Civil War Encampments at Montpelier

General Samuel McGowan
Gen. McGowan commanded 1,500 troops that marched from Montpelier to Wilderness in early May 1864.

During the winter of 1863 and 1864, Montpelier was the location of a substantial set of winter encampments occupied by Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Lee's camps spread across Orange County, and the westernmost section of these camps, under the command of General Cademus Wilcox, was at Montpelier. In the spring of 2002, local relic hunters provided Montpelier archaeologists with the location of several of these camps. Many of these relic hunters allowed us to examine their collections, which allowed us to determine that one set of camps was occupied by General Samuel McGowan's South Carolina brigade.

Since that time, the Montpelier Archaeology Department has spent several years mapping in individual hut sites and to date has been able to locate and survey nine regimental camps and 12 company camps. In addition, we also excavated four huts sites within a camp occupied by General Samuel McGowan's South Carolinians. Then we were able to establish the form of architecture in the hut sites and the types of material goods the soldiers used to survive the harsh winters of 1863 and 1864.

In our investigations of these camps, the Montpelier Archaeology Department has been fortunate to engage the help and assistance of the local relic hunter community in both researching and protecting these valuable historic resources. To date, the camps at Montpelier are the only known set of encampments of their size and condition that are on protected land. In the spring of 2005, we opened an interpretive trail that leads through these camps and over to the Gilmore Farm.

This website provides details on the layout of camps and details on the huts based on the archaeological discoveries that we obtained during detailed excavation of several of the hut sites in the McGowan encampment. More detailed information is available on our downloadable Technical Reports.

Map of the 1864 distribution of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. The red start indicates the location of McGowan's Encampment. [Click picture for larger image.]	Map showing the interpretive trail that links one of the Civil War camps with the Gilmore Freedman's Farm. [Click picture for larger image.]

The excavations at the McGowan Encampments have provided similar results to the analysis of historical documents: