Crimea Mansion

Crimea Mansion. The Arrest of Ross Winans. , On May 11, 1861, Union Gen. Benjamin F. Butler's troops occupied the railroad depot southwest of Baltimore at Relay, where a spur of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's main line turned south to Washington. The seizure of Relay yielded a surprise triumph in the capture of the "Winans Artillery Gun," a rapid-fire steam-powered cannon invented by Ross Winans, before Confederate forces could move it to Harpers Ferry. Winans, a wealthy railroad pioneer well known for his Southern sympathies, often visited his son Thomas D. Winans here at Crimea Mansion., After Butler's men occupied Federal Hill in Baltimore on May 13, Maj. Benjamin Watson and 50 men from the 6th Massachusetts Infantry came here to arrest Ross Winans on Butler's orders. They ignored the painted logs - "Quaker Guns" or simulated cannons - that the younger Winans had deployed on the ridge below the estate to discourage Federal soldiers from entering the property. When a search of the mansion and grounds failed to locate the elder Winans, the soldiers camped on the property in the event that he should return. They cut down the orchard and burned the trees as firewood. The next day, soldiers arrested Winans at Relay as he returned here by train from an emergency session of Maryland's General Assembly held in Frederick. He was the first civilian arrested in Maryland during the Civil War.