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Date/Time
Date(s) - 06/08/2023
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Location
Reinsch Library Auditorium, Marymount University

Categories


This program is free and open to the public. You can attend via Zoom or in-person. See details below on both ways to attend.

We hear much about the Civil War’s defensive ring of forts protecting the Capital City in what was then Alexandria County, but did you know that our county also had convalescent camps? In early December 1862 the US Army established a convalescent camp north of Four Mile Run, with a short spur off the Alexandria, Loudoun, and Hampshire Railroad leading to a station roughly in the neighborhood of today’s Drew Elementary School.  The camp had barracks for 5,000 convalescents and tents for 1,000 men returning to their regiments. There were also hospital wards for 500 patients, a bakery capable of producing 16,000 loaves of bread per day, two reservoirs piping in fresh water, a post office, a barber shop, a “photograph gallery,” a library, and a chapel. Civil War historian Michael Schaffner will talk about how it worked, who was posted there, and how the camps changed as the war raged on.

Michael Schaffner is an amateur historian who has given presentations on several topics to a number of Civil War Round Tables as well as at the Museum of Civil War Medicine and Arlington Historical Society audiences and a  reenactor in several Civil War units, including Company B, 54th Massachusetts.

Attend via Zoom or In-Person

PREREGISTER FOR ZOOM ACCESS. You can attend this event on either Zoom or in-person on the Marymount University Main Campus.  If you want to attend this event virtually, please use this link to register. You can also cut and paste the following URL into your browser:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScJJjqN06nCbld4zPL2U01ateMoJ2QO6vNBHsvbdCfS_QgAcw/viewform?usp=sf_link

Please register by Wednesday, June 7:  Zoom access information sent to you the morning of the event on Thursday, June 8.

DRIVING DIRECTIONS and FREE PARKING: Attendees planning to attend the event in-person should enter the Marymount University campus at the library gate on N. 26th Street. From Glebe Road going north, take a right onto 26th Street. Pass the intersection with Yorktown Road and then enter the campus through the next gate on your left. The library is to your left as you enter the campus. Free garage parking is just past the library at the bottom of the small incline. (Handicapped parking is immediately to your right as you enter the campus.)

  • If the University has lowered the garage gates, push the button and let them know you’re here for an Arlington Historical Society event in the library. To leave, push the button and they’ll raise the gate.

This event is one of the monthly series of public programs sponsored by the Arlington Historical Society and Marymount University’s Department of History and Politics. For more information, please email: info@arlingtonhistoricalsociety.org.