Towards the end
of the war the Yankees stormed across the state looking for "rebels"
to capture or kill. The Chapman family from Essex county hearing
these stories became very frightened about their 16 year old son,
William, that was living at home. One day there fears were realized.
A Yankee force descended on the farm. There was no time to hide
William in the barn. An old African American slave woman called
Mammy, that had been with the Chapman's for years quickly sat
down in the rocking chair on the back porch and pulled up her
dress and said. "Massa William, get under here right now
or those Yankees are sure' buff going to kill ya". When the
Yankees arrived several minutes latter all they found was Mammy
sitting on the porch snapping string beans and singing a song.
One thing that the Yankees loved
dearly to take were prize livestock and in particular horses.
The Eubanks of Prospect, near Gray's Point, when hearing the Yankees
were nearby, lead their prize horse upstairs and into a bedroom
where they hide him. After the Yankees had left in trying to get
the horse back downstairs, it threw a fit. So they left the horse
their fearing it might come through the ceiling. The horse stayed
in the upstairs room several days after which it was calmly lead
back down.
In order to keep Yankees from coming
onto his farm, captain Billy, owner or Hewick had his slaves cut
down cornstalks about the height of a rifle. When Yankees were
reported in the area the slaves would line up and with cornstalks
on their shoulders, march back and forth in front of the house.
From the road it appeared as if Hewick was occupied by a large
number of rebels. As a result the Yankees stayed away.
A widow lady that lived on Stingray
Point in Deltaville had two sons. One fought for the North the
other for the South. During the war the sons would come home from
time to time to see their mother. For fear of being captured they
created a hideout in some thick underbrush. So if the two boys
were at home and the Yankees came, the Confederate son would hide
and the Yankee son would go out and meet his comrades. The opposite
would happen if Confederates showed up.
P.T. Woodward a clerk at the Middlesex
County court house saved the county records by taking them to
a farm located on an island in the Dragon Swamp (located at the
head waters of the Piankatank River). There he buried them in
fodder. Although the Yankees did search the barn they didn't go
deep enough into the fodder to discover the boxes in which the
records were buried.
Another
place it is possible that Woodward hide records was in the cemetery
at Glebe Landing Baptist Church. Woodward may have hidden records
in several different places, some even as decoys.
Alexander
Fleet of Irvington remembers stories about how his family hid
the silverware in the pig pen.
Faced with a shortage
of weapons, the Confederacy had to come up with "creative"
ways of convincing Union Gunboats to stay away from the river
front farms and plantations. One of the solutions was the creation
of "Quaker Guns". Logs painted black with tar and set
up to look like cannons along the shore lines. This "method"
of defense was particularly successful along the shores of the
Potomac River.