Bringing Back Sligo

Breathing new life into an Italianate home in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Bringing Back Sligo
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    • The “Haunting” of Sligo

      Posted at 9:57 am by Lauren Tepaske, on August 4, 2021

      Since we’re still in limbo waiting for orders to move to Singapore I thought I would write about something else that is in limbo and answer a question I get asked from time-to-time: Is Sligo haunted and have we had any “experiences?” The easy answer is “yes and no.” As far as I know, Marcus hasn’t had any experiences but keep in mind he’s an engineer and Dutch which makes him doubly pragmatic and logical. Both of our daughters claim to have experienced what they thought was the cat walking in their room only to turn and see nothing. The youngest also claims that things move in her room and there’s a ghost boy named “Gary or Larry or Peter” (now I really don’t believe her). She’s also the one most likely to crawl into bed with us in the middle of the night but whether it’s an 8-year-old imagination or something really going on, I don’t know. What I can say is that her room is the same room a previous resident slept in and had many experiences though I have never told her that (I’m all about being open and honest with the kids but the last thing I need is a child in my bed every night).

      What I can tell you are my own experiences, some of which are more compelling than others. So, let’s get started. One of the first events that happened was the skeleton key to our front door went missing for a month or so. I found it eventually stuck in a mint julep cup on the mantle and while I or the children or even Marcus could have done it and forgot I’m not convinced it wasn’t the spirits. Also, please note, we don’t use our front door so missing the key for a while was not critical. In this same room where the key was eventually found is also the same room where electronics go off (always in the middle of the night which really gets the heart rate going). Now, the logical part of me thinks that this is bound to happen because the majority of the electronics are stored and charged in that room. The less logical side of me thinks “ghosts!”

      For the most part, I rarely experience anything but for a period of time in the fall I was constantly seeing shadows or movement from the corner of my eye. One particularly startling moment was seeing a full body shadow just outside of the youngest’s bedroom. I have also had the same experience as the girls thinking the cat was in the room but finding nothing. Also, sitting on the couch in the living room I have a viewpoint of the small hallway outside of the half-bath. From the couch I would constantly see movement and even at times the feeling that someone was walking from the kitchen into the hallway. I feel as if my youngest daughter’s room and the area just outside of the half-bath have more energy than other spaces in the house.

      One of the most compelling things to happen though involved the dog. As I was calling her to go out one night I was standing near the hallway to the half-bath. From the corner of my eye I saw a shadow fly across the space and at that exact moment, the dog came trotting through and looked directly at the spot where I had seen the shadow. For me, that exact moment solidified all I had thought I had been seeing and experiencing. There was also a strange moment when the cat was hissing towards the top of the stairs and behaving as if the dog had materialized and was about to pounce even though the dog was not there. She could have been on high-alert because she and the dog did not get along but it was weird nonetheless.

      A few friends with more of a sixth sense have walked through the house and determined that the energy is calm. When we had C & C Paranormal come through (which you can read about here, here, and here) they spent time in the basement releasing the energy and now, when people stay down there, they claim to have had the best sleep of their lives. Whether that is all associated or not, I don’t know? There is a lot of “I don’t knows” when it comes to the question of whether the house is haunted or not. I do think there is an energy here but I do not think it is haunted in the way we typically think of such. We don’t have “broke-neck ladies” or vengeful spirits doing harm but given the age of the property and it’s experiences (i.e. as a small-pox hospital, a slave owned property, and the Civil War) it’s foolish to think there is nothing lingering.

      Posted in Basement, Grounds, Haunted, History, Hospital, Life, Main House, Slaves and Servants, Wars | 3 Comments
    • The Battle of Fredericksburg at Sligo Part II

      Posted at 5:02 pm by Lauren Tepaske, on January 3, 2020

      Here it is folks, how Sligo and the Ferneyhough family were affected by the Battle of Fredericksburg.  I know, I know.  You all have been waiting with baited breath for this installment.  I, too, have been waiting for it.

      So, for a refresher the Fredericksburg Campaign took place during December 1862, the Chancellorsville Campaign which took place during May 1863, and a third battle in June 1863 which was the beginning of the Battle of Fairfax.  All of these battles affected Sligo.  You can also check out Part I of this post which gives a little bit more detail (just a little).  At this point in time Sligo was occupied by Eliza Ferneyhough, widow of John R Ferneyhough Jr who had died in 1860, and their children:  Thomas Gilbert (John Ferneyhough Jr’s adult son from his first marriage to Mary Frances Gilbert), George (as in George Thrift who would later build our Sligo), Sallie, and Fannie Chesley (a granddaughter).

