from $800 to $1000.
Okay.
But still it would have been pretty steep fees that the Pringles would have been paying
for all of this enslaved labor here at the at Ben Lomond because by this point you know
it is still a farm of several hundred acres and the Pringles had 500 sheep that were
on the property and of course the standard crops that you'd see on a southern farm as
(11:08):
well.
Where would the enslaved people who lived here at Ben Lomon?
Where would they have come from?
Most of them would have been native born to Virginia.
The African slave trade had been canned in the United States for the last several decades.
There were still illegal importations of Africans into the United States at this time.
(11:29):
But most of these people would have been born here in Virginia born into slavery.
The way it worked in Virginia throughout the American South is a slave that has just
been born, takes on or I should say a person that has just been born, takes on the status
of the mother.
So for example if it's a freed father but an enslaved mother then the child that was just
(11:49):
born to that couple would become enslaved and ultimately that would be their status for
the rest of their lives until they were freed, purchased their own freedom, ran away, gained
freedom of some other means, whatever that was.
But they all would have been local too here and you know this was just as much their home
too.
And the spot of Virginia that a lot of these people would have known and they would have
(12:10):
become very familiar with a lot of these back roads, a lot of the people that they would have
known around here and of course the other enslaved communities did have a pretty good means
of communication between all of them so they would have known who else was living at the
other farms in the area.
Kevin and I walk back over to the main home and up a few stairs to step inside.
So you never quite seen historic sites with smells like this?
(12:32):
No I haven't actually.
We've been all over the world.
I haven't seen this yet.
Oh wow, okay.
I'm serious.
Oh cool.
Probably one of the first things you'll notice if I'm coming into our exhibit here at
Ben Lomond are the smells.
So this is all meant to be an immersive experience into what a Civil War hospital was like.
So here in the central passageway you'll probably get a bad waft of the smell of barnyard.
(12:56):
Dozens of cattle, horses sheep out on the farm, the manure beans spread to farm the fields.
Dozens of soldiers coming into the house that have been marching almost nonstop for days
on end.
I have a very acute sense of smell so this is like a lot right now.
It can be overwhelming.
So interesting though because all of our senses leave such an imprint on our memory and now
(13:17):
this is going to stick in my memory for sure.
So where do you buy the barnyard smell?
So there was a company that...
I'm not trying to get it from my house for the holidays or anything.
You probably don't want it.
We've got plenty of bad stories of gangrene smell getting everywhere throughout the house.
But there are companies that will make it.
The company that we had used previously has since gone the way of making good smells.
(13:40):
So we've had to farm out some of the other smells to have them literally recreated in large
quantities and be able to use them throughout the house to continue that immersive experience
for visitors.
So if you look hard enough you can find any different kind of scent that you possibly imagine
or maybe not imagine for your house from different companies around the United States
(14:00):
and I'm sure around the world as well.
But we had to do a little bit of hunting around to find somebody who was willing to manufacture
or recreate the smell of gangrene which is another one of those smells that we do have here
right in the house.
Yeah we've got the 25 gallon jug of liquid gangrene now.
So yeah, that is not good.
I explore a bit on my own upstairs before meeting Kevin back downstairs.
(14:24):
So I'm upstairs for the streetway smell and is definitely the worst one to tour more
of the home.
So what smells do we have in these rooms?
Let's go into the parlor or what we also refer to as the recovery room since this was
the largest room in the Pringle House Hospital.
This is where most of the soldiers ultimately would have recovered and you can see the different
(14:45):
means of recovery for private soldiers.
What you can see here is you know the means of conveying these soldiers off the battlefield
and bringing them back here whether that might be if they're able to walk they can follow
that same road back here to the house they might be dragged on a blanket they could be carried
in a stretcher as well like you see in every inch of space of this house was used for wounded
(15:07):
soldiers to be cared for for at least the next couple of days following the battle.
How haunted is this house?
It depends on me.
You're right.
There are stories associated with this house.
I have spent multiple nights in the house by myself before.
Worked late nights early hours.
