Woodstock-Execution and Burning - Woodstock VA - Battlefields on Waymarking.com

TEXT from HISTORICAL Marker attached: Woodstock-Execution and “the Burning”— 1864 Valley Campaign —In the midst of the 1864 Valley Campaign, Woodstock bore witness to the horrors of war. Plagued by raiding parties of Confederate partisan rangers, guerrillas and bushwhackers, Union General Philip H. Sheridan issued orders by mid-August to execute anyone captured wearing civilian clothes and carrying a weapon.

While pursuing Jubal Early's retreating Confederate army from the Battle of Fisher's Hill, elements of Brigadier Gen. George A. Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade entered Woodstock on September 23, and captured 39 year-old Davy Getz, armed with a squirrel rifle, in the woods near town.

A rope was tied around Getz's neck, and he was made to walk behind Custer's headquarters wagon as it moved south along the Valley Turnpike (U.S. Route 11). Several men of the town, including merchant Adolph Heller, followed and pleaded with Custer that Getz had the mind of a child and did not know what he was doing. The pleas to the young brigadier fell on deaf ears. Finally, Heller admonished Custer saying, "You will have to sleep in a bloody grave for this." Getz was executed near Dayton in Rockingham County on October 2, 1864.

Five days later, Federal Troops reentered the town and began laying waste as part of the infamous "Burnings." A portion of Col. Thomas Devin's Brigade of the 1st U.S. Cavalry Division, the 19th New York Cavalry, destroyed the railroad depot, warehouses, a locomotive and three boxcars on the siding. Steady winds came up and soon ignited fires in barns and haystacks on the outskirts of town. Not intending to fire those particular properties, two Union regiments dismounted and assisted in extinguishing the flames.

That evening Sheridan wrote Gen. Ulysses Grant from Woodstock reporting that the destruction of the Valley had reached from mountain to mountain in Augusta County to the south, and would continue the next day to Strasburg in the north.

From WIKIPEDIA in part: Woodstock, Virginia-Civil War Era-Confederate military units raised in Woodstock included Company F (the Muhlenberg Rifles) of the 10th Virginia Infantry (of whom 71% had German surnames) as well as Company C of the 33rd Virginia Infantry, part of the Stonewall Brigade led by Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. While the area had an active Confederate population, it also was home to many reluctant secessionists, Unionists and families religiously opposed to slavery and war (Mennonites, German Dunkards.) In addition, traditional enmity between the slavery-based plantation society in eastern Virginia and the small farm populations over the rugged Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains, where slavery was not as predominant an economic institution, meant that allegiances in the Shenandoah Valley and western Virginia were often divided. Many of German descent in the Shenandoah Valley were generally or religiously opposed to slavery, even as others with German ethnicity served in the Confederate Army.

The Civil War left no serious visible scars on the town, although there was partisan activity and retaliation. A few buildings were destroyed, notably the railroad depot and some warehouses along with a locomotive and some rolling stock. No major battles were fought in the immediate vicinity of the town, although skirmishes and large troop movements were not uncommon. Recorded skirmishes in Woodstock were May 18 and 21, 1862; June 2, 1862; February 26, 1863; November 16, 1863; September 23, 1864; and March 14, 1865. Various homes were used from time to time as staff headquarters by both sides, and as the occasional military hospital. General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson made Woodstock his headquarters during part of his Valley Campaign in spring 1962, using the small brick law office near the courthouse. Union General Phil Sheridan sent a famous telegraph message from Woodstock during his own Valley campaign in 1864, during which his army destroyed anything of military value to the Confederates, stating “I have destroyed over 2,000 barns filled with wheat, burned over 70 mills filled with grain and flour. I have made the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia so bare that a crow flying over it would have to carry its knapsack.

Name of Battle: Skirmish at Woodstock Name of War: U.S. Civil War Date(s) of Battle (Beginning): 09/23/1864 Entrance Fee: Not Listed Parking: Not Listed Date of Battle (End): Not listed

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