Battle of Chancellorsville • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies
The Fairview and Ordeal of the Wounded wayside markers are next to each other on the Fairview loop trail, which begins at Stop 10 on the Battle of Chancellorsville Auto Tour.
The “Fairview” (left) and “Ordeal of the Wounded” (right) wayside markers.
Fairview wayside marker
Text from the marker:
Fairview
Just ahead of you stood a story-and-a-half log house known as Fairview. This was originally a Chancellor home, but during the Civil War James Moxley and his family occupied it. Moxley was overseer of Frances Chancellor’s 20 slaves. Moxley likely managed most aspects of physical work on the Chancellors’ 800-acre farm – dispatching slaves to daily assignments, maintaining buildings and machines, and ensuring that crops made it to market. Moxley’s status as overseer exempted him from service in the Confederate military.
As the Union army approached Chancellorsville, the Moxleys fled to Catharine Furnace, two miles to the south. Then Gen. Alpheus Williams turned the house into his headquarters; artillerymen built more than 40 lunettes, a type of fortification, in the fields nearby. On May 3, 1863, the farm became the focal point of one of the most intense artillery duels of the war. Though riddled, Fairview survived the battle but burned down just weeks later – one of three Chancellor houses lost during the war.
Ordeal of the Wounded wayside marker
Ordeal of the Wounded
After the May 3, 1863, fighting at Chancellorsville, the Confederates gathered up 500 wounded Union soldiers and brought them here to Fairview. For more than a week the helpless men lay in the yard around the house, receiving little medical care, exposed to the wind and the rain, lying in the mud. Wounds festered and became infected. Insects attracted by piles of corpses nearby inflicted painful bites. Dozens of soldiers died; many others prayed that they might be taken too.
A team of Union surgeons arrived at Fairview on May 5. Using the door of the house as an operating table, they commenced treating wounded arms and limbs – often with amputation, an average of four per hour. Although the surgeons toiled for a week, many patients still received no attention. Finally on May 12, Union ambulances arrived under a flag of truce to carry the survivors to hospitals north of the Rappahannock.
There was no food, no nursing, and no medicine to dull the pain of those who were in torture. The majority were crowded together, had no covering tents, and many very little in the way of blankets to lie on or for cover. All were so weak they could scarcely move hand or foot.
Corporal Rice C. Bull, 123rd New York
Location of the Markers
The markers are next to each other on the Fairview loop trail. They are about 600 feet from the trailhead. (38°18’27.3″N 77°38’32.4″W)
(go to the main Stop 10 page)
(go to the main Chancellorsville Battlefield Auto Tour page)