I don't really experience anything but certainly I think with the amount of pain and suffering
(15:30):
and death that happened here as well it can be sort of a haunting place to be in one year
by yourself thinking about all the stories that took place here in the house and specifically
in this room as well where we have one of the most prominent stories related to the Pringle
House Hospital.
The bed that you see there in front of you has a uniform on it that's reproduction of
the uniform of Lieutenant Colonel William Fitzhulee who is a soldier and what became Stonewall
(15:54):
Jackson's brigade.
There atop Henry Hill at the Manassas Battlefield he was wounded in the chest by some kind of projectile
we're not sure which but he was brought back here to this house eventually because of his
status as an officer you can see he got a bed instead of a stretcher or laying down on
the floor.
He had three physicians personally attending to him trying to save his life.
His wife Lily traveled from the Shenandoah Valley to be with him but none of that unfortunately
(16:17):
worked and he died eight days after receiving his wounds not so much from the wound itself
but from gangrene that he probably contracted in transit from the battlefield or while
here in the hospital.
So that was the real killer of civil war soldiers not bullets not can balls it was disease
that ran rampant through a place like this.
It's wild it's I mean I always tell people when you go to a site that's where you really
(16:43):
understand what took place there and you understand the history much better but here
you're taking it to level 10 with the smells and the sounds and the fact that you can actually
physically touch the artifacts that have recreated here.
Yeah so it's great for kids great for families to be able to try out this out it's not
(17:04):
every day you get to go to a museum and try on a civil war uniform or really even smell
with the civil war.
Smelled like or in some cases you know tasted like as well when we do cooking programs
and food programs here.
So it really is just trying to you know immerse yourself fully in what this was like 160
years ago.
It's so easy to forget what it would have been like you know it's easy for us to read
(17:27):
letters and diaries and memoirs about this place but until you can actually experience
it just as the people that experienced that year 160 years ago would have felt it and heard
it and smelled it then you really can't wrap your head around it until you experience it
that way.
So we have barnyard, gangrene what are the other smells inside?
We have street waste upstairs and then we got through everybody a bone with the smell
(17:50):
of coffee upstairs and usually the last room that we take folks on on tour so you get at
least one good smell inside the house itself before everybody's running for the doors
and the fresh air.
So I would say maybe come to this stop way in between your meals.
That's right before right now.
Yes we do have visitors that come here that immediately will come into one room and
(18:10):
you can tell right away that they don't like the smell and they'll just quickly move
on to the next room.
I know this is on the graffiti trail which is here in Virginia.
Yep.
Can you show me some graffiti?
Yes so there's some right there behind you and there's more behind me here in the corner.
So we've only left a few spots preserved.
One of the better stories with the graffiti is this one up here behind you.
(18:32):
It is the signature of James E. Mooney of Company A of the first regiment Pennsylvania Reserve
Corps and we know all that information because that's what he wrote on the wall.
So he made it pretty easy for us to figure out who he was.
Some of the other signatures that are here simply have a last name and a numerical regiment
but doesn't say what state they're from so it's become very difficult for us to track
(18:52):
them down.
So there's actually only two signatures that we can positively link to Union Soldiers who
are here and one of them was James Mooney who had to climb on top of someone or something
to get his signature way up there on the walls.
But for soldiers it was not only a way of just saying hey I was here it was a way of wanting
to be remembered as well.
And let's be honest nobody would be talking about James Mooney today at least not here at
(19:16):
Ben Lomond if he hadn't taken the time to sign his name on the walls of the house here.
So we're able to tell that story as well when the Confederate Army left this area in the
spring of 1862 that opened the area up to Union Army occupation and the Union Army came
to visit the Pringle family on multiple occasions.
So the Pringle's not only had to give up their house as a hospital but they had to give
up a lot of their property that soldiers of both sides would have taken while they were
(19:39):
here during the course of the first year or so of the Civil War.
What do you hope that people will take away after they visit this historic site?
Think a little bit I hope that people will get a sense of what a Civil War hospital really
was like and that's why we have the immersive exhibits here.
