Jennie

As the battle raged around her home, our heroine risked her life to leave and join her family up the hill at the home of her sister, Georgia, who had just given birth. She was there with her mother and a young boy that her family had taken in as well.

For three days, the bullets flew, shattering the windows and thretening the lives of all inside of it. She spent her time there baking bread for the Union soldiers who had taken up residency there.

She took her loaf box and crouched in the kitchen behind the open door that led into the room where Georgia and the baby cowered on the bed. She figured that having the door to the home, plus the kitchen door, in front of her, that was twice the protection. It wasn't enough.

A bullet tore through both wooden doors and struck her directly below the left shoulder blade as she mixed biscuits for the Union army. A soldier from New York was the one to tell her family what had happened to her, and they knew that they needed better shelter. Her mother refused to leave her, so the soldier carried her lifeless body up th stairs of the house to the hole that had been torn through a brick wall by a shell, which they had widened so that the family could crawl through into the neighbor's area. They crept down the stairs of the neighbor's house, outside, and down into the basement, where her body was placed on a bed and covered over with a blanket while her mother finished baking that last batch of bread for the army.

Miles away, her sweetheart lay dying, a soldier for the Union named Jack Skelly. His childhood friend, John Wesley Culp, now a Confederate, was able to find him and console him before he passed. Jack gave Wesley a letter to bring home to his girl, which he promised that he would, as soon as he was able. However, Wesley was also mortally wounded before being able to deliver the message.

"What was her name?" the Union soldier asked as they huddled in the cellar.

"Her name was Mary Virginia," her mother replied. "But most of us called her Jennie."

Find the house where Jennie passed away, the only civilian casualty of this conflict. Now, cast your gaze south-ish across the parking lot to the cemetery, and go there. In the corner of the parking lot where the stone wall meets the chain-linked fence is a multi-sister tree. Respectfully hop over the wall and face the tree. About two feet to the right of the tree on top of the wall under a flat rock is Jennie's letterbox.

This is a very well-traveled area. Please be discrete, even taking the box to your car or elsewhere to stamp in and returning it later.

Thank you for honoring one of our nation's less-known war heroines.