County Buys Bermuda Hundred Site; George Fickett Succeeds One-On-One
By Deborah Fitts
September 2004

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY - Piece by piece, Chesterfield County has been quietly saving modest parcels of battlefield from the May 1864 Bermuda Hundred Campaign in the face of inexorable development.

The latest addition is a 10-acre tract on Old Bermuda Hundred Road, the site of the May 20, 1864, battle of Ware Bottom Church. The county made the acquisition with a $176,500 grant from the federal American Battlefield Protection Program.

The property could become the latest county park next year, with parking for four or five cars and interpretive trails. It will be the seventh county-owned Civil War park in the last two decades, a remarkable achievement that has been spearheaded by one individual.

George Fickett, Civil War sites chairman for the Chesterfield Historical Society, has a low-key, hands-on approach.

"I've dealt one-on-one with developers saving pieces that can be saved without going through a big hassle," says Fickett.

He is also strategically placed. Now 54, he has worked for the county since 1971 and serves a mapping specialist in the environmental engineering department. In that post he has "wandered" the county for years, observing the still-significant earthworks that snake through the woods. He has also been privy to developers' plans in the early stages, providing him with a unique opportunity to steer projects away from some of the most sensitive battlefield resources.

The Ware Bottom Church property was Fickett's latest success.

"I've been keeping an eye on this site for many, many years," he says. After extensive negotiations, he talked owners G.E. Miles and W. Courtney Wells into donating half the $350,000 appraised value in exchange for a tax write-off. The fact that the wooded tract was zoned light industrial hiked its value.

Fickett said the property comprises the heart of the Ware Bottom Church battlefield and also contains a portion of the Howlett Line, the strong defensive line that the Confederates built between the James and Appomattox rivers to "bottle up Butler" - Union Gen. Benjamin Butler and his Army of the James.

Earthworks on the site are 8 feet high and 20 feet thick, according to Fickett, and extend for 1,200 feet in an unbroken line. "It's a really significant site."

The 10 acres is part of a 60-acre property that includes a dozen cannon emplacements and the route of the entire Confederate assault against the Union works. "I would love to get the whole 60 acres," says Fickett, but the price is $4.2 million for the remaining 50 acres. "It's kind of out of range."

He adds, "Because developers have the right to bulldoze anything they want," saving entire battlefields and defensive lines is out of the question. "We have more of a connect-the-dots kind of system," he says.

Fickett is at work on two more sites. One, if it works out, will add 18 acres to Howlett Line Park. Another is a 4-acre piece across the road from the Ware Bottom Church property.

In his role with the county mapping section, Fickett and his colleagues have located Civil War earthworks throughout Chesterfield and placed them in the county database. Last year the planning department started including these locations in the calculus when handling development proposals. As a result, according to Fickett, a developer with plans for a 168-acre tract made a donation of 12 acres along the Bermuda Hundred federal line for a county park.

Until 1985, the only preserved battlefield land from the Bermuda Hundred Campaign was the 10-acre Parker's Battery parcel belonging to Richmond National Battlefield Park. That year Fickett managed to move a planned road off a section of the Howlett line, leading to creation of the county's first Civil War park - 2-acre Howlett Line Park.

Of the seven parcels that the county has secured since 1985, four are parks and the other three, including Ware Bottom Church, will be, Fickett says.

Fickett is regarded as the leading local authority on the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, and officials at Richmond National Battlefield Park regularly refer visitors to him. "I like to take them out and show them where their family fought," he says.

Growing up in Petersburg, Fickett says he became interested in the war during the centennial in the 1960s. He witnessed the bulldozing of forts Mahone and Sedgwick, and now the shopping malls that took their place "are almost all empty."

"Where Fort Mahone stood there's an empty K Mart," he says. "You take the wartime photos and stand there and say, 'Look what you've got now.' I never thought I would be a preservationist, but I got off my butt and it worked. It's been very gratifying."