The Civil War Experiences of Wm. Randolph Smith

An Introduction to an unpublished account of the Civil War experience of Wm. Randolph Smith

by Randolph Smith (1998)

The old Antioch Church sits below a small cemetery. The church and
cemetery are circled by a white rail fence. In this cemetery are the graves of my father’s family. Like many graveyards in Virginia, this one is very old, and, as is the Southern custom, family groups are buried together. There are Foleys, Gossoms, Picketts and Smiths.
Before the Civil War, and through the turn of the century, Antioch had a large and prosperous congregation, numbering among its members the “best” people of the area, who traveled from as far as Haymarket, which was four miles away.
Every summer the church is opened for a “homecoming.” Remnants of family still in the Virginia area, along with other members and their descendants, gather for a meeting—a remembrance. I have never attended. They shake hands, I suppose, and hug, sing some hymns, hear a message from some old preacher, walk down to Little Bull Run which flows in an arc around the church, to see the
baptismal, and then up to the graveyard where the centerpiece, for us Smiths at least, is the marker of “William Randolph Smith—killed at Fraiser’s Farm, June 30, 1862.” Uncle Randolph is the subject of this story.
We have other family heroes who are buried nearby. Uncle Randolph’s brother James Philip (my great-grandfather) rode with Colonel J. S. Mosby and survived the war. My father’s brother, Herman, fought in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, and was awarded a Bronze Star for valor. But William Randolph Smith is the greatest of the family’s heroes.
Uncle Randolph kept a diary. In our family it is known, as one might expect, as “Uncle Randolph’s Diary.” Scores of cousins have a typescript copy somewhere in their homes. (The location of the original is still a mystery). The diary of Uncle Randolph is a relic. It validates our family link to the most significant event in the history of our country. But, I question how thoroughly we nieces and nephews have read or studied the short record of his career in a Virginia Infantry Regiment. Most would summarize that Uncle Randolph fought heroically in the Civil War and was killed at “Fraiser’s Farm.” They have read the grave marker. Little more is known, for the diary is not as detailed or explicit as one would like it to be. The fact that a copy of the diary exists at all is something of a miracle which I will in due course explain.

To the east, a mile or or so down the road, where it crosses a shallow, narrow, brook called Catharpin Run, are a cluster of farms that once were all occupied by Smiths and their relatives. A bend in the lane at the intersection of Road 601 and Road 680 is identified as Waterfall, Virginia. One needs a detailed topographical map to find Waterfall. An old white building, now boarded up, was once a store and post office operated by family members. Before that it had been a grist mill. Waterfall was never even a village, although my great
Aunt Bessie, Uncle Randolph’s niece, refers to it as such in her family
history.
Smiths had arrived at this place in the gently rolling country along the Catharpin early in the nineteenth century and must have favorably reacted as did the famous Smith (Captain John—no relation) to “pleasant plain hills and fertile valleys, one prettily crossing another, and watered so conveniently with their sweet brooks and crystal springs, as if art itself had devised them.”
Our earliest known ancestor was another John Smith who came to Westmoreland County Virginia in 1700. According to Colonial Families of the Southern States of America, “He accumulated a large estate and was one of the prominent, influential citizens of his county.” John had three sons, as noted in a will probated in
1725. A younger son, Augustine, moved to Faquier County where he was a planter and an Episcopalian. Younger sons keep moving and his descendant, James Smith, moved to Waterfall. James may have had a small inheritance, but after arriving in Waterfall he prospered.
The Waterfall Smiths and their cousins were yeoman farmers, for the most part not slave owners, who saved their money and bought land. As years passed, this small area, because of marriage, became what could be described as a “kin-neighborhood.” By the time the Civil War broke out many were related. Marriage of first cousins, for example, while condemned in New England, was common
and even encouraged in Virginia.
In 1876 my great grandfather, James Philip Smith built a nice new house to the east of the village on a farm known as Hagley. Great grandpa Smith had ridden with Colonel John Singleton Mosby during the last year of the Civil War. He had been only fifteen years old when the conflict began and had watched his older brother leave as a Virginia volunteer and had not seen him return. At age eighteen, he was mustered into what was officially known as the 43rd
Ranger Battalion and was fortunate enough to survive the final year of the war without injury. He was also lucky to be in the group of Mosby’s raiders who stopped a train near Harper’s Ferry and made off with a Federal payroll. Those who participated in the famous “Greenback Raid” of Civil War history, and Mosby folklore, referred to themselves laughingly as “stockholders.” Great grandpa Smith’s share of stock was worth $2100. This was a sizable fortune considering his pay as a Confederate private was about $13 a month and that in Confederate currency which, by the time of the Greenback Raid, was worth next to nothing.

