Bluemont: A Civil War Chronicle

Long-time Bluemonter Henry Plaster in front of his barn with the Civil War cavalry pistol used by his Grandfather

Henry Plaster, a Bluemont resident whose family reaches back to the Civil War era in the village, presented his year-by-year chronicle of the Civil War in Bluemont to the Friends of Bluemont 2008 Annual Meeting.  The meeting was held Sunday November 2, 2008 2:00-5:00 PM, at the Stable at Bluemont Vineyards, 18755 Foggy Bottom Road, Bluemont, VA 20135.  The view of the Loudoun Valley from the Stable is magnificent.  Mr. Plaster’s chronicle, compiled in 2006, is in the Balch Library in Leesburg.

During the Civil War (1861-1865), Snickers Gap was a strategic pathway between the much-fought-over Shenandoah Valley and Union-occupied Northern Virginia.  Both opposing armies used Snickers Gap to travel back and forth.

In 1862 the village of Snickersville, now Bluemont, saw an engagement between Union cavalry of the Army of the Potomac and Colonel John Singleton Mosby’s irregular forces.  In 1964 General Philip Sheridan ordered Major General Wesley Merritt to make Snickersville his “point of concentration” and scorch the earth east of the Blue Ridge to stop the area from providing food and other support to Confederate troops.

Wrote George E. Plaster, M.D., Henry Plaster’s grandfather, in 1902:  “At the end the wreck was appalling. The farms adjacent were stripped of fences, barns were burned, all livestock was driven off, and means for providing for future wants were exhausted.  For miles around extended a fenceless, prairie-like plain.”