But also recognizing that the people who were operating on soldiers, the surgeons especially
(20:02):
while by our standards weren't using or weren't doing the best that they could, by their
standards they were.
They only knew so much based off of what other people had discovered before them and that
they were not surgeons who were simply trying to hack off limbs left and right as quickly
as possible.
They certainly were doing that but they were doing that because they believed that was
(20:22):
the best thing for those patients at the time.
Believe it or not as grisly as all of this might seem with the disease that would have run
through this hospital and blood stains on the floorboards here in the house, those surgeons
were able to save more lives than what they ultimately took because of the measures they took
here in this house and what they continued to learn.
So these surgeons were really angels on a battlefield that saved as many lives as they
(20:47):
possibly could here in this house.
Interviews like this one, it's one of the reasons why I started travels with Darlie Podcast
to sometimes be allowed to go more in-depth with longer content in this modern day of short
or media because sometimes a story needs more time to breathe, be revealed and be exposed
especially when a complicated history takes center stage.
(21:11):
I'm Darley Newman and I live to take you places that are not the ordinary where people
stories from the past and present reveal humanity through times that are amazing, catastrophic
and altogether real.
Thanks for joining me at a historic site in Northern Virginia with a lot to share.
(soft music)
(21:33):
[Music]
Have you ever been to a historic location where you step back in time with the sounds,
(00:05):
sights, and smells of the era?
So where do you buy the barn yard smell?
So there was a company...
I'm not trying to get it from my house for the holidays or anything.
You probably don't want it.
While many museums and historic homes have living history, this next stop in Northern
Virginia attempts to take you back in time by enlisting all five senses.
I have a very acute sense of smell, so this is like a lot.
(00:29):
It can be overwhelming.
We're heading back to Civil War times at the Ben Lomond Historic Site, less than a ten
minute drive from Manassas Battlefield National Park in Prince William County, Virginia.
Many people visit this National Park, but may not know about this hidden history gem
just nearby.
In this episode of The Travels with Darley Podcast, we're taking you inside this home once
(00:54):
a Civil War hospital and also home to enslaved people from the colonial era to the Civil War.
Historian and author Kevin Pawlak is guiding us, and what you learn may surprise you,
including stories of hauntings, Civil War era graffiti, and where exactly they get the smell
of gangrene.
(01:18):
An anti-bellum farm that served as a Confederate hospital during the Civil War's Battle
of First Manassas, travelers can tour the grounds of the Ben Lomond Historic Site, home to
a garden of antique roses, and the main home and outbuildings, each with their own distinctive
story.
Kevin Pawlak and I walk alongside a white-picket at fence, enclosing a garden, and up a sidewalk,
(01:42):
outside of the two-story, red sandstone Manor home, with its gable roof.
So you're here at Ben Lomond Historic Site, and we are a site owned and operated by Prince
William County's Office of Historic Preservation.
We've got six acres here, five historic outbuildings, including our smokehouse and dairy, that
are here on our right, the historic 1832 slave quarters that you can see in front of us,
(02:02):
and then of course here the main house as well.
We have over two centuries of history here at Ben Lomond
Well today it's just a six-acre site that's owned and operated by the county.
This was actually once a 6,000 acre plantation owned by Robert Carter III.
It was originally known as Cancer Plantation, certainly an offsetting name, but Carter
(02:22):
and family named all their plantations after Zodiac signs, so the name here stuck.
It wasn't until 1832 when Carter's grandson Benjamin Tasker Chinn actually built the house
here, and then a few years later he married his wife Edmonia, and according to family tradition,
she came in and didn't like the name of Cancer Plantation, you could only wonder why.
And so she gave it the name we know it as today, which is Ben Lomond, which is not a person,
(02:46):
a lot of people will come to our site and think that they're going to learn about who Ben Lomond
was, but instead Ben Lomond is a Scottish term that means beacon mountain.
And so it's hard to see today from here because of the development, we are a cool historic
site mixed in with all of this development, but we do sit up on top of a hill, so an
Manassas National Battlefield just off to our right would have been visible from here in 1861
(03:09):
when it wasn't the Chinns who were living here, but instead the Pringle family as well.
