Union, Western Virginia
History All Around
The Confederate Monument, dedicated in 1901 to honor the local men who served the South, is up the walkway to your left. Thirteen Confederate companies were formed here in Monroe County.
From the top of the hill, behind the monument and the tree line half a mile away stands Walnut Grove. This house served as a hospital when Federal forces under Gen. George Crook occupied Union for five days in 1864. Incomplete pairs of shoes later found under the house were allegedly tossed there after amputations.
To your left are the Knobs, hills where many of the town’s residents hid as Crook approached. The Rev. Samuel R. Houston, a Presbyterian minister who kept a diary during the war, lived in the brick house behind, across from the church. Elmwood, the brick mansion of attorney Allen T. Caperton, is visible above the stone wall to your right. As county provost marshal, Caperton imprisoned loyal Unionists. He also served as a Confederate senator for Virginia and, after the war, as a U.S. senator for West Virginia.
Crook’s 10,000 men camped in these fields. Like other houses here, Elmwood was plundered, “entered by 50 {Union soldiers} at the front door and almost ruined.” Caperton’s daughter Mary asked Crook to return a cow so her family could have milk. A gold medal belonging to another daughter, Melinda Caperton, also was taken. Years later, a former Confederate officer in Wheeling learned that a former Union soldier had just traded a canteen of whiskey for the medal. Both men wished to return it, and thirty-three years after the war, the medal came back to Elmwood
Marker can be reached from 5th Street (U.S. 219), on the right when traveling north.
Courtesy hmdb.org