Aunt Bessie, James Philip’s daughter, relates that she was born in 1875 and lived at the miller’s old house in the “village.” She only lived in this old house one year “for ... father prospered.” I suspect he prospered because by that time the heat of Reconstruction had subsided and he felt comfortable in digging into his stash of greenbacks. During the train episode grandpa had also liberated a box of cigars which he hid in the ash pile of his father’s home.
But these were found by Yankee foragers. Fortunately, he hid the money well. Though Uncle Randolph is the great dead hero, grandpa’s exploits were more dramatic, and the oral history of the Greenback Raid, and hand-to-hand calvary combat with General Sheridan’s army in the Shenandoah, is much better known in the family than what Uncle Randolph did before his demise at “Fraiser’s Farm.”
Great grandpa Smith could have most certainly written an interesting diary himself. “He was handsome, tall and straight as an Indian, with hazel eyes and dark hair; never in his life too fat or lean, with perfect health...a man of strong convictions, a man of honor who always sided with the right no matter who it offended.” This was Aunt Bessie’s (his daughter’s description). She continues: “I shall always regret that papa didn’t have the disposition to keep us children close to his heart. He was a quiet man, little given to speech, a great reader—one of the best read persons I have ever known, because he always remembered what he read. He was devoted to mother, but I am sure she was afraid of him as we were. The only fault he had, but which caused most of mama’s tears—Drink.”
He was Justice of the Peace for thirty years. That is not surprising
since he was one of Mosby’s men. For most of the Civil War this area of Virginia was occupied by Federal troops, and Mosby, the partisan ranger, was the de facto Confederate government. As a veteran of conflicts involving men on horseback shooting pistols at each other at close range, the teen-aged James Philip Smith, “fought with fire in his heart—with that desire to avenge, unmindful of himself.” He then took to drink for reasons lost to history. Sometimes he would go for months, even years without drinking. “Yet the lord was good to him.
Luck always seemed to come his way. His cattle thrived, his fields bore
abundance and his was a house of plenty.”
Perhaps he was guilty about his survivors luck, guilty over becoming the older brother, guilty because his secret cache of Union money.
A description of James Philip is helpful in trying to understand his
older brother William Randolph, who left no photo, and only a brief apocryphal physical description from Aunt Bessie, who would have received it second hand: “A young man of brilliant mind, tall and handsome.” Quite similar to great grandpa Smith who was also, by her testimony, tall and handsome. A photo of James Philip does reveal, in fact, a handsome man who has the look of someone quite
formidable—a man to take seriously. And Uncle Randolph, in his diary, comes across as serious and intelligent and respected by his peers.

I have spent very few days in my sixty some years in the vicinity of
Hagley, Waterfall and Antioch Church. Yet, it seems like home. Family memory hangs over the place like humidity. As a young visitor it was easy to be swept up in the tide of relations. Isolated as my nuclear family was on the West Coast, it was fascinating to visit a place where everyone was a cousin, where the Civil War was a recent event and where the size of the world receded to what one could see from the front porch at Hagley Farm. It was life imploded into a
small, nondescript place, between a country road of no importance, and a tiny stream that, over centuries, had flowed out of the Bull Run Mountains and carved some rolling hills. It was not difficult to imagine life before the Civil War on these small family farms, with wagons hauling goods to Haymarket on Saturday, and
families assembled at Antioch on Sunday. In the summer and fall food was put up for the winter table, while large meals were prepared for the men when they came in from the fields. “There were great bags of dried apples, jars of honey, pickles and canned fruit, and preserves of all kinds in abundance. Every kind of vegetable that grew was put away for winter as well as thousands of pounds of beef and pork.”
James Smith, Uncle Randolph’s and James Philip’s father, had the
reputation of being a great Christian man who exuded an irresistible force, and whose blessings were sought even by strangers, and who led many people to the Lord. Aunt Bessie says, “How true are God’s promises to bless the children to the fourth generation, and that the seed of the righteous would never beg bread, for now it is nearly half a century since he passed away (in1890) and none of
the descendants of his seven surviving children have ever been in need.”
The wife of the exuberantly Christian James Smith was described as “a woman of sorrows, so sad was her countenance.” Aunt Bessie never remembered her smiling—just at some task, “continually providing abundantly for her household.” Uncle Randolph’s mother, Ann Matilda Moore, did have her work cut out for her—the life of a Virginia farm wife, a life that made my own Montana-born and
raised mother shudder in fear to contemplate. Ann Moore Smith had eight children, born in the years from 1838 to 1858. She was twenty-years old when she birthed the first one and forty when she had the last. She also raised two foster children and cared for her husband’s “afflicted” brother Uncle John. When Uncle Randolph left for war in 1861, she had a three year old, a six year old and ten year old, in addition to a couple of teenagers, her foster children, and
Uncle John.
She was an expert weaver, using a large loom to create beautiful cloths, carpets and rugs, blankets, and bedspreads “fit for a king.” She used lindsay woolsey for dresses. She knit woolen scarves, gloves and socks for all the members of the household. She produced clothing for her husband, for Uncle John, and for her sons. Ann Moore Smith and her family were held in the embrace of a continuous cycle of work.