So they would have been able to see all of the fighting of the first major battle of the
American Civil War going off to our north.
They would have been able to see the fighting and then the house would get turned into hospital
for Confederate soldiers.
Yes, that's correct.
So Confederate soldiers took a road that ran through the property here on their way up
(03:30):
to the battlefield and as they passed by it, of course this house just stick out like a sore
thumb on top of this hill.
So it was a perfect landmark for Confederate surgeons to use to bring wounded soldiers back
here, while the house was literally shaking from the sounds of cannon fire off to the north
and the windows were rattling, we're far enough away from the battlefield that wasn't likely
going to come under fire.
(03:51):
And so for all of those reasons, initially it was just the grounds that were converted
into a hospital.
And then the night after the battle of First Manassas or First Bull Run, it began to rain,
thunder and lightning.
Nobody wants to be outside in those elements, even today.
And so the Pringle family was informed that their house was now going to be taken over
and used as a hospital.
(04:11):
So all the hospital operations would have been moved inside at that time and into any of
the buildings that were here on the property in July of 1861.
The Pringle family who was living here in the house at the time, a family of Scotsman,
it was his father, Andrew Senior and his two sons, they would have been able to see the
battle going off in the distance.
(04:32):
And thousands of Confederate soldiers passed right by this house on their way, ultimately
to one of the bloodiest portions of the First Manassas battlefield.
It became known officially as the Pringle House Hospital.
Now initially, the way hospital operations were done, everything would have been set up
outside.
It allowed for better ventilation when anesthesia was being used.
And also it was believed nobody knew what germs were in 1861.
(04:54):
So everybody thought it was bad air that caused sickness and best way of avoiding that bad
air is to get fresh air.
So the hospital operations would have been established all on the grounds of the house.
And then the night of July 21st, 1861, after the battle came to an end, it began to rain,
thunder and lightning, forcing pretty much everybody inside the house.
And forcing Confederate surgeons to inform the Pringles, notice not asking them or anything
(05:19):
like that, they just told the Pringles were taken over your house and using it as a hospital.
And so most of the wounded and all the hospital operations would have been moved inside of the
Pringle's home.
And the Pringle family ultimately decided to stay and remain in the house, but they just
had their living space shrunk down from the five rooms that it was to what it ultimately
or to just one room that they had there in the house.
(05:40):
Do we know what the Pringle family, how they reacted, what they did day to day, while
this is being used as a hospital?
Not day to day.
So unfortunately all of this information comes from claims that the Pringles filed after
the war.
And they don't talk much about the hospital because what they were trying to do is get
money back from the federal government for damages done to their property, not from
(06:01):
the Confederate government.
But they did at least say that they were here while the house is being used as a hospital,
which is pretty common because the greatest question they would have asked is where else
would they have gone?
Every other house in the area is being used as a hospital and so they really had no other
place to go.
But the Pringle family were farmers.
They were renting from the Chien family that initially built the house in 1832.
(06:22):
And the main thing that they had here were sheep.
There was a herd of about 500 marino sheep that were here on the property.
So that was how they were making all of their money at that point at the time of the Civil
War in 1861.
Kevin and I have made our way to one of the outbuildings, just a stone throw from the main
home.
The original quarters for the enslaved people is a small one-story cottage made of stone.
(06:45):
This is one of only three original slave quarters that still stands in Prince William County.
In 1860, the last year that a slave census was taken in the United States, we estimate
there were probably based off the population of enslaved people here in the county, probably
over 400 buildings of this kind, not all made out of stone, but today there's only three.
And this is the only one open to the public that you can still find.
(07:07):
So still has a lot of the original fabric of the building.
One of the unique parts about it is it doesn't sit though in its original location.
It actually used to sit on the other side of the house.
And then in 1980, as a way to save it as development was encroaching on Ben Lomond.
This building was actually saved.
It was literally jacked up onto the back of a truck and driven over here and so now it
sits a sort of a mere image to where it once sat in relation to the main house.
(07:31):
But you can see it was divided up into two rooms.
