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Land lost because of apathy

November 6, 2002 1:59 am

W HEN developer Ray Smith Jr. telephoned sev- eral months ago, he wasn't prepared for the conversation that ensued. Here's the gist of it:

Smith: "Hello, I'm Ray Smith. I've got a couple of development projects I'd like to talk about with you. I've read your columns, and I think you might like some of my 'smart growth' ideas."

Me: "Which projects?" His name wasn't familiar to me.

Smith: "The Village of Idlewild in the city and the Town of Chancellorsville in Spotsylvania County."

Me: "Oh, you are developing my ancestral farm, the one I never got to own."

Smith: Long pause.

Me: Silence.

Smith: "Your ancestral farm?"

Me: "Yes. In the 1860s, my great-great-grandfather owned part of that land in Spotsylvania. He and his family were farming it when the battle broke out on their place."

Smith: "Who was your great-great grandfather?"

Me: "Reuben McGee."

Smith: "You are right. I am."

Reuben and Margaret McGee had five sons. One of them, also named Reuben, was my maternal great-grandfather.

He was a private in one of the 10 companies that comprised the Confederacy's 30th Virginia Infantry. He was elsewhere on May 1, 1863, the day the three-day Battle of Chancellorsville erupted on the family's farm.

Hundreds of soldiers were killed that morning before the fighting ceased.

Other members of the McGee family were not away at war; the war had come to them. Among those McGees was one of my great- grandfather's brothers, Ebenezer, who was a spy for the Union. Among others still on the farm were his parents and the oldest of the five brothers, Absalom, who refused to fight for either side.

My great-grandfather moved to Fredericksburg when the war ended. The farm remained in the McGee family for a few more decades. It later became known as the Ashley Farm and is now part of what is called the Mullins Farm.

Early this year, the current owner, John Mullins, succeeded in having the property rezoned by the Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors. Mullins has granted an option to developer Ray Smith Jr.

Smith and his Reston-based Dogwood Development Group want to turn those rolling hills and woods into a "neo-traditional town," with 1,995 residences, stores, offices, a library, elementary school and 36-acre battlefield park.

I do not presume to know what my ancestors would say if they could voice their opinions at a Planning Commission public hearing that will be held at 7:30 tonight at the county's administration building.

My guess is the McGees would disagree.

Smith and I have met several times since our initial telephone conversation. I've listened for about a dozen hours as he explained what he wants to do. One of those sessions was spent touring the 788-acre property, which is on the north side of State Route 3, just west of Chancellorsville Elementary School.

I like aspects of Smith's plan.

He proposes a community that is a throwback to pre-1950, when towns were places where people could live, work and shop. In other words, places that evolved prior to five decades of sprawl.

As Smith says, it makes sense to densely develop one farm rather than lose 10 farms to sprawl.

A negative aspect of his plan, however, is that the town would be bisected by a proposed beltway around Fredericksburg, the so-called Outer Connector.

I've voiced opposition to that sprawl-inducing beltway for years--long before I knew the beltway would intersect with State Route 3 exactly where my great-great-grandparents' home once stood. (It was where three silos now stand.)

Smith pointed out that home site to me on an 1863 map. Most of the other information I know about my McGee ancestors was obtained by reading Noel Harrison's book, "Chancellorsville Battlefield Sites."

History is part of the marketing plan for Smith's project. He thinks his development's appeal will be heightened by the history of that piece of property and the adjacent Park Service-held land.

Preservationists contend that Smith's project would be a magnet for more development and traffic in the vicinity of the national park's Chancellorsville holdings.

For most of my life, I have cared little about Civil War history or battlefield preservation, even though I was born in Fredericksburg and have lived almost all my life in either the city or southern Stafford County.

That's not unusual, though. Look into the recently formed ranks of homegrown Civil War battlefield preservationists, and you will see people who were well into middle age before they began appreciating the national--and personal--significance of the battlegrounds of Virginia.

Why do so many other people with strong local ties to that time and place remain apathetic and silent as hallowed ground is bulldozed, developed and treated as if it has no value higher than the money and tax revenue development can bring?

I've thought a lot about that question in recent months.

I've come to the conclusion that the Civil War and its aftermath were so horrible for people in Spotsylvania, Fredericksburg and Stafford that they just wanted to put it behind them.

It was not talked about in my family, nor, I believe, in many others. So now, three or four generations down the line, we've lost sight of something important that shaped this place and ourselves.

Many local family names that appear in the 1860 Census and on the rolls of the 30th Virginia Infantry and other units are the same family names so common here now: Orrock, Seay, Jett, Newton, Alsop, Pendleton, Dye, Chewning, Timberlake, Peyton and numerous others.

I am only one of many thousands of local people whose ancestors lived around here and either fought in the Civil War or were civilians who felt the immediate brutality and long-lasting effects of battles and military occupation.

From the 1860s onward, our ancestors just wanted to forget the horror and hardship and move on. There was nothing nostalgic to them about a war in which relatives, friends and neighbors were killed, and which would hamstring the local economy well into the 1960s.

To put it simply, you can't eat history.

The time is past due, however, for those of us with deep roots in this community to pay a debt to the past.

In our collective apathy and silence--in turning our backs on the importance of what happened in this place and to our families--we have done a disservice to our nation, as well as our ancestors.

We have abdicated a special responsibility and missed a decades-long opportunity to speak with a certain standing that a person cannot achieve, only accept.

We have, with few exceptions, stayed in the background and watched with casual interest or complete indifference for decades as National Park Service historians have fought to save pieces of local battlefields that now comprise Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.

I have at long last--and perhaps too late--come to believe that those of us whose Civil War-era families lived, fought and died around here should be leading the charge to see that certain places are not destroyed.

The land the McGees farmed--and where the May 1, 1863, battle was fought--deserves preservation, not development.

You can consider me biased, of course. I am. When I write about that land from here on out, you will know where I'm "coming from," to use a 1960s expression.

I was much less sure of my opinion when I first answered the telephone call from Ray Smith Jr. When he asked me to consider the merits of his project, I did so with the idea that what he proposes might be OK, that it might, in fact, be better for everyone--the community, the landowner and, of course, Smith--than what landowner John Mullins can build there under the existing zoning: a large-lot subdivision and strip shopping center.

After much thought, I stand opposed to anything happening to that land where Confederate and Union soldiers died.

And where psychic hell was experienced by my great-great-grandparents and their adult children, who were torn apart by allegiances to one side or the other in this nation's very uncivil war.

LARRY EVANS can be reached at The Free Lance-Star, 616 Amelia St., Fredericksburg, Va. 22401; by fax at 373-8455; by phone at 374-5409; or by e-mail at levans@freelancestar.com.