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Description

This series of monuments and accompanying tour pamphlet were part of an initiative from the Jefferson County Camp, United Confederate Veterans to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Civil War. In 1910 Col. R. Preston Chew and the Jefferson County UCV raised the funds to place 25 concrete obelisks in Jefferson County to mark locations of engagement or other significant events. The following year the Camp published a pamphlet to accompany the obelisks and give more information about each location. This was Military Operations in Jefferson County, Virginia (Now West Virginia), 1861-1865 published in 1911. The pamphlet has been reprinted several times by the Henry Kyd Douglas Camp, No. 199 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Because the monuments and accompanying pamphlet were done by Confederate veterans it is likely that the locations and descriptions are biased towards or favor the Confederate view and experience of the war. When the members of the UCV chose the locations and wrote the pamphlet they emphasized their personal experiences and recollections of the war as well as focused on instances of Confederate success. While these markers do not cover every part of the history of the Civil War in Jefferson County, the series offers insight into the memory of the war held by Confederate veterans decades later. As with any monument, these represent a constructed memory of a past event, in this case the memory that Jefferson County’s Confederate veterans wanted memorialized. For each marker, the entries will include the original 1911 text written by the veterans as well as additional history and information to put the events into context. You will also see additional books, primary documents, and other resources.