Mass grave found in Colonial Williamsburg
Work underway to recover remains from 1862 Civil War battle
WILLIAMSBURG — A mass grave associated with the May 1862 Battle of Williamsburg was found by archaeologists during their excavations at the Powder Magazine in Colonial Williamsburg.
Archaeologists don’t know how many individual remains are in the grave, or to whom they might belong. But Jack Gary, director of archaeology for The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, said the discovery “is very important, and it will be really exciting when we find out details about the human remains that were casualties of the (May 5) battle.”
Gary said it’s too early to tell whether they were Union or Confederate soldiers or civilians. “Those identifications will come later. Our goal is to try to understand as much as we can about these individuals.”
Excavation of the grave site is underway, and Gary said he believes it may take two to three more weeks before the site work is completed.
The battle, part of the Civil War’s Peninsula Campaign, was fought between the armies of Union Gen. George B. McClellan and Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. The action focused around Fort Magruder and a line of Confederate redoubts about 2 miles east of Williamsburg, nearly stretching from the James to the York rivers.
The Confederate army was retreating from Yorktown and was caught by the advance guard of Union army that was moving toward Richmond. The battle resulted in nearly 4,000 killed, wounded or captured from the two armies.
Several experts on the battle, including Will Molineux, a retired Daily Press editor and local historian who has worked for several years researching the reinterment of Civil War soldiers to cemeteries at Bruton Parish Church and Cedar Grove in Williamsburg, said “most of the remains are most likely Confederate soldiers because with the Union occupation of the city after the battle, Union remains were collected and
ultimately buried at the cemetery in Yorktown.”
Carson O. Hudson, the preeminent authority on the Battle of Williamsburg, wrote in his book, “Civil War Williamsburg” about the Williamsburg Baptist Church — beside the Powder Magazine — being used as a hospital during and after the battle. The church also was known as Zion Baptist Church prior to 1856 when a sanctuary was constructed.
“The Confederates who died in this church,” he penned, “were buried in large square pits on the west side of the building” adjacent to the Powder Magazine.
The Powder Magazine is one of the 89 surviving 18th century structures in Colonial Williamsburg’s historic area. Built in 1715, it was originally used as a storehouse for military supplies and equipment.
The mass grave excavation site is within the reconstructed brick walls around the Magazine. The original walls were taken down in the 1850s and reconstructed in the 1930s. The archaeological location is on the side of the magazine adjacent to the church, a few dozen yards away.
Work is in the early stages to recover the skeletal remains, Gary said. “We got our (burial) permit in early January from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources that allowed recovery of the remains, an anthropological analysis, extraction of DNA and ultimately the reinterments.”
Once the remains have been recovered, they will be transported to the Institute for Historical Biology Lab within the anthropology department at William & Mary. The remains of one unknown individual are already at the lab after being uncovered during earlier archaeology work, Gary said.
Ultimately, a decision must be made regarding reinterment of the bones, Gary said. That will come later, after all the efforts are made to get as much information as is possible from the uncovered bones.
“We must identify the stakeholders and determine the best way, the most respectful way, we can handle the burials,” Gary said.
The Powder Magazine was important in the Civil War as well as before and during the American Revolution. In 1861, Confederate forces used the Magazine to store ordinance.
Archaeological work at the Magazine began in July 2021 in the courtyard between the building and the protective wall that surrounds it. The effort is tied with the work of Colonial Williamsburg’s Department of Architectural Preservation, which has been examining the building’s interior with a goal to restore the Magazine to its 18th century appearance.
The restoration of the Magazine is planned to be completed by 2025 — the 250th anniversary of the actions of Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s last royal governor, to steal the powder in 1775. The so-called Gunpowder Incident was one of many that pushed Virginia toward active revolt against British rule.
Among the thousands of artifacts also uncovered are those that provide evidence of military activity in the colonial period.
“We have found artifacts connected with Union troops, including minié balls for rifles that were only used by Union forces,” Gary said.
However, one of the many questions to come from the discovery of the mass grave was why was it not found earlier. Why now — 161 years after the battle?
Gary suggests that it was simply overlooked when some of the pits were opened and soldier’s bodies “removed to be buried in consecrated ground.” Earlier archaeological work in the 1930s at the Magazine also apparently missed it. Most recent examination of adjacent land where Market House is now located also did not find any mass graves because it was the site of the Baptist Church and not the green area between the church and Magazine, where the “hastily dug” Civil War burial pits were located.
Molineux, during his research, found a letter to the Richmond Times published Dec. 4, 1892, from Isabella Thompson Sully. The letter gives details of the efforts to remove “Confederate casualties” from the burial pits adjacent to the Baptist Church to consecrated ground.
Sully was in Williamsburg at the time of the battle, he explained, and in that letter 30 years later wrote of experiencing “scenes of horror and confusion.” Sully wrote, “every place (was) filled with the dead, dying or wounded.”
Sully visited homes and public buildings and the Baptist Church hospital to see the wounded. As she visited Confederate patients she promised the seriously injured “faithfully that, so far as I could accomplish it, they would have (a) Christian burial and that if I lived to see the end of the war, I would have their bones placed in consecrated ground.”
Sometime after the war — no one has been able to find the exact date, Molineux said — Sully made sure the pits were opened and bodies moved to a site within the graveyard of Bruton Parish Church. Today, there is a 6-foot granite shaft on a 3-foot base, erected in 1893, marking the burial site mound.
There is also a plaque on the wall of the church sanctuary that recognizes the Confederate soldiers who died in the Battle of Williamsburg.