Over the past two years the Richmond Battlefields Association has contributed a staggering $275,000 towards the successful effort to preserve the Glendale/Frayser's Farm battlefield. This extraordinarily important crossroads - site of one of the Seven Days battles in July 1862 - has been an elusive goal of preservationists for many years. Now enough of this battlefield has been preserved that the possibility exists to combine it with other National Park Service holdings along the Willis Road corridor to create a major new Seven Days park encompassing Glendale and Malvern Hill.
This success is the culmination of extensive efforts by the RBA and the Civil War Preservation Trust, and it illustrates the collaborative relationship between these two entities. The RBA and the CWPT have worked together throughout their mutual existence. The CWPT has the financial and logistical resources of a national organization. The RBA is smaller but has "boots on the ground". We have spent years developing relationships with local landowners and educating them about battlefield preservation.
In this case we were fortunate. Much of the Glendale battlefield has long been in the hands of a local family, and they have been good stewards of the property. Though now it is more heavily forested and crossed by a power line right-of-way, the battlefield is otherwise unchanged from its condition in the summer of 1862.
The first parcel to become available was 40 acres on Long Bridge Road. This property was the location of intense hand-to-hand fighting over Randol's Union battery, eventually captured and held by the 47th Virginia Infantry of Field's Brigade. The 47th also captured a Union division commander -- General George McCall -- and Gen. George Meade was seriously wounded nearby, possibly by a shot fired from this location. Though he went on to command the Army of the Potomac Meade's death in 1872 was attributed to liver damage from this wound. The landowner had formerly been a Boy Scout under one of the RBA board members. When he was ready to sell the CWPT was at hand with the resources needed to get the job done. Ultimately the RBA partnered with the CWPT and contributed one-quarter of the cost -- $175,000.
But the deal came at an awkward time for CWPT, which had just sent out several appeals for other large and worthy projects. According to CWPT president Jim Lighthizer, "As we finalized negotiations, we immediately reached out to our good friends in the local preservation
community, the Richmond Battlefields Association to see if they could help. These heroic stalwarts jumped at the opportunity to help save this ground, and earlier this month, committed to putting up fully ¼ of the total cost into this deal, a tremendously generous $175,000. Those good folks will be paying significant portions of the second and third installment payments, and I am deeply grateful to them."
That created critical momentum for battlefield preservation in the Glendale area while all around bulldozers pushed splintered gashes into the surrounding woods and houses began to spring up. 2007 brought the big prize. The CWPT put together a deal on three parcels of land comprising 322 acres in the core of the battlefield, the main area of fighting where James Longstreet and A.P.Hill very nearly broke through the defensive line to interdict the Union retreat down Willis Church Road. (Some of you may remember the RBA's 2004 annual meeting, which featured a tour of this part of the Glendale battlefield.) The deal was finalized at a throat-clearing price tag of $4.1 million. The RBA contributed another $100,000 to the effort, which was used to create a matching fund for the CWPT's Glendale campaign. In 2007 the RBA also was a recipient of the CWPT's presentation of the Brian Pohanka Preservation Organization of the Year Award.
The National Park Service has recently announced its intent to purchase the Glendale acquisitions from the CWPT.
Today the RBA and the CWPT continue to enjoy a complementary relationship that draws on the strengths of each.
