Union Church

Union Church. "The Congregation Was Not Long in Dispersing". , The Battle of Cross Keys was fought on a Sunday. When the battle began, Confederate soldiers were inside Union Church, the house of worship that stood on the site of the present structure. A southern cavalry scout wrote, "At the fire of the first gun at Cross Keys I…galloped up to the little church...As I dismounted and was about to enter the door, a shell came hissing over the church, and burst a short way beyond. The congregation was not long in dispersing.", As the Federals advanced into this area and the Confederates pulled back, newspaper reporter Charles H. Webb rode up. "I arrived at the Brick Church, near where the roads converge... A cannon-ball came bursting through the graveyard fence, a few feet to the left of where I stood. Of course I took the other road! But as I passed beyond the other corner of the church another ball came tearing through the limb of the trees, nearly over my head." Webb moved up the road for safety. When he returned a half hour later, the building had been tuned into a battlefield hospital. "Some fifteen of twenty of our wounded had been brought in to receive the attention of the surgeons.", By the time the fighting ended that night, the church was packed with wounded. "The groaning and misery of the crowds brought in," Union Col. Albert Tracy recalled, "attested full sadly the destruction wrought both of limb and body.", A visitor shortly after the war said that the church's interior "was a ruin, and its walls showed many scars of heavy shot and shell." It was rebuilt after the war. After a fire in 2003, major renovations were made to the building. That repair work was funded in part by a grant from the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation., This marker was made possible through the generosity of the Cross Keys-Mill Creek Ruritan Club, (captions) , Union Church. From Conquering the Valley by Robert K. Krick , New York Times correspondent Charles H. Webb.