Petersburg • East • Southeast • West • Monuments • Markers • Facts • Timeline
The Uprooted by War wayside marker is at Stop One on the Petersburg Eastern Front Auto Tour. It is along the west side of the walking trail just north of the Visitor Center.
The original marker has been updated with slightly altered text and graphics. The old version is also included for historical reference.
Text from the current marker:
Uprooted by War
Before you is the foundation of “Clermont,” the center of a 525-acre plantation where Josiah Jordan III’s family lived before the siege. Behind you and to your left were the quarters of twenty-two enslaved Black men, women, and children who lived and worked here. Presently, only the names of Fanny, James, Margaret, Abram, and Henry who were born between 1855 and 1862, are known.
In 1862, enslaved and free Black men began building earthworks around Petersburg. Going from your right and running behind you the earthworks split the Jordan property.
By the time the fighting arrived here on June 15, 1864, the Jordans had left. The destruction of the Jordan house during the war leaves us with little knowledge of this plantation and the people on it. No post-war family papers are known to exist. However, the Jordans returned to their destroyed house and chose to rebuild.
Clermont’s story played out in different ways after the war, with people uprooted in terms of loss, in terms of a new-found freedom, or both.
How have the events of history shaped your family’s story?
Caption to the background photo:
Jordan house in center background (two chimneys) and slave quarters foreground. Illustration by E. Forbes June 1864
Caption to the inset map:
US Army map detail of Jordan plantation, July 1864
Text from the original marker:
Uprooted by War
“Every tree, stump, and fence has disappeared… What was once verdant is now a wasteland of dust and dirt.”
– John Haley, 17th Maine Infantry
January 26, 1865
The gentle depression in front of you is the only vestige of the Josiah Jordon House. The house was dismantled by Union troops during the Siege of Petersburg.
War came to the Jordon farm in late 1862, when Confederate engineer Charles Dimmock laid out ten miles of defenses to protect Petersburg. Battery 5 of the “Dimmock Line” stood only yards from the Jordon House.
When Union and Confederate armies swarmed over this area in 1864, dozens of farmers like Jordan were uprooted, their homes damaged or destroyed, their woodlots cut, and their fields ravaged. The landscape sill bears the scars.
Caption to the drawing at left:
The Jordon House appears clearly in this lithograph of the June 15 attack on Battery 5
Caption to the photo at right:
The ruins of Edge Hill, five miles west of here, symbolized the fate of many Petersburg-area homes. It was the home of William Turnbull and served as Lee’s last headquarters during the campaign.
Location of the marker
The wayside marker is about 200 feet north of the Visitor Center on the west side of the Battery Five Trail. (37°14’39.5″N 77°21’25.1″W)