From Home to Hospital

From Home to Hospital. Suffering in the Warren House. The Civil War brought trauma and pain to this stately home, built in 1856. Before the conflict began, Edward T.H. Warren, his wife, Virginia Watson Magruder, and their three children, Elizabeth, James, and Virginia resided here. With them, lived Warren's mother Harriet, his grandmother, his sister, as well as Virginia's two sisters., The 1860 census records indicate that this house was also home to eight enslaved persons owned by the Warrens. They would have likely been working around the house, but still treated as property. Three of these individuals are named in a letter between the Warrens: Martha Ann, Fanny, and Bill. Their ages ranged from 6 to 17 years old and it is assumed that four of the eight of them were a family., Edward Warren was active in the local militia, and joined the 10th Virginia Infantry when the war broke out. He led his regiment, and at times a brigade, through some of the most savage battles of the war. At the Battle of the Wilderness, Va., on May 5, 1864, he was shot seven times and died at age 34., After the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the General Hospital down the street overflowed with wounded, and some were brought to the Warren house. The home's most famous patient, 19-year-old artillery Maj. Joseph Latimer, died in the house on August 1, 1863, after gangrene set in following an arm amputation., Many Confederate hospital records were lost at the end of the war. Today, it may never be known exactly how many soldiers received care at the house, and how many enslaved individuals and women worked here to save their lives., (captions) , Maj. Joseph Latimer was known as the "Boy Major" due to his young age. He suffered a mortal wound on Gettysburg's Benner's Hill, and is also buried at Wood Cemetery. (Courtesy Virginia Military Institute) , A late-19th-century photo of the Warren home, much as it would have appeared during the Civil War. - Courtesy Rocktown History , Col. Edward Warren was brought to Harrisonburg's Woodbine Cemetery after his 1864 death.Courtesy Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library