So when the chin family was living here, they owned anywhere from eight to twelve in slave
people.
And this is the only quarters that we know of that existed on the property.
So as far as we can tell, there probably would have been five or six people perhaps living
inside each of these rooms.
And that was there everything.
It was their home, it was their kitchen, their living room, their dining room, their bedroom,
(07:55):
all mixed into one spot here at the slave quarters here at Ben Lomond.
Kevin, what was life like for the enslaved people who lived here at Ben Lomond?
So unfortunately we really don't have a lot of information.
We do know based off studies done throughout the American South of what daily life was
like for enslaved people typically.
But here at Ben Lomond we don't know a lot of the names of the people who were here for
(08:18):
slave schedules that would have been taken every ten years, every start of each new decade
in the United States history.
Really all you typically see is the gender of an enslaved person and their age.
And that was it.
So unless there are other documents like newspapers, recording slaves running away or court
documents or anything like that, we really don't have a lot of information at all.
(08:41):
So the exhibits that we have in here, we've based off of some of the information that we
do know.
And Robert Carter III owned cancer plantation as well as 16 other plantations throughout
Northern Virginia.
He actually in 1791 freed over 450 of his slaves.
And in that document, thankfully he did provide us with the names and the ages of each of
(09:01):
the enslaved people that would have lived here at cancer plantation itself in 1791.
Then later on the documents sort of fade a little bit more if you will.
With the chin ownership in the 1830s and 1840s, again all we have is just that information
about the ages and genders.
And then when the Pringle family moved in in the 1850s, we get some more information just
(09:22):
a little bit more about these people because the Pringles being Scots did not own any slaves.
Instead they rented all of their slaves that would have been here.
So in 1857, there were 12 enslaved people living here.
And thankfully the Pringles, thankfully for the historical record I should say, the Pringles
were notoriously bad at paying the rent for all of these people that they were renting.
(09:43):
So we have a lot of the court documents showing the names of the enslaved people who lived
here, where they lived prior to coming here for the year 1857 and what the Pringles were
supposed to provide them.
So most of that information is standard food clothing, which was usually one set of summer
clothing, one set of winter clothing, a pair of boots, and then how much money those
(10:06):
rental fees would have been in 1857.
So for example, we know one of the ladies who lived here in enslaved person named Rachel
that's really all we know about her.
Unfortunately we don't have much more information about her than that.
She was here for $25.
Was the rental fee paid from the Pringle family to Mrs. Meshett out of Noakesville just a
(10:26):
few miles down the road where Rachel had spent most of her life until she spent the year here
at that moment.
$25 for what time period?
A year or month or...
$25 for a year.
For a year.
How much would that equate to in today's thought or currency?
The average American worker in 1860 made about a dollar a day.
So that's about a month's wages.
(10:47):
The average slave in 1860 cost anywhere from $800 to $1000.
Okay.
But still it would have been pretty steep fees that the Pringles would have been paying
for all of this enslaved labor here at the at Ben Lomond because by this point you know
it is still a farm of several hundred acres and the Pringles had 500 sheep that were
on the property and of course the standard crops that you'd see on a southern farm as
(11:08):
well.
Where would the enslaved people who lived here at Ben Lomon?
Where would they have come from?
Most of them would have been native born to Virginia.
The African slave trade had been canned in the United States for the last several decades.
There were still illegal importations of Africans into the United States at this time.
(11:29):
But most of these people would have been born here in Virginia born into slavery.
The way it worked in Virginia throughout the American South is a slave that has just
been born, takes on or I should say a person that has just been born, takes on the status
of the mother.
So for example if it's a freed father but an enslaved mother then the child that was just
(11:49):
born to that couple would become enslaved and ultimately that would be their status for
the rest of their lives until they were freed, purchased their own freedom, ran away, gained
freedom of some other means, whatever that was.
But they all would have been local too here and you know this was just as much their home
too.
And the spot of Virginia that a lot of these people would have known and they would have
(12:10):
become very familiar with a lot of these back roads, a lot of the people that they would have
known around here and of course the other enslaved communities did have a pretty good means
of communication between all of them so they would have known who else was living at the
other farms in the area.