      Noel Harrison states that Sligo was situated “behind the Union front line during…December 1862 and May 1863 Battles of Fredericksburg and between the opposing front lines during the June 1863 engagement near Fredericksburg” (1995, Fredericksburg Civil War Sites, Vol 2, p. 102).  I like how succinctly he wrote that because I have spent literally hours looking cross-eyed at all of the documentation I have and not comprehending a word.  In the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of Virginia Historical Inventory of Sligo (Site) it is reported that the Federals used the house in 1862 as a hospital and drilled and were quartered around the property (Deaderick, 2 June 1937).  With that being said, the WPA of Sligo (Home Site) states that Confederate soldiers were quartered in the house during December 1862 (Deaderick, 14 June 1937).  So, I guess no matter which way you look at it, Sligo was in the thick of it.

      InkedSketch of the Battle of Fredericksburg_LI

      Sketch of the Battle of Fredericksburg, 13 December 1862 (https://catalog.archives.gov/id/109182787) which shows the Union lines in blue and Confederate lines in red. The “Ferryhough” house is depicted and I drew a red circle around it for easier detection.

      The WPA of Sligo (Home Site) gives an account of how George (remember George, the son of Eliza) listened-in on the plans of the Confederate soldiers quartered in his home and ran to tell his mother.  The family quickly gathered their belongings and left.  After the Battle of Fredericksburg they returned to discover the house ransacked and a threat from the Union soldiers that they would hang George who was a 2nd Lieutenant in the boys Military Company of Fredericksburg.  After this the Ferneyhough family moved to Richmond and did not return to Sligo until 1865.  Unfortunately, they returned to find the house in disrepair.  All but one secondary building had been burned and much of the farming equipment thrown into the well. (Deaderick, 14 June 1937)

      I was having a conversation with my girls the other day about what it might be like to have to leave everything behind because soldiers were coming and it wasn’t safe anymore.  Their eyes grew big and they had many questions including who was the good guy and who was the bad guy (good question with many implications and I explained it as best as I could at an eight and seven year old level), how many lovies could a person bring, and (most importantly) what about the farm animals and pets?  We decided that the soldiers probably used or took the farm animals and we hoped the Ferneyhoughs were able to bring their pets.

      I want to remind everyone that the WPAs weren’t exactly thoroughly researched and a lot of the information was conjecture or word-of-mouth.  We do, however, have accounts of soldiers who write of Sligo.  One particularly interesting letter written by a soldier of the 122nd New York Infantry during the June 1863 battle describes how Confederate sharpshooters used Sligo as a “den” and shot at the Union lines (Harrison, 1995, Fredericksburg Civil War Sites, Vol 2, p. 103).  I imagine anyone with a metal detector reading this right now is probably salivating; there’s surely something left in the ground.

      So, there it is.  The Civil War at Sligo.  It took me a while to sit down and write this because 1.  Every time I write about the Ferneyhough family I have to log into my Ancestry.com account and look at my previous emails between myself and our Dovetail consultant in an effort to piece together who was who (and in an effort to be as accurate as possible). and 2.  The information is in pieces and scattered about and it took a minute to organize myself.  Lucky for you the children are out for the day and it’s raining so what else did I have to do?

       

      Posted in Ferneyhough, Grounds, History, Main House, Wars | 2 Comments
    • The Battle of Fredericksburg at Sligo Part I

      Posted at 9:55 pm by Lauren Tepaske, on December 15, 2019

      As we all know writing about military battles, people, etc. is not my forté.  There’s something about reading the specifics of battles that make my eyes go cross and I quickly lose interest.  This is not to say that I don’t love history because clearly I do.  I think it has to do with the abundant use of cardinal directions and military terms such as “flank” which I think means rear because that’s what it means in most other circumstances but I could be wrong.  I digress.  The point is, I’m going to make an attempt to write about the Battle(s) of Fredericksburg at Sligo and the Ferneyhough family who would have been the occupants at that time.

      The Battle of Fredericksburg took place from the 11th through the 15th of December, 1862 and I made the judicious decision to go ahead and skip to the end because you all who are Civil War history buffs will absolutely scream in rage if I try and write anything more.  So, in the end it was a decidedly Confederate victory as the Union faced problems almost from the beginning when the pontoon bridges necessary to cross the Rappahannock did not arrive in time.  One interesting tidbit related to the Battle of Fredericksburg is that it was the first battle to take place in an urban environment in the history of the United States and, despite the urban setting (and the looting by the Union), there were only four civilian deaths reported during this time.

