Another Civil War Woman

(I know these posts don't actually generate a huge amount of comments, something every good psychotic blogger hopes for, but I do find facts about women in history interesting, and these things I'm learning were not in any Civics class I took. So I hope that even though we are not talking about poop, you will still read and enjoy. At the very least you can think, "Gee whiz, I'm glad that wasn't me!" Ok, disclaimer is over.) Jacob and I went out to the Manassas Battlefield today. He was whining and rubbing his eyes, tripping all over himself, and finding trivial things like stale Saltine crackers seriously offensive, so I loaded him up in the car to get him to fall asleep. He hates just to "go on a drive", as he knows that means, "Take a nap", so he always demands a destination. I vaguely told him, "Manassas. It's a battlefield," mainly just to shut him up. We have to travel mostly by freeway towards Manassas, so I figured 10 minutes on the freeway, he'd be out, and I could turn around and go home and blog. Well, the little booger stayed awake the ENTIRE 40 minute drive, so once we got there I thought, "Hmm. We're here. Might as well get out and wear this crazy child out." We did, and we actually had a great time. Jacob was completely enthralled with the cannons on the battlefield, as well as the miniature replicas in the museum shop. We ran around in the heat for an hour or so, he got a miniature Abraham Lincoln from the gift shop, (which, for some inexplicable reason, he thinks is totally cool) and he fell asleep on the way home and is blissfully dreaming about soldiers as we speak (or blog, I guess is a better word!). But I learned about this woman, one Judith Henry, today. Her farm was on the land where the first Battle of Bull Run was fought, and her family was in the farmhouse when the fighting began. They fled from the house, and tried to take her with them, but she, being 92 years old, or something like that, refused to leave her home. As one might expect, she did not survive the battle. Her home was occupied by sharp shooters (I can't remember if they were Confederate or Union), and she was killed by a bullet shot into the house, one intended for the soldiers. But what interested me most is that she is buried on the battlefield itself, in a small cemetary surrounded by a small gate. I don't know how many men died at both the First and the Second Battles of Bull Run, but no graves mark the battlefield for any man. A makeshift monument built from brick and Parrot Rifle shells, yes. A huge, austentatious statue of Stonewall Jackson, yes (we are in Virginia, after all!). But no graves, except for that of Judith Henry and her family. A woman remembered when the men who died on her farm are not.