Kevin and I walk back over to the main home and up a few stairs to step inside.
So you never quite seen historic sites with smells like this?
(12:32):
No I haven't actually.
We've been all over the world.
I haven't seen this yet.
Oh wow, okay.
I'm serious.
Oh cool.
Probably one of the first things you'll notice if I'm coming into our exhibit here at
Ben Lomond are the smells.
So this is all meant to be an immersive experience into what a Civil War hospital was like.
So here in the central passageway you'll probably get a bad waft of the smell of barnyard.
(12:56):
Dozens of cattle, horses sheep out on the farm, the manure beans spread to farm the fields.
Dozens of soldiers coming into the house that have been marching almost nonstop for days
on end.
I have a very acute sense of smell so this is like a lot right now.
It can be overwhelming.
So interesting though because all of our senses leave such an imprint on our memory and now
(13:17):
this is going to stick in my memory for sure.
So where do you buy the barnyard smell?
So there was a company that...
I'm not trying to get it from my house for the holidays or anything.
You probably don't want it.
We've got plenty of bad stories of gangrene smell getting everywhere throughout the house.
But there are companies that will make it.
The company that we had used previously has since gone the way of making good smells.
(13:40):
So we've had to farm out some of the other smells to have them literally recreated in large
quantities and be able to use them throughout the house to continue that immersive experience
for visitors.
So if you look hard enough you can find any different kind of scent that you possibly imagine
or maybe not imagine for your house from different companies around the United States
(14:00):
and I'm sure around the world as well.
But we had to do a little bit of hunting around to find somebody who was willing to manufacture
or recreate the smell of gangrene which is another one of those smells that we do have here
right in the house.
Yeah we've got the 25 gallon jug of liquid gangrene now.
So yeah, that is not good.
I explore a bit on my own upstairs before meeting Kevin back downstairs.
(14:24):
So I'm upstairs for the streetway smell and is definitely the worst one to tour more
of the home.
So what smells do we have in these rooms?
Let's go into the parlor or what we also refer to as the recovery room since this was
the largest room in the Pringle House Hospital.
This is where most of the soldiers ultimately would have recovered and you can see the different
(14:45):
means of recovery for private soldiers.
What you can see here is you know the means of conveying these soldiers off the battlefield
and bringing them back here whether that might be if they're able to walk they can follow
that same road back here to the house they might be dragged on a blanket they could be carried
in a stretcher as well like you see in every inch of space of this house was used for wounded
(15:07):
soldiers to be cared for for at least the next couple of days following the battle.
How haunted is this house?
It depends on me.
You're right.
There are stories associated with this house.
I have spent multiple nights in the house by myself before.
Worked late nights early hours.
I don't really experience anything but certainly I think with the amount of pain and suffering
(15:30):
and death that happened here as well it can be sort of a haunting place to be in one year
by yourself thinking about all the stories that took place here in the house and specifically
in this room as well where we have one of the most prominent stories related to the Pringle
House Hospital.
The bed that you see there in front of you has a uniform on it that's reproduction of
the uniform of Lieutenant Colonel William Fitzhulee who is a soldier and what became Stonewall
(15:54):
Jackson's brigade.
There atop Henry Hill at the Manassas Battlefield he was wounded in the chest by some kind of projectile
we're not sure which but he was brought back here to this house eventually because of his
status as an officer you can see he got a bed instead of a stretcher or laying down on
the floor.
He had three physicians personally attending to him trying to save his life.
His wife Lily traveled from the Shenandoah Valley to be with him but none of that unfortunately
(16:17):
worked and he died eight days after receiving his wounds not so much from the wound itself
but from gangrene that he probably contracted in transit from the battlefield or while
here in the hospital.
So that was the real killer of civil war soldiers not bullets not can balls it was disease
that ran rampant through a place like this.
It's wild it's I mean I always tell people when you go to a site that's where you really
(16:43):
understand what took place there and you understand the history much better but here
you're taking it to level 10 with the smells and the sounds and the fact that you can actually
physically touch the artifacts that have recreated here.