The wealthy family in the neighborhood was the Foley’s, who had purchased the old Mt. Atlas plantation directly north of Hagley Farm. Mt. Atlas had a thousand acres and many slaves. The Foley’s didn’t “join” with the Smiths until after the war when James Philip married Annie Foley. Mt. Atlas didn’t survive the war. In 1863 it was divided up into small farms and distributed to the many children. The slaves had slipped away before Lincoln announced his proclamation. Aunt Bessie, who used to wander Mt. Atlas locating the slave cabins, and the site of the kitchen by finding iris beds, rose bushes and whitewashed stones, ended up owning what was left of the old place. The ancient Mt. Atlas house still stands, though overgrown with weeds and cobwebs, looking smaller than a plantation house should. It is padlocked, with windows boarded up, and was deeded to the County Historical Society in a deal to allow the present owner to short plat some lots on the property.
Hagley Farm was bought in the 1960s by a developer, who subdivided it and built many new houses, now occupied by people unaware of the history of the area. Only my first cousin, Lewis Smith, can claim a deed along Waterfall Road with a Smith name on it. He was born at Meadowbrook Farm, across the lane from Hagley, and on weekends retires into what is left of our past.

But in 1860 it was pastoral and prosperous following the rhythm of the seasons, with the land generating work, and work creating abundance. There was peace in this land of farmers. None were soldiers. No one had been to a war though they might have read about Napoleon and Sir Walter Scott’s heroes. The last American war—the Mexican War—had been fought in a distant place by career
soldiers.
The Smiths didn’t know war; they only knew work. Waterfall was a small, provincial world made up of capable, independent, self-sufficient people, no doubt proud of the place they had carved for themselves along the Catharpin. Their lives revolved around family, work and church. The outer edges of that world were Haymarket, Manassas and The Plains. Government made very little
intrusion into their lives but, like other Virginians, they were doubtless fiercely protective of their prerogatives as citizens, though no evidence indicates they were abnormally interested in politics.
It is fascinating, then, to find small details which indicate the impact that John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry had on every community in the South. John Brown’s audacity did, as the poet wrote, create “a crack in time itself.” The bucolic, rural life of the South would be gone, as young men in every community geared themselves, if not for war, at least for one cataclysmic battle
in which the minions of the evil Federal empire would be driven away, so the South could be left alone.
The Rev. A. G. Hawley, a Baptist minister, started and maintained a
military school in Waterfall which was attended by Smiths, Picketts and Foleys. And, in 1859, in a direct response to John Brown and the perceived threats to Southern sovereignty, The Prince William Rifles were assembled in Haymarket under the leadership of Dr. George S. Hamilton, a local physician. The company proceeded to drill on a regular basis, and soon was equipped with Springfield muskets and neat gray uniforms topped with a tall cap decorated with a pompom.
The young boys in Haymarket, swept up in martial fever, with wooden guns and uniforms of many colors, were “ready to meet the Yankees, and would gladly have marched to war with the Prince William Rifles.”
Uncle Randolph was an original volunteer with the Prince William Rifles. He was preparing for a conflict. He had a musket and a uniform. He had the will to fight. Perhaps at age twenty-one and still unmarried (and not engaged as far as we can tell) he was ready for an adventure. Ready to march off on a quest with his fellows, his cousins, his kin. Ready to see Washington D.C. or even New York City if they could drive them back that far. Ready to get away from the farm and its unending labor. Ready for the work of war. Ready for some
elbow room. He was the oldest son with seven siblings, five of them younger, in a household which was occupied by thirteen people, when you counted the foster children and afflicted Uncle John.
Uncle Randolph took a horse and, in obedience to orders, rode five miles to Haymarket, and drilled with his comrades. It was his duty. At home, he farmed the hills and hollows and, in moments of respite, looked down at Catharpin Run, which flowed gently east and in five or six miles emptied into another nondescript brook—the soon to be famous Bull Run.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’d known about Uncle Randolph all my life. After all, I was one of his namesakes. Named in his honor, and after my grandfather (Robert Randolph), and for my father’s older brother Randolph (who died of a ruptured appendix at age twenty-one). The heroic death of Civil War Randolph had unleashed an epidemic of Randolphs through five generations of descendants of the Hagley Smiths. There are, or have been, a dozen or so nephews and nieces who claim relationship
