Prince William County’s Occoquan is a small town, but it’s rich in history. Elder is the curator of the town’s Mill House Museum and a member of the Occoquan Historical Society, which will host a reenactment of a Civil War skirmish Feb. 25. Find out more at occoquanhistoricalsociety.org.
What are you reenacting Feb. 25? The Feb. 3, 1862 snowstorm and shoot-out. The Confederate troops were training in the town plaza. The Union troops stationed at Fort Lyon, near where the Huntington Metro station is today, had been doing reconnaissance and came upon the Confederate troops and started shooting at them from across the river. What stopped it was a huge snow storm. It kind of saved the day for everyone.
Why is it important to retell history in this way?
Especially for a town as small as Occoquan, it was a day-to-day horror for people to live through the war. There was no sense of peace for that four-year period. They were constantly in flux, whether occupied by Confederate or Union troops. It’s just so hard to picture what these people went through.
What do you have at the museum? Most items relate to the town of Occoquan and the Occoquan River. Because it is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, one of the feature exhibits right now is about the town during the Civil War. The Republicans in the town raised an Abraham Lincoln campaign banner on July 4, 1860. And even though Virginia had not yet seceded, it caused a lot of unrest in the county, because there was already a lot of Southern sentiment. So what was the county board of supervisors at the time authorized the militia to ride into Occoquan and tear the banner down. – Liz Essley
