Christ Episcopal Church

Christ Episcopal Church. Vestrymen Arrested. , Early on Sunday morning, June 28, 1863, 5,000 of Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart's cavalrymen rode into Rockville as they trailed Gen. Robert E. Lee's army through Maryland into Pennsylvania. Here in Rockville they arrested Union supporters. They sought merchant John H. Higgins at his house, but he already had left for Christ Episcopal Church (across the street). His wife, Dora Higgins, ran to the church to warn him and the other vestrymen gathered there., Other captured Unionists were held in the courthouse one block away. Dora Higgins wrote that "at six [P.M.] … [Stuart's men] carried their prisoners off, compelling Capt. Vinson, tho' too ill to stand alone, to mount a horse, at the point of their sabers, and go with them.", Higgins then returned to the church to tell the vestrymen it was safe to leave, but a Confederate rear guard followed her and arrested them. The prisoners included her husband, Judge Richard Johns Bowie, Lawrence Dodson, Richard Williams, minister John DeSellum, provost marshal Mortimer Moulden, and postmaster Thomas Bailey. When local secessionists told her that they had taken no role in the arrests, she replied "I know positively that not one of you could have any influence today, as Gen. Stuart had a written list of all the Union men's names. But someone here furnished that list.", [Captions:] , Arrested by Stuart, Judge Richard Johns Bowie was the most respected public figure in 19th-century Rockville., William Veirs Bouic, Sr., town commissioner, lawyer, state's attorney, and leader of secessionist movement in Montgomery County., Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Dawson, wife of arrested lawyer Lawrence Dawson.