with Randolph in their name. I was, proudly, one of those Randolphs. With the appellation came the responsibility to learn as much as possible about the original Randolph. Thus motivated in my survivorship, I set about my search.
In college I had studied history in depth with Professors LaFerriere,
Holmes, and Rulifson, each of whom is unknown in the wider circle of historians. LaFerriere was noticeable for his energy, Rulifson for inviting me onto the golf team so he wouldn’t have to play alone at away matches, and Holmes for his persistent interest in a Trappist monk who had explored in Oregon. It had unfortunately been over thirty years since I sat at the feet of these learneds and
I couldn’t recall much about the historical method, or if they had taught it. They had expected me to go on to graduate school and continue their good works at, at least, the Junior College level. Disappointing them then, as I have done to many since, I responded to the call of my Southern heritage and enlisted in the United States Air Force becoming the first Randolph to be an officer. This was done at age twenty-one, which given the history of the Randolphs, seemed risky business. The tombstone in the Antioch cemetery was a constant
reminder and guided me away from the infantry; my father’s description of my grandmother hitting herself on the head, dropping the telephone to the floor on receiving the call that a second Randolph had died early (of the aforementioned burst appendix) was a motive for paying close attention to my health.
I hadn’t really studied history, never researched it, only read it and
regurgitated it to my trinity of mentors. In retrospect, I wondered why I, as a senior honors student, hadn’t been required by Dr. Holmes to research and write something based on original sources. He didn’t; just went on in our seminar in his jolly way, an affected attempt at joie de vivre, with frequent diversions about his research into the life of the ubiquitous Brother Ewing: Enterprising Trappist. (Now that I think about it, it may have been John Ewing: Enterprising Trapper. The Trappist thing may have been a college witticism I devised
for my seminar mates). But this illustrates the trouble with history, doesn’t it? You can’t remember it unless it’s written down and, even then, the written word is inexact, and subject to interpretation. And when there is very little written down, how do you write a history?
Uncle Randolph’s Civil War diary is very short on detail and description. It is compelling because of the hints it gives about an experience that is described more vividly and in more detail in many other Civil War diaries and letters. Yet I was driven by ego, more or less, to amplify, to elucidate this particular diary, to make it into a real history because, and you can see this coming by now, it is the only known Civil War diary written by a Randolph Smith
to whom I am related.
Douglas Southall Freeman, the venerated historian of the Civil War,
writing about the thousands of books written about that conflict says that many are “memorials to the dead...little more than ancestor worship and have scant historical value.” This story will clearly fall into that category—at least the historical value jibe. The Lord and D. S. Freeman know that the world does not need another Civil War book with, I am told, at least one title a day printed since the end of that great conflict. However, duty requires the one of the surviving Randolphs to make the attempt to walk beside his Uncle during the
last year of his life and make a best effort at discovering his experience.
Relatively few soldiers kept journals. Uncle Randolph does not tell us why he kept his except to say in his opening entry,

“ Having concluded to keep a journal this year, I will commence today, it being the first opportunity I have had of writing since I left home.”

Professor Emory Thomas relates that in writing about that dashing calvary officer J.E.B. Stuart he “was determined to ‘get inside of’ Stuart but that the best he could do was “get beside” him. This became my goal, recognizing the difficulties presented by history, and armed at the outset with an imprecise journal and Aunt Bessie’s muddled meanderings. I wanted to get beside Uncle Randolph, search for him, explore his diary, get acquainted with him and his
fellows, and put his short military career into historical context. If I could do this and, in consequence, write it down coherently, I would at least have done my duty as a Randolph.

