The Burning Raid

The Burning Raid. A Peaceable Community Faces Fire. Here, you are in Quaker country. Just to the south was Mosby’s Confederacy, where Confederate supporters provided Col. John S. Mosby’s Partisan Rangers (43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry) With safe houses and supplies. Mosby’s quartermaster often targeted the Quaker farms around Goose Creek (today’s Lincoln) To help feed their many horses., On November 28, 1864, Union Gen. Wesley Merritt led 5,000 cavalryman from the Shenandoah Valley through Ashby‘s Gap and into the Loudon valley in response to Mosby's raids and attacks on Federal outpost and supply trains. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan ordered Merritt to burn mills, barns, stables, corn cribs, farm machinery, and crops in Loudon and Fauquier counties to carry off livestock and all men of military age., Merritt's men stormed through this area with torches on November 30 and December 1. A local Quaker girl, Carrie Taylor, wrote, "Word came ... the Yankees were coming and ... burning everything before them. ... [We] saw the snoke rising all around us, from our neighbors' barns, stockyards, and cornfields. It was too true. They had come to burn up everything." The war cost the Goose Creek Friends dearly in lost barns, crops, livestock, and farm equipment. After the war they worked together to restore their farm community to prosperity. Stories of the burning raid continue to be shared among the descendants of Civil War-era Fiends here., (sidebar) , Goose Creek Friends (Quakers) founded a thriving farm community here in the 1700s. Their first log meetinghouse is long gone. The ca. 1765 stone meetinghouse and cemetery are in front of you. Their 1818 "new" brick meetinghouse, the site of worship meetings and social gatherings, stands across the road to your left. Originally two stories high, after a 1943 windstorm damaged it, the meetinghouse was lowered to one story. Believing that the spirit of God is in everyone, the pacifist Quakers opposed slavery and taught black and white children together in the one-room brick schoolhouse across the road and behind the new meetinghouse. Several nearby Quaker dwellings and Samuel M. Janney's Springdale School for girls may have been Underground Railroad stations., The Friends' pacifism and antislavery beliefs fostered suspicion among non-Quakers, especially when the war came. Goose Creek Friends continued to transact Quaker business on both sides of the Potomac River. They also housed, fed, and cared for injured soldiers from both armies. Friends continue to worship here and endeavor to live according to the traditional Quaker testimonies of equality and peace., (captions) , Burning Raid November 28, December 1, 1864, Coolbrook Farm barn Courtesy Richard T. Gillespie The Taylor family barn survived the Burning Raid, but the Federals removed its contents and burned them., Samuel M. Janney (1801, 1880), by Lucien Powell , Courtesy Goose Creek Meeting Archive The Goose Creek Quaker educator and abolitionist was tried and acquitted in 1850 for "inciting slaves to revolt" through letters he wrote to local papers., Goose Creek Meeting House with members, 1880 Courtesy Goose Creek Meeting Archive