      A few years back we lived on Sunken Road and planned a Christmas party to introduce our friends to our second newly born and to say “good bye” as we were getting ready to move to Jacksonville, North Carolina (aka, the “Armpit of America” but ask me how I really feel).  Without realizing it we had planned our party for the same day as the 150th anniversary as the Battle of Fredericksburg.  Let me tell you, you know you live in a special town when you look out your window and can witness an entire reenactment taking place as you down your wine in a red solo cup (because we keep it classy).

      IMAG0131

      I wasn’t sure if I should tell them I had a GPS that might help them find their way…

       

      I digress, again.  You guys need to help me stay on track.  Anyway, it turns out, December 1862 was not the first, or last, time Fredericksburg would be witness to the horrors of war.  In the spring of 1863, the Chancellorsville Campaign began (“campaign” meaning something different from “battle” and which I have yet to figure out)  and which encompassed a second battle at Fredericksburg.  Considering the location of Sligo (just south of the city and directly on the Rappahannock) it should come as no surprise that the Ferneyhoughs were in the thick of the fighting from the first battle of Fredericksburg and on…

      Posted in Ferneyhough, History, Life, Wars | 1 Comment
    • General Thomas Posey

      Posted at 7:22 am by Lauren Tepaske, on October 26, 2019

      Alright, here’s a post I started writing at least three months ago but it got away from me.  Lately I have been waking up at 5:00 in the morning and I blame getting older on that.  Apparently as we age we need less sleep?  Is that a thing?  Why is that a thing?  Can it not be a thing?  I really like to sleep.  It also doesn’t help that afternoon crash I inevitably succumb to every day.  I digress.  Because I have been waking up at 5:00 in the morning I now find myself with a little bit more free time to write.  Yay for you!  Unless otherwise noted, all of my information was retrieved from Wikipedia (again, totally aware that is not a reliable source of information but I was just looking for a succinct description of Posey).

      So, General Thomas Posey in a nutshell:  He was born near Mt. Vernon in Fairfax, Virginia.  As a result, he was a patron of George Washington (some even claimed he was the illegitimate son of George Washington though historians doubt that) and would eventually benefit from that patronage as the Revolutionary War approached.  Prior to the war, however, he moved to Staunton, Virginia and married though his wife died while giving birth to their third child.  Only one child survived into adulthood.

      While living in Staunton he was part of a reprisal against the Native Americans who continually led raids against the settlers.  I only mention this because Posey’s experience with Native Americans becomes an asset for him later in life in 1816 when he became an “Indian agent” in Illinois.  I know the word “Indian” is not correct anymore but that’s what they called it.

      Alright, rewinding a bit to 1775 and the beginning of the Revolutionary War.  Posey rises through the ranks, leads battles, and is eventually promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in the Continental Army.  He leaves the Continental Army but then later joins the United States Army as a Brigadier General and serves in the Northwest Indian War which to be honest, I had never heard of.  I think by this point it is painfully obvious that I am not a war history buff and am quite terrible writing about it.  I love history but the minute I start reading about wars and battles and how one regiment lined up here and charged forward over there while the other guys were over yonder and they fell back and…my eyes glaze over and I kind of stop remembering how to read and comprehend at the same time.

      Okay, so the point I’m getting at here is that Thomas Posey was an impressive guy, militarily speaking.  It’s what happens between the Revolutionary War and the Northwest Indian War that we want to know about because that is when he moves to Fredericksburg and marries Mary Alexander Thornton, the wealthy widow of George Thornton.  In my earlier days of research on Sligo it was stated that Thomas Posey owned and lived at Sligo.  There was even a newspaper clipping our wonderful Dovetail consultant found that stated a brick with his name and dated “1752” had been discovered when Sligo burnt down in 1888.  However, I do not believe Thomas Posey lived at Sligo nor do I believe he built the first house in 1752 and here’s why:

      First of all, Thomas Posey didn’t marry Mary Thornton until 1784 which is when he moved from Fincastle to Fredericksburg (Posey, p. 109).  Right off the bat, the dates don’t line up even remotely.  The couple settled on her estate called The Wilderness which is near Wilderness Run.

      Secondly, Posey (a descendant of Thomas Posey…I realize that could be confusing) writes:

      During their nineteen years at Greenwood, the Poseys engaged in some limited purchases and sales of real property in Spotsylvania County.  From James Frazier  and John Minor they acquired an improved five-acre plot just outside Fredericksburg, a segment of a larger estate called “Sligo,” which had been a hospital during the war, partially burned, and later restored.  Later they sold the property to John Lewis, kinsman to George Washington, for 1250 (pounds) on 5 September 1794.  (1992, p. 113, General Thomas Posey:  Son of the American Revolution, Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, Michigan.)

