The Hart Farm House

The Hart Farm House. . , Mary Hart, her four children, and a family slave watched nervously from the basement of this house as the Union army attacked across her farm on April 2, 1865. Bullets and artillery shells flew all around the dwelling during the battle. The victorious Federals rushed across the adjacent Confederate fortifications and planted a national flag here, behind the building., Some vengeful Union soldiers prepared to set the house on fire until an officer arrived and sent them away. Other troops battered down the door, prompting Mary to run upstairs and plead with them to spare her home. She informed the intruders that she and her husband were from Pennsylvania and loved the Union, an explanation that fell on deaf ears until another officer appeared and promised the distraught family their safety. Although the home suffered damage from the battle - repaired after the war - the Harts remained shaken but unharmed in their cellar the rest of the day., Charlotte Elizabeth McKay served as a Union nurse during the Petersburg Campaign and stayed in the area after the war to work with the Freedman's Bureau. She befriended Mary Hart and wrote of her wartime troubles:, "Mrs. Hart came from the North, and settled here a few years before the war. Her husband was conscripted in the rebel army, and she was left alone to care for her children nearly all the time. Imagine a Union woman living unprotected on a rebel line of fortifications!" , , Charlotte Elizabeth McKay