Image ID: AXSB

Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book Of The War. Vol. 2, No. 68. Charles City Court-House, Virginia. June, 1864. This place is the county seat of Charles City County, about twenty-five miles southeast from Richmond, and is a fair specimen of many Virginia Court-Houses. This neighborhood was the scene of a number of severe cavalry fights during the war, the Court-House, in 1862, being only three miles from the intrenched camp of Gen. McClellan, whose army marched past the village in its retreat from before Richmond to Fortress Monroe. Gen. Meade’s army, in 1864, again occupied this section, and passed over its roads from Coal [sic] Harbor to Petersburg, when the building was sacked by the troops, and many of the records destroyed. There were but two or three dwellings and a church composing the village, and a stranger might pass through the place without dreaming that it possessed a name. Its history dates from the early settlement of Virginia, and the cemeteries round about it contain the names of those who passed away one hundred year ago.
The return of peace has here failed to quicken the people, and everything is rapidly sinking into decay. The aristocratic families, impoverished by the war, and deprived of the labor of their slaves, barely manage to live, and the whole country along the James is rapidly becoming overgrown with scrub timber and chaparral.

Incidents of the War. Charles City Court House, Va. June 13, 1864. [Gardner Co. cabinet card]