      What I’m trying to prove here is that Sligo was merely an investment property for Thomas Posey and his wife.  My uneducated guess as to how his name became so prominently affixed to Sligo is because he was a Revolutionary War hero and someone, somewhere along the line attributed him to the property in order to garner more interest.  Also, it’s kind of like 267 years of the game “telephone” and information is going to get skewed over time.

      To end Thomas Posey’s story he eventually moves to Kentucky because he was awarded 7,000 acres for his military service.  In Kentucky he starts a new career in politics eventually becoming Lieutenant Governor.  He then moves to Louisiana and is a United States Senator for one year.  In 1813, President James Madison appoints Thomas Posey as Governor of the Indiana Territory though he loses the re-election in 1816.  After that loss he moves to Illinois in 1816 and becomes an Indian agent.  Thomas Posey eventually passes from typhus in 1818 and is buried in Shawneetown, Illinois.

      Thomas_Posey_Portrait

      John Bayless Hill, American, 1849-1874
      oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 26 3/16 (76.5 x 65.6)

      Posted in History, Wars | 2 Comments
    • Sligo as a Hospital

      Posted at 7:39 pm by Lauren Tepaske, on July 18, 2019

      To continue our lecture on the fact and fiction of Sligo we now turn to the hospital stories.  If you read the Works Progress Administration (WPA) report or any other articles regarding the house you will find that the previous home at Sligo was a Revolutionary War hospital, a hospital for the local Gunnery Factory, a smallpox hospital, a Civil War hospital, a hospital just for the sake of being a hospital, and a doll hospital because, why not?  That last bit isn’t true, just so you know (sarcasm can be hard to get across when writing).

      I have found a few definitive instances of Sligo being used as a smallpox hospital.  According to Quinn, in 1790 and 1792 the sick were quarantined at Sligo and attended to by a Dr. Brooke and Dr. Kerr (The History of the City of Fredericksburg Virginia, p. 66).  Also, Deaderick did use a legitimate source in her WPA report for Sligo when she cited Council Minutes from 22 June 1796:  “…the Overseers of the Poor be requested to rent the house at ‘Sligo,’ at present occupied as a hospital, to be used as such for one year, and that Dr. Kerr be requested to attend the said hospital when it shall be necessary” (WPA, Sligo – Site, 2 June 1937).  In a few of the reports it states that the house is unoccupied before being commissioned as a hospital and I am not sure what that means exactly.  It does, however, confirm my belief that some people owned the land but never lived there (that’s a post for another day as it is still very much a work in progress as I try to determine who was who and where and when and why and sometimes how).

      A third instance of the house being used as a hospital comes from the City of Fredericksburg’s Historic Court Records archive online (https://www.fredericksburgva.gov/998/Historic-Court-Records) and is written as follows:

      A notice issued this morning calling all the magistrates together to fix upon a site proper for the establishment of an hospital for the diseased with the smallpox, when it was unanimously agreed (present: Robert Lewis, Mayor; William Gordon, Recorder; William J. Roberts; John Hart; and, William Allen, J.P.) that the house now unoccupied belonging to John Ferneyhough near the banks of the Rappahannock below the Hazle Run be immediately prepared for the reception of the sick – that a guard of two men be employed to watch night & day alternately to prevent any communication with the neighborhood & town & to prevent all intercourse with the hospital unless it be by the nurse, physician & those who furnish diet to the sick. At a meeting of the Common Hall yesterday (Present: Thomas Goodwin; William Gordon; Robert Parrott; Henry T. Phillips; Robert Mackay; Joseph Walker; Charles Austin; and, Robert Ellis) to take into consideration the propriety of providing by appropriation for the sick & diseased with the smallpox in the natural way. It was ordered that one hundred dollars be set apart for the purpose & that the Mayor be directed to draw for the same at his discretion for the above purposes.

      I have yet to confirm if the house was truly used as a hospital during any of the wars it has witnessed.  During the Civil War in particular, I find it hard to believe that it was used as a hospital because the Union soldiers looted and ransacked the property after the Ferneyhoughs fled.  It’s also really only speculation that it was a doll hospital however, there were approximately nine little girls (perhaps more) born and raised at the property so one could assume it admitted quite a few injured dollies.  So, despite the concrete evidence for some of the mentions of the house as a hospital, it is safe to say that Sligo has seen it’s fair share of sickness and sadness.

      Posted in Grounds, History, Hospital, Main House, Wars | 1 Comment
    • Recent Posts

      • Preoccupied December 20, 2021
      • The “Haunting” of Sligo August 4, 2021
      • Rehabilitation Tax Credits April 27, 2021
      • Put Me in Blogger Jail April 6, 2021
      • Virginia Historic Registry and the National Landmark Registry August 6, 2020
      • My Good Boy, Axel July 14, 2020
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