Touring the Jackson House Museum, in Lexington, Virginia

Dear Henry,

While in Lexington, Virginia, I stopped by the Jackson House Museum. Let me tell you all about it!

Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson was born on January 21, 1824, in what is now Clarksburg, West Virginia. His father and one sister died of typhoid while he was young, and his mother remarried in 1830. The new stepfather did not want responsibility for either Thomas or his sister, so his mother sent the children to live with their uncle in what is now Jackson's Mill, West Virginia. Growing up in a rural area, Jackson did not have many opportunities for traditional schooling and was primarily self-educated. However, despite Jackson's lack of formal education, he enrolled in West Point in 1842 and struggled through, graduating 17th in his class of 59 in 1846.  

Jackson deployed to Mexico almost immediately after graduation for the Mexican-American War. He participated in the battle of Chapultepec and the capture of Mexico City. When the war ended in 1848, General Jackson went on to serve in New York and Florida. He left his service with the US Army in 1851 to pursue a teaching career at the Virginia Military Institute and married Elinor Junket in 1853.

Tragedy struck 14 months later when Elinor and their unborn child died during childbirth. Devastated, Jackson took a sabbatical for two years from VMI to tour Europe and recover from his sadness.   

In 1857, Jackson married again to Mary Ann Morrison. Sadly, the couple lost their first child shortly after birth. However, in 1862, the couple gave birth to a healthy girl named Julia. The couple bought their house in Downtown Lexington, Virginia, a short distance from the Virginia Military Institute campus in 1858.

When Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861, Jackson accepted the rank of colonel in the newly formed Confederate Army and was promoted to General almost instantly.

Jackson earned the nickname "Stonewall" during the Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. General Jackson held his ground during the battle's mass confusion, and General Bernard E. Bee said, "Look, there is Jackson, standing like a stone wall." The nickname stuck, but Jackson wasn't a fan of it.

General Jackson made a name for himself with the Shenandoah Campaign in the spring of 1862 and cemented his reputation as one of the world's great generals. During this campaign, General Jackson defended western Virginia, preventing Union troops from taking Richmond (the Confederate capital) with an army one-fifth the size.

That summer, General Jackson joined Confederate General Robert E. Lee's troops, and the pair proceeded to further the Southern cause in the Second Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Antietam (a draw considered to be the bloodiest battle in the Civil War), and the Battle of Fredricksburg. 

The Battle of Chancellorsville is considered to be the pair's finest hour. Here, Union General Hooker tried to push back the Confederate army to Fredricksburg using a force of 130,000 Union troops. He failed. General Lee held the line with around 30,000 soldiers, with General Jackson taking another 30,000 and marching around the Union army to attack them from behind. At the end of this battle, Jackson's luck turned when he was mistaken by Lee's troops as enemy cavalry and shot. 

Initially, doctors thought that they could save General Jackson's life by amputating his left arm. However,  pneumonia set in during his recovery, and on May 10, 1863, General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson died. He rests at the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery. He was 39 years old.

After his death, his wife, Mary Ann, kept their house until 1904 before selling it to the Daughters of the Confederacy, who turned it into the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital. The house operated as a small community hospital until 1954 when it was purchased by the Lee-Jackson Memorial Association and transformed into a museum. In 1975, the Historic Lexington Foundation took over the building and restored it to Jackson's domicile. 

The Jackson House Museum isn't really about General Stonewall Jackson, though. It's about a man named Thomas, a Mexican-American War veteran and instructor at the Virginia Military Institute. A man who played practical jokes on his wife, danced the polka in his living room, maintained a large garden, and ran a Sunday school for Black children in Lexington, which was an illegal practice at the time. It's about a man who never expected to return to war until Virginia seceded.

I still don't completely understand the cause of the Confederacy and will probably always be 100 percent Yankee. However, the Jackson House Museum offers a different narrative of slaveholders than the ones found in 12 Years A Slave and Incidents In The Life of a Slave Girl.  The Jackson's cared deeply about their enslaved people, which seems like a weird incongruity, but, when Lexington was being burned to the ground by the Union Army, it was the formerly enslaved members of the community who deceived the army about the location of Jackson's house and are the reason the house still stands today.

The house really is an amazing bit of history and gives you much to think about. The museum is open Monday through Saturday, 9am to 5pm, and admission is $10.00. If you can, take the time to talk with tour guide Mike Lowry. He knows a lot about Thomas J. Jackson, the house's history, and the US Civil War. It's a conversation any history buff would enjoy.

xoxo a.d. elliott

P.S. You can check out the YouTube Video Here: https://youtu.be/faR-pRKrM0s

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a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller living in Salem, Virginia. 

In addition to the travel writings at www.takethebackroads.com, you can also read her book reviews at www.riteoffancy.com and US military biographies at www.everydaypatriot.com

Her online photography gallery can be found at shop.takethebackroads.com

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