Yeah so it's great for kids great for families to be able to try out this out it's not
(17:04):
every day you get to go to a museum and try on a civil war uniform or really even smell
with the civil war.
Smelled like or in some cases you know tasted like as well when we do cooking programs
and food programs here.
So it really is just trying to you know immerse yourself fully in what this was like 160
years ago.
It's so easy to forget what it would have been like you know it's easy for us to read
(17:27):
letters and diaries and memoirs about this place but until you can actually experience
it just as the people that experienced that year 160 years ago would have felt it and heard
it and smelled it then you really can't wrap your head around it until you experience it
that way.
So we have barnyard, gangrene what are the other smells inside?
We have street waste upstairs and then we got through everybody a bone with the smell
(17:50):
of coffee upstairs and usually the last room that we take folks on on tour so you get at
least one good smell inside the house itself before everybody's running for the doors
and the fresh air.
So I would say maybe come to this stop way in between your meals.
That's right before right now.
Yes we do have visitors that come here that immediately will come into one room and
(18:10):
you can tell right away that they don't like the smell and they'll just quickly move
on to the next room.
I know this is on the graffiti trail which is here in Virginia.
Yep.
Can you show me some graffiti?
Yes so there's some right there behind you and there's more behind me here in the corner.
So we've only left a few spots preserved.
One of the better stories with the graffiti is this one up here behind you.
(18:32):
It is the signature of James E. Mooney of Company A of the first regiment Pennsylvania Reserve
Corps and we know all that information because that's what he wrote on the wall.
So he made it pretty easy for us to figure out who he was.
Some of the other signatures that are here simply have a last name and a numerical regiment
but doesn't say what state they're from so it's become very difficult for us to track
(18:52):
them down.
So there's actually only two signatures that we can positively link to Union Soldiers who
are here and one of them was James Mooney who had to climb on top of someone or something
to get his signature way up there on the walls.
But for soldiers it was not only a way of just saying hey I was here it was a way of wanting
to be remembered as well.
And let's be honest nobody would be talking about James Mooney today at least not here at
(19:16):
Ben Lomond if he hadn't taken the time to sign his name on the walls of the house here.
So we're able to tell that story as well when the Confederate Army left this area in the
spring of 1862 that opened the area up to Union Army occupation and the Union Army came
to visit the Pringle family on multiple occasions.
So the Pringle's not only had to give up their house as a hospital but they had to give
up a lot of their property that soldiers of both sides would have taken while they were
(19:39):
here during the course of the first year or so of the Civil War.
What do you hope that people will take away after they visit this historic site?
Think a little bit I hope that people will get a sense of what a Civil War hospital really
was like and that's why we have the immersive exhibits here.
But also recognizing that the people who were operating on soldiers, the surgeons especially
(20:02):
while by our standards weren't using or weren't doing the best that they could, by their
standards they were.
They only knew so much based off of what other people had discovered before them and that
they were not surgeons who were simply trying to hack off limbs left and right as quickly
as possible.
They certainly were doing that but they were doing that because they believed that was
(20:22):
the best thing for those patients at the time.
Believe it or not as grisly as all of this might seem with the disease that would have run
through this hospital and blood stains on the floorboards here in the house, those surgeons
were able to save more lives than what they ultimately took because of the measures they took
here in this house and what they continued to learn.
So these surgeons were really angels on a battlefield that saved as many lives as they
(20:47):
possibly could here in this house.
Interviews like this one, it's one of the reasons why I started travels with Darlie Podcast
to sometimes be allowed to go more in-depth with longer content in this modern day of short
or media because sometimes a story needs more time to breathe, be revealed and be exposed
especially when a complicated history takes center stage.
(21:11):
I'm Darley Newman and I live to take you places that are not the ordinary where people
stories from the past and present reveal humanity through times that are amazing, catastrophic
and altogether real.
Thanks for joining me at a historic site in Northern Virginia with a lot to share.
(soft music)
(21:33):
[Music]
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