Was the Brawner Farm House Standing During the Battle? What Archeology Found

The house at Brawner Farm may not be the house that stood during the Second Battle of Manassas. Archeologists digging around it found the foundation of an earlier house, and evidence that the one standing today was probably moved to the farm after the fighting. The National Park Service tells the story of the farm and what lay in its ground.

The fight at the farm

On the evening of August 28, 1862, Union troops marching along the Warrenton Turnpike (now US 29) toward Centreville came under Confederate artillery fire. Brigadier General John Gibbon sent his 2nd Wisconsin regiment up the hill to silence the guns, and found instead two lines of Confederate infantry advancing across the field: the Stonewall Brigade, first of six brigades Stonewall Jackson sent against the Federal forces. Gibbon brought up the rest of his men, with the 19th Indiana on his left, anchored on the farm house the Douglas family owned and John Brawner leased. For about 90 minutes, until after dark, the two lines stood 70 to 80 yards apart and shot it out. Gibbon called it the most intense musketry fire he heard in the entire war. Toward the end, Virginia troops of Alexander Taliaferro's brigade took the farm house, and the Federals fell back toward Brawner's Woods. Second Manassas went on for two more days and ended in a convincing Confederate victory.

What the ground holds

Dropped bullets and spent percussion caps that mark the positions of the 19th Indiana. NPS.

The line the 19th Indiana held is marked by dropped, unfired .58 caliber bullets and spent percussion caps. It runs east from the north foundation wall of the original house and west to the kitchen that stood in the yard 50 feet from it. Fired bullets lie all around the yard, many smashed against stone foundations or trees. US military buttons, one with the Wisconsin coat of arms, show where Union soldiers stood. Dozens of artillery shell fragments and pieces of case shot show the house came under heavy fire, and bullets and shells from units not in action on August 28 show fighting at the farm on the 29th or 30th.

Sabot and shell base from a 3-inch Dyer shell. NPS.

The farm and its people

George Tennille founded the farm around 1800. When his widow Sarah died in 1846, the house, 326 acres and six enslaved people passed to their grandson George Douglas, who died of typhoid fever in 1855 at 36. His young widow went to live with her mother, and the farm was rented out. John C. Brawner, the tenant at the time of the war, moved there in 1857 with his wife Jane and their eight children, five of whom lived at home in 1860. The Brawners did not own slaves. William Davis bought the farm in 1895 and made major improvements in 1904, and it stayed in the Davis family until the Park Service acquired it in 1985.

Two houses

Foundations of an earlier house partly under the site of the house that stands today. NPS.

The standing house was built in two stages: the first floor of the northern part is older than the southern wing, built around 1904. Architects say the older part used techniques common before 1800 and handmade nails, which became rare after about 1820. But archeologists found an earlier foundation, from a house built around 1800 that measured about 24 by 31 feet, with its north wall about 10 feet north of the present house. There is no sign that it burned, and no record of a major change on the farm between 1800 and 1904. No bullets or shell fragments have been found in the frame of the standing house, though the fighting around it was so intense there should have been some. So the earlier house probably stood at the time of the battle, and the standing one, with its old building methods, was most likely moved from another site after the battle.

The kitchen pit

When the Park Service acquired the farm, the yard west of the house was a tangled thicket. Clearing it revealed a pile of stone and brick, and digging exposed a massive stone chimney base, 5 by 10 feet, and unmortared foundation stones. A chimney that large served an important outbuilding, a kitchen, a slave quarter or, most likely, both. A root cellar and other pits held Civil War artifacts and hundreds of pieces of pottery and glass, mostly from before the war. The building seems to have been badly damaged in the fighting and demolished soon after, its pits filled in. They give a picture of life on the farm before the war: tools, dishes, jewelry, children's toys and many objects probably used by enslaved people, such as handmade colonoware pottery and worn bits of pottery or glass used as gaming counters.

Jewelry pieces from the Brawner Farm site. NPS.

Three clay marbles (bottom center) and five water-worn pieces of glass and pottery possibly used as gaming counters by enslaved African Americans (top center). NPS.

Sources

• National Park Service, Manassas National Battlefield Park, Archeology at Brawner Farm; rewritten in hubnx's own words.