Brandy Station Foundation Preserves The Historic Graffiti House
This is the Graffiti House at Brandy Station, where the war’s largest cavalry battle was fought on June 9, 1863, just three weeks before the Battle of Gettysburg. A humble structure from the outside, walls inside are covered with magnificent examples of what soldiers can do to blank walls with a little time on their hands and a little mischief in their minds. The Graffiti House, a two-story frame structure, was built in 1858 and had 14 sets of owners over the years, according to Bob Luddy, past president of the Brandy Station Foundation (BSF) for 10 of its 20 years. The BSF bought the house in 2002 and opened it in 2003. Luddy said that over the past three years 10,000 people have visited the house. “It’s not bad for an all-volunteer operation that’s open, on average, three days a week.” All 10,000 of those visitors got in for free. “I think it’s virtually criminal to charge people to see their history. I just think that is abysmal,” Luddy said. “I recognize you have to pay bills, I do. So when people donate money to us, that’s fine.” Visitors are invited on Dec. 12 when the house will be open from 1-4 p.m. for a Christmas party. The repair figure of $1.2 million is based on a study done by an architectural conservation company. Luddy said their task was three-fold: to identify all the problems in the house, to prioritize them and to estimate what it would cost to fix all of them. Despite identified problems, the house is in sound condition. A recent renovation stabilized it and brought the floor loadings up to the Culpeper County code. A significant drawback is the house’s location, just a stone’s throw from the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. Of course, this was likely one of the incentives for building it where it is. “The major problem is when the big, heavy freight trains go by,” Luddy explained. “The vibrations roll right off the track and right through the house. And when you have 150-year-old plaster and those vibrations, it’s a bad combination.” The BSF has received a variety of proposals for solving the vibration problem. These include placing giant springs under the foundation and drilling deep vertical holes between the house and the track in which to place cork telephone poles, in a staggered pattern, to absorb the energy of the train vibrations.
The Graffiti Surprise The son found some loose wallpaper on a wall upstairs, tugged on it, and it fell off, revealing the graffiti on the plaster underneath. Fortunately, he left those walls alone. Unfortunately a lot of the first floor walls had previously collapsed and the plaster had fallen in. The owner put the plaster chunks in a box and threw them out. Luddy said, “If he hadn’t done that, maybe somebody could have put together a tremendous jigsaw puzzle, but maybe not.” What’s intact today is the wonderful graffiti on the top floor. The 130 pieces of graffiti include 41 names: 30 Confederate, six Union, and five whose allegiance can’t be determined. One oddity is the very different kinds of graffiti left by men from the opposing sides. The Confederates left mainly signatures. The Union men usually made drawings. For example, “Lt. J. Marshall, Company E, 12th Va. Cavalry,” signed the wall. Luddy said research uncovered that he was William J. Marshall, grandnephew of the fourth Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall. “Marshall is the aristocrat. Bob Lewis and Edward Moreland are ‘Joe Sixpacks,’” Luddy said. Lewis and Moreland were privates in the Norfolk Light Artillery. Near the end of the war they were part of the besieged Confederate forces at Petersburg. They left their trench in March 1865 and tried to walk down the Virginia Peninsula to home in Portsmouth. They were captured by Union forces. “If they’d stayed in the trench, in six weeks the war would have been over. They’d have had a free meal, a train ticket and they’d have been home,” Luddy said. Instead, the two were imprisoned at Point Lookout, Maryland, and were not released until the end of the summer. Sgt. Allen Bowman, Co. E, 12th Virginia Cavalry, signed the north wall. He had a blacksmith turn his bayonet into a hoe. The family loaned the implement to the BSF which displays it in a case along with his photo. On the west wall is a primitive drawing, presumably Union, of a man holding a sword. Below it is the phrase, “J. Davis. Good on the boots.” Luddy said this may be a variation of a Union patriotic envelope design showing President Lincoln kicking President Davis. Another drawing insults Confederates by depicting a man near a horse’s rear end, with the caption, “He smells a rebel.” Although the original graffiti on the first floor was lost, there is now a Hall of Honor with modern graffiti in its place. Descendants of soldiers who fought at Brandy Station or were encamped there during the winter of 1863-64 are welcome to indicate their ancestor and sign their name. There is humor in some. Darrel Griffiths of Winchester, Va., wrote about his ancestor John E. Woll, Co. E, 4th U.S. Artillery: “Great great uncle John was kicked in groin by a horse while here in Winter of ‘64’.” About $25,000 is needed to uncover additional graffiti. Luddy estimates 500 square feet of walls upstairs await careful removal of the paint and wallpaper. A consultant told him there are between six and nine layers of paint and/or wallpaper on various walls. “I think there’s every reason to expect that we will find additional graffiti and probably significant numbers of it,” Luddy said. “The problem is that once you uncover it, you have to protect it,” he said. And that would be more exposed plaster that would shake when the trains rumble by. For additional information go to www.brandystationfoundation.com.
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