Ellwood Manor

The Georgian house at Ellwood was completed around 1790 by William Jones on land once granted to Governor Alexander Spotswood. By 1860, J. Horace Lacy owned the plantation—and 249 enslaved people who worked the fields, mills, and forges across nearly 49,000 acres. Most labored as field hands or house servants, though Lacy also employed skilled tradesmen: millers, carpenters, blacksmiths. Little physical evidence remains to show where they lived.

When the Civil War came, both armies needed Ellwood. Confederate forces used it as headquarters and hospital after Chancellorsville in 1863. Chaplain Beverly Tucker Lacy—J. Horace's brother, who had served as General Stonewall Jackson's chaplain—buried the general's amputated arm in the Jones-Lacy family cemetery after a friendly fire incident that ultimately led to Jackson's death. Before the Battle of the Wilderness the following year, Union generals Gouverneur K. Warren and Ambrose Burnside used Ellwood as headquarters. It later served as a Union hospital during the drive to Richmond.

By the war's end, both Ellwood and Chatham were desolate and severely damaged. Ellwood was essentially abandoned for eight years, though graves still dotted the grounds. In 1872, the Lacys sold Chatham to pay taxes but kept Ellwood, where they would live for the next thirty-five years. Betty Lacy helped found the Ladies Memorial Association of Fredericksburg, establishing the Confederate Cemetery. In 1903, a monument was erected to mark the location of Jackson's arm—still the only marked grave in the family cemetery.

After Betty Lacy died in 1907, Indiana University law professor Hugh Evander Willis acquired the property. His family held it until donating it to the National Park Service in 1977. Ellwood became the only structure surviving from the Battle of the Wilderness, now part of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The house is open weekends and holidays from May through October—quiet grounds where an arm lies buried under stone, the sole marked grave among the unmarked.