A Civil War Fight in Snickersville - Recalled by an Eyewitness
in 1924
February 14, 2010
On January 3, 1924, the Loudoun Mirror ran a remarkable
feature article, recounting a Civil War skirmishthat had taken
place in Snickersville on March 5, 1864. It was told through the
eyes of E. Copeland, M.D., of Round Hill who, as a Hillsborough
schoolboy, had encountered a contingent of the Union cavalry in
front of his father's house on the Purcellville Road.
The Loudoun Mirror headline read:
"Snickersville Fight as Eye Witness Saw It: Dr. Copeland
Relates a Thrilling Episode of the Civil War in Loudoun and
Corrects Some Errors."
Dr. Copeland, a Round Hill physician, wrote the story to correct
some of the "errors or omissions" he had spotted in
a then-recent article in "an Atlanta paper" by "my
old friend Thomas Osburn, now of Atlanta, Ga."
The editor of the Loudoun Mirror (who signs himself by
initials, A.B.W.), added a similar reminicsence: "As a boy
of nearly nine years he saw at Abingdon, Southwest Virginia, in
December 1864, a fight remarkably resembling, in many respects,
the affair at Snickersville of which Dr. Copeland so graphically
tells."
Names mentioned in the Copeland account include: his father,
Cravan A. Copeland, John W. Hammerley, Lieut.-Col. Elijah V. White,
Volney Purcell, Lieut. Jos. A. Gibson, Mason Alder, Fleet H. James,
and Henry H. Gregg.
The pencil markings at the exploits of Fleet H. James suggest
that he was very close to - perhaps a relative of - the Volney
Osburn family who preserved this newspaper account.
This page from the January 3, 1924 edition of the Loudoun Mirror
was made available through the generosity of Bud and Judy Anderson.
| Snickersville Fight as Eye Witness Saw It,
Loudoun Mirror, 1924 |
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