Richmond Offices of the Confederate Government 1861-1865

The Custom House, the first Federal building ever built in Richmond is seen below.  This building provided offices for Confederate President Jefferson Davis and other executive staff, including the Confederate Treasury Department. At the end of the Civil War, the Richmond evacuation fire of 1865 left much of Richmond in ruins.

The view from the south side of Canal Basin is seen below, showing the Capitol, the Custom House and other structures after the fire of April, 1865.

The Custom House is seen below. With its stout granite walls and inflammable roof, the building survived the fire. In 1866, the Grand Jury of the United States District Court met on the third floor and indicted Jefferson Davis for treason. Davis was granted amnesty and never stood trial.

The Civil War Wedding

Civil War Humor 1861-1865

The White House of the Confederacy

Called “The White House”, the Executive Mansion was rented from the City of Richmond by the Confederate government to serve as the residence of President Jefferson Davis and his family.  The White House of the Confederacy  is located at Clay and 12^th Streets.

Security was lax by modern standards.  The President’s two personal secretaries were armed.  Additionally, a soldier was stationed at the front door, and another at the basement door.  Twelve soldiers were stationed on the grounds.

Jefferson Davis, his wife Varina, and their three small children moved into the White House in August, 1861.  Two more children were born in the White House, in 1861 and 1864 respectively.  Five year old Joseph, died from a fall at the house in 1864.

After the fall of Richmond, President Lincoln and his son Tad went to view the ruined city.  Lincoln went to the Confederate White House (depicted in the next picture), went to the second floor and triumphantly sat at Jefferson Davis’s desk.  Thousands assembled outside to catch a glimpse of Lincoln.

The 1865 Fall of Richmond in Pictures

The last death agonies of the Confederacy captured in pictures.

Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Civil War

A brief look at love, sex, and marriage in the Civil War. The book covers courtship, marriage, birth control and pregnancy, divorce, slavery and the impact of the war on social customs.

Pet First Aid Kit

Libby prison in 1865

Libby Prison

Libby prison, a Confederate prison in Richmond during the Civil war, was considered second only to Andersonville Prison in Georgia as hell on earth.  The prison was for Union officers.  Prisoners suffered from disease, malnutrition and a high mortality rate. By 1863, one thousand prisoners were crowded into the prison which had been a warehouse before the war.

According to the Daily Richmond Enquirer of February 2, 1864, “Libby takes in the captured Federals by scores, but lets none out; they are huddled up and jammed into every nook and corner; at the bathing troughs, around the cooking stoves, everywhere there is a wrangling, jostling crowd; at night the floor of every room they occupy in the building is covered, every square inch of it….”

Private Jackson O. Broshears, Co. D, Indiana Mounted Infantry is seen in the next picture. Age 20 years; height 6 feet 1 inch; weight when captured, 185 lbs.  Broshears was in Confederate hands three and one-quarter months, two months of which were passed on Richmond’s Belle Isle in the James River.  Food was scarce for Confederate soldiers and even scarcer for POWs.

The 1865 Fall of Richmond in Pictures

The Richmond Vampire

     According to this legend, a blood covered creature with jagged teeth and skin hanging from its’ body stalks Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.  Hollywood Cemetery is a likely place to encounter a vampire.  It is a large sprawling, Victorian era cemetery often called the Valhalla of the Confederacy since it is the final resting place of twenty five Confederate generals (including George Pickett of “Pickett’s Charge” and the dashing cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart) as well as the only Confederate States President, Jefferson Davis.

     The legend of the Richmond Vampire got started in 1925 after the collapse of the Church Hill Railway Tunnel.  The collapse outed a vampire.  A blood covered monster with jagged teeth and rotting, hanging skin emerged from the cave-in and raced toward Hollywood Cemetery.  Pursued by an angry mob, the creature fled into the hillside mausoleum of one W.W. Pool.  Curiously, the mausoleum of W.W. Pool has no birth date, just a death date, 1922, three years before the cave-in.  The mob found no sign of the monster, which had vanished, and which presumably still haunts the cemetery.  Certainly some people believe this, reporting sightings of paranormal orbs of light near the crypt to this day. 

     Researcher Gregory Maitland is not a believer.  Maitland discovered that the legend is based on the true story of the collapse of the Church Hill tunnel, without the vampire.  One living man emerged from the disaster that gobbled up a still unknown number of transient laborers.  That man was 28-year-old railroad fireman, Benjamin F. Mosby.  Mosby was horribly burned, several of his teeth were broken, and layers of his skin were hanging hideously from his body as he emerged from the collapse.  Mosby, in shock, headed toward the James River, in the general direction of Hollywood Cemetery.  Concerned onlookers overtook him and took him to Grace Hospital, where he later died from his injuries.  But the legend of the vampire lives on.

Urban Legends of Virginia

Mind bending stories from the Old Dominion. A collection of Virginia’s most notable Urban Legends, many include the true stories behind them.

Treasure Hunting: The Lost Confederate Treasury

The fall of Richmond. What happened to the Confederate treasury? Where is it now?





Treasure Legends of the Civil War


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