PURDY’S FARM
Fort Schneider was located on the land of James S. Purdy, a northern man who was one of four who voted in his precinct against Virginia’s Ordinance of Secession.[4] Purdy’s family and property suffered during the war due to the strategic location of his 318-acre farm. Purdy described his losses in a claim filed with the Southern Claims Commission. Purdy stated that at the beginning of the war, he furnished Union General Mansfield, the U.S. Provost Marshall at Alexandria, and the Captain of nearby cavalry pickets with information on the movement of Confederate soldiers. Knowing that Purdy was for the Union, the Confederates searched his house and tried to capture him but he escaped to Washington. He was threatened that if caught he would be killed rather than taken to Richmond.
After the Battle of First Manassas/Bull Run, Purdy took an officer to Washington (and his horses were impressed to carry the wounded) but he was refused a pass to return home. He was absent from his family for 3 1/2 months during which time Confederates seized all of his personal property they could lay their hands on by order of Confederate authorities. Purdy and his family were in Washington during the winters of 1861 and 1862 since his house was then outside Union lines. A few days before Christmas 1861, the 4th New York cavalry burned one of his houses down because they said it made a hiding place for the enemy and could shelter enemy scouts. Upon his family’s return, Purdy repaired another dwelling that had been fired by not destroyed. After the Battle of Second Manassas/Bull Run, his house was filled with wounded soldiers most of the time. He, his wife, and daughter nursed the wounded.
Prior to encampment and construction of the fort on the farm, the property was used for parade drilling, driving cattle and horses to water, making roads in every direction, and cutting many ditches (estimated to have been a mile of ditches). When within the Union lines, the farm was almost constantly occupied by government trains (probably wagons and mules) and cattle. Purdy’s fences were daily torn down by passing troops and teams and also used for fuel. Portions of his house were seized by U.S. officers, during the presence of the family, for their own use.
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