Saving History Saturday: Central Virginia Battlefields Trust Updates

The Central Virginia Battlefields Trust (CVBT) is currently fundraising to protect Witness Trees on the Chancellorsville battlefield.

During storms in the late summer, CVBT had a 200-year-old witness tree suffer fatal damage due to a storm on one of their properties along Stonewall Jackson’s Flank Attack. This served as a call to action for the organization.

On the same piece of property, they identified two additional Witness Trees that are over 190 years old, and the property may have as many as eleven witness trees on this 10-acre parcel. These trees bore witness to the events of May 2, 1863. First as Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker rode west to check in on the XI Corps in the morning, and Lt. Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson as his men made their famous flank attack, as well as he was carried back past them after his wounding a little while later.

CVBT is currently raising $20,000 in their effort to protect the Chancellorsville Flank Attack witness trees.

In late September CVBT also finished the work to place a historic preservation easement on 70-plus acres of their Myer’s Hill property at Spotsylvania with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. The fighting at Myer’s Hill took place on May 14, 1864 and is the location where Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade was almost captured as he rode forward to inspect the army’s position just as the Confederates counterattacked. CVBT is currently working on both short- and long-term interpretation places for the property.

To learn more about CVBT’s witness tree preservation campaign, as well as everything else that they do, visit the CVBT website.