‘The Only Union Lady in Williamsburg’

Pencil Sketch of Mary Ann Bowden, 5 May 1862

Civil War Collection, Mss. Acc. 2001.17

The Historic Triangle is a term that was used as early as the 1930s to denote the three towns which have become tourist attractions: Jamestown, site of the first permanent English settlement in North America, Williamsburg, the Revolutionary War capital of Virginia, and Yorktown where the American Revolution ended.

There are two kinds of military occupation: the kind employed during a war and the kind implemented once the surrender treaty ending a broad conflict has been signed. And, psychologically, they must be different. The majority of the white people of Williamsburg, Yorktown and Jamestown hoped that a Confederate victory would soon end the war and they wanted to support that cause. Most blacks also were hoping that the war would soon be over and, increasingly, must have hoped that they would gain freedom—and during the war period many did.

It was clear that the majority of the white Williamsburg population did aid the Confederates as much as they could and this meant that the Federals had to be ever alert. But much of the Historic Triangle population’s time was occupied with just gathering together the necessities of life and worrying about members of their families, who were elsewhere. Although there were isolated incidents of arrests and bad feelings, the occupation of the Historic Triangle was neither cruel nor oppressive.

Images of the exhibit are available from Special Collections on Flickr.

Curator: Susan Riggs, Manuscripts & Rare Books Librarian; Exhibit design and installation: Jennie Davy, Burger Archives Specialist; fabrication and installation assistance from James Tolj, History Graduate Student Apprentice, Ashley Irizarry, History Graduate Student Apprentice, Carliegh Branch, Undergraduate Student Assistant, and Lia Servidio, Undergraduate Student Assistant.