Comments

[RS]

I continue to learn more and more about our history. Keep it coming. RS

[Lew Smith]

A younger son, Augustine, moved to Faquier County where he was a planter and an Episcopalian.
Like John Kerry, he married well -- into the Marshall family, which also came from Westmoreland. I believe I am correct that he was the uncle by marriage of John Marshall, the chief justice, and lived on Thomas Marshall's Oak Hill plantation in a house called "The Grove," which is still standing. The county is Fauquier.


In 1876 my great grandfather, James Philip Smith built a nice new house to the east of the village on a farm known as Hagley.
Actually, the house that J.P. Smith built with his ill-gotten Union greenbacks was on the northwest end -- the farm that borders my place (down the hill from the barn) where Aunt Flora lived. You took a picture of it. It's called Twin Oaks, and I believe that's the original name. When it caught fire in the 1920s, they moved into the storehouse (that lime green shack I own on Waterfall Road) while the repairs were made, according to Aunt Jean.

Both Twin Oaks and my place were originally parts of the Mt. Atlas property.

The "Old Hagley" house was probably built in the 1700s and had been torn down long before I remember -- probably soon after Grandpa built "New" Hagley. You could see the foundation of the old house and where the spring and icehouse were. Dad said he remembered the house being very drafty, with two big rooms downstairs and a loft upstairs. The barn near Old Hagley (built later) was still standing until it was torn down for the subdivision in the '60s.

Before that it had been a grist mill. Waterfall was never even a village, although my great
Aunt Bessie, Uncle Randolph’s niece, refers to it as such in her family history."

In its hayday, I think it might have passed the "village" test. There were actually two mills in Waterfall at one time, a store, saloon and a bunch of houses/shacks that are long since gone. Rough place, according to Grandpa. (I have some stuff on mills of Prince William that I'll send you

[peggy gardner]

Enjoyed reading all of this, but the Gossom or Waterfall house is not the millers house.
I think the old store building that lewis owns with all the junk outside was the millers house for awhile, Waterfall house was not built until 1887. I asked Ruth and she said it was never a millers house. or was the picutre of the house just in the writing and not referred as miller house.

[Jill Wilson]

William,
Very nice article on your family. Are you online with the Mosby Rangers at Yahoo.com? They would really like this to see this. Do you mind if I post it online with them?

[Linda]

I was looking for something on Mt. Atlas and was thrilled to find your article! If you have any further info, I would love to see ANYTHING on that old house! Thanks. L

[M Lyne]

Do you happen to have a photo of your great grandfather Phillip?

[M Lyne]

Are you the Philip R Smith of the newsletter, born about 1926? And do you have Randolph's letters to his sisters?

[Michele]

I very much enjoyed reading about your family and the history of the area. My g-g-granfather was also a Mosby Ranger and my family also has deep roots in the Catharpin area.

[Carole Thornhill]

Hi! I am the granddaughter of Pauline Padgett, Who was the daughter of Bess & Deedee. I grew up playing in the "Old House" , when I came to stay with "Murker" (that is what we called, Pauline). My Father is Philip Thornhill, Pauline's son. She had the house directly across from the Old house.

[Carole]

BTW...The plantation house was purchased I believe somewhere in the number for about 475.00 or something like that, because the taxes were not paid on it(previously) WHAT A STEAL!, and that is how my Great grandfather was able to purchase it. So I have been told.

[Jay Knight]

I am the son of Norma Wayland Knight and grandson of Florence Lorene Gossom (Neenie), who was also sister of Pauline Gossom Padgett and Richard Benoni Gossom, and daughter of Bess & DeeDee. I recently came across a picture that had the Gossoms together. There they were...DeeDee and Bess, Richard B. Gossom (Uncle Bookie), his wife Aunt Alice and their children Phillip and ?, Florence (Neenie) and her husband Robert Jackson Wayland (my "Grandpap"), and Pauline (Aunt Polly) and her husband Barton Padgett (Uncle Barton). It was really neat.
I was always told That we had a great grandfather that served with Mosby in the Civil War and as I did a family tree, I suspected that it was James Phillip Smith because Mom always told my it was on the Pickett side of the family tree. I heard that Neenie had his uniform for years but donated it to the battlefield museum.