Ellwood - Home and Workplace

Ellwood - Home and Workplace. The Battle of the Wilderness. Today only the main house remains, but Ellwood once stood at the center of a plantation that sprawled across 5,000 acres, one of the largest in the region. Outbuildings stood clustered around the main house: a kitchen, smokehouse, dairy, barns, and unadorned cabins for the enslaved people who lived here. The place resembled more a working village than a simple home. Before the Civil War, it's unlikely that the white residents ever amounted to more than 15 percent of Ellwood's population. , ,br> For two centuries, the demands of the fields governed life here, a predictable rhythm disrupted only by war. After the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville, Ellwood became a hospital. In 1864 it became the most prominent landmark on the Wilderness battlefield, an immense assembly area for Union troops. War transformed life here. The enslaved went free. Ellwood's owners adapted to a new system of labor and steadily sold off land. Still, the place remained a working farm in private ownership until the 1970's., (captions) , A view of Ellwood, taken from the north in 1866. At left was the ice house, and at right what were likely two slave cabins. Only the main house still stands., William Jones owned the plantation and built Ellwood's main house in the 1790s., This wartome sketch shows the land between Wilderness Tavern (left) and Ellwood (right), with masses of Union troops in the fields around Ellwood.