3rd Winchester • Tour the Battlefield • Battle Maps • Battle Facts • The Armies
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Red Bud Run • Star Fort • Fort Collier • Rutherford’s Farm
Stephenson Depot • National Cemetery • Confederate Cemetery
The “Hackwood House” wayside marker is about 0.7 mile south of the Redbud Road trailhead on the walking tour for the Civil War Trust’s Third Winchester battlefield site. (see map below) Hackwood House and the land immediately around it is privately owned – please respect the owners by not trespassing.
From the marker:
The Third Battle of Winchester
Hackwood House
Prominent Virginian John Smith was charged with guarding prisoners of war held in Winchester during the Revolutionary War. He purportedly had this stately home (in front of you) built by Hessian and British prisoners around 1777.
During the fighting at the Third Battle of Winchester, Gordon’s Confederate troops formed around the Hackwood House and its outbuildings. At 3 p.m. the Union Eighth, Sixth, and Nineteenth Corps attacked. Col. Thoburn of the Eighth Corps described what happened next: “A succession of stone walls gave excellent cover to the enemy, and from behind them we received a very severe musketry fire…but we steadily advanced and beat back the enemy.”
When it was over, recalled James Franklin Fitts of the 12th Connecticut, “the Rebel dead lay thickly in the fields beyond, and were piled upon each other in the yard of a large stone mansion…A ghastly row of gray-clad corpses lay along a wall, behind which some Rebel brigade had evidently found shelter; and the fields and hillsides as far as Winchester were dotted with the fallen.”
From the caption to the portrait photo:
Confederate General John B. Gordon’s division fought a valiant but unsuccessful fight trying to stop the Union Eighth Corps. (image courtesy of the Library of Congress)
From the caption to the inset photo:
The fighting on September 19 left the house partially demolished. Various owners have worked to restore it to its original grandeur throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, Period sketch (in background) by J.E. Taylor, courtesy of the Western Reserve Historical Society)
The Hackwood House wayside marker is along the walking tour for the Civil War Trust’s Third Winchester battlefield site about 0.7 mile from the Redbud Road trailhead. The trailhead can be reached from the Interstate 81 interchange with U.S. 11 north of Winchester. At the light immediately to the east of the interchange take Redbud Road (County Road 661) south 0.85 mile. Parking for the trailhead is on the south side of Redbud Road. (39°12’07.4″N 78°07’41.7″W)