The Old Museum at Manassas

As the approach of the Union troops became imminent Mrs. Henry's daughter Ellen and son John tried to move her to a nearby residence. The sound of gunfire and smell of smoke frightened Mrs. Henry into demanding that they return to her own house.
Shortly thereafter, Rickets' Union artillery was moved into position near the house. In an attempt to dislodge confederate sharpshooters located in the house, Capt. James B. Ricketts turned his guns on the house and opened fire, fatally wounding Mrs. Henry as she lay in her bed.
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Mrs. Henry, the only civilian death of this battle was buried the next day beside her house.

26 July, Fri.
. . .Oh nothing, no words - and they are limited in this little diary - can describe the horrors around me. Two men dead and covered with blood were carried down the stairs as I waited to let them pass. On a table in the open hall a man was undergoing amputation of the leg. At the foot of the stairs two bloody legs lay and through it all I went to my husband. Outside the next door was a severed arm, and my clothes brushed by blood, cloths, splint, etc. I found my dear husband lying on a hospital stretcher still covered with blood!
God alone knows the horrors of this place...Downstairs there are some forty men in the various stages of death or possible recovery. Blood runs on the floors, the smell is dreadful but no language can describe it.

27 July, Sat.
Dear J. passed a restless night, his knee is much inflamed. Oh God grant my darling husband be spared his leg...I was awake all night, the groans of the dying sounding in my ears. As I look from the window I see a severed leg under a tree. It has been there all day and I intend asking to have it removed.

Rose O'Neal Greenhow was a widowed Washington D.C. socialite at the outbreak of the Civil War. She was born on a tobacco farm in Maryland and sympathized strongly with the southern cause. Due to her personality and position in society, she had highly influential ties to the nation's most powerful men and she used this to spy for the Confederacy.

Rose was credited by both Jefferson Davis and General Beauregard for sending a series of messages that forewarned them on their preparations for the First Battle of Manassas.

Sarah Emma Edmonds

1841 - 1898
Whether it was for independence, patriotic duty or the money, Sarah Emma Edmonds, in disguise, joined the ranks of her fellow man and enlisted in the 2nd Michigan Infantry as Franklin Thompson.

Sarah was serving as a male nurse during July of 1861. Caring for the wounded at a field hospital somewhere between Centreville and the Battlefield, Sarah was forced to escape on foot as the Union Army retreated.

During her two year military career Sarah would serve as nurse, mail carrier, soldier and spy. Upon contracting malaria and not wanting her true identity discovered, Sarah deserted the Army.

In 1897 Sarah was accepted as a member into the Grand Army of the Republic - the only female ever to receive this honor.

Born in New Brunswick, Canada, Sarah E. Edmonds was the fifth daughter of Isaac and Elisabeth Leeper Edmondson (the family’s original name). Her father who had hoped for a large family of sons to help him farm his land, was bitterly disappointed with his female progeny.

Sarah was keenly aware of her father’s disappointed, and after some education and acquisition of "male skills", she ran away from home to Michigan. Sarah tried very hard to be the boy her father wanted, abandoning female attire and becoming an expert equestrienne and noted marksman. But she never won the approval of or even a kind word from Isaac, whom she dubbed "The Brutal Father."

When war broke out, Sarah cut off her hair, became "Frank Thompson," and enlisted as a private in Company F, 2nd Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment. She perfected her masculine qualities; her guise was successful. In 1861 Sarah went to Virginia and served as a male field nurse, but when she tried to be recruited as a combat soldier, she was rejected for being "too small and delicate."

Moving to Ohio, Sarah shed her male identity, and became a nurse in a hospital. She wrote a book, published in 1865, entitled Nurse and Spy in the Union Army, claiming to have served as a female nurse. Sarah eventually married and kept her secret from most until 1882, when she applied for a veteran's pension. Some of her army confidants wrote affidavits corroborating her petition, and Congress granted Sarah the pension.

Owned at the time of the First Battle of Manassas by the Lewis family, Portici was named for a town in Italy known for its history of destructive fires.
Located in close proximity to the battlefield, the house served as headquarters for Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. After the battle it was converted into a field hospital.