by Adrian O'Connor, Winchester Star

On the evening of Oct. 15, 1864, Confederate signal masters along the Massanutten range excitedly wig-wagged a message to the army of Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early, camped near Fisher's Hill.

The message contained nothing of military import, but carried unabashed joy. It was meant specifically for one of Early's divisional commanders, Maj. Gen. Stephen Dodson Ramseur.

His beloved wife Nellie had just given birth.

Ramseur, 27, was not informed the baby was a girl, but she was soon to be christened Mary Dodson. Three days later, the proud father wrote out his will. And at dawn the next morning, Oct. 19, his troops struck hard and fast at Federal positions along Cedar Creek near Middletown.

Maj. Henry Kyd Douglas, with Ramseur on the morning of the attack, heard the general cry out as he led his men into battle, “Let's drive ‘em, Douglas, for I must get a furlough to see my little wife and new baby.”

Courtship

The Ramseurs' child was the blessed fruit of a classic Confederate love affair.

A native of Lincolnton, N.C., Ramseur was a dashing Rebel officer. The petite and pretty Ellen “Nellie” Richmond, of Milton, N.C., was his cousin.

As a teenager, Ramseur briefly attended school in Milton, a community hard by the Virginia line just southeast of Danville. Almost certainly, he made Nellie's acquaintance at that time, for he corresponded with her regularly during his days at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Yet, not until the fall of 1862, when he was recovering from a serious wound suffered in the ill-fated assault up Malvern Hill during the Seven Days Battles near Richmond earlier that spring, did he feel the first pangs of true love. To him, Nellie was his “long cherished ideal of womanly perfection. During his long convalescence, the newly minted brigadier general ardently courted the fair Nellie at Woodside, her family's home near Milton. “Desperately smitten,” so noted his biographer Gary Gallagher, Ramseur quickly proposed marriage. And Nellie accepted.

Convalescence

The war, however, intervened. By December 1862, his severely injured right arm still wrapped in a sling, Ramseur was back with the army. In his letter of Christmas Day, scrawled with his left, or opposite, hand, Ramseur conveyed his undying devotion to “the source of all my joys, how infinitely much I owe to you, how inexpressibly (sic) much I love you for all this newfound happiness.”

Come spring, he returned to the saddle, but eagerly anticipating a summer wedding, ached to return as well to Nellie, waiting for him at Woodside. “I must overcome these longings,” he wrote. “Duty, stern and high, must reign supreme.”

This “duty” called first at Chancellorsville, where his brigade marched with Stonewall Jackson on a flanking maneuver. Ramseur himself was wounded again, though not as seriously as at Malvern Hill. He was, however, temporarily transferred to Danville and, quite naturally, found his way to Milton, where he spent a blissful week with Nellie.

On The March

Memories of that week — the strolls about Woodside, the roses in full bloom throughout the rolling hills of Caswell County, her sweet face beaming in the moonlight — later filled Ramseur with desire, even as he was crossing the Potomac River with the Army of Northern Virginia, bound for Gettysburg.

Though his brigade was heavily involved, once again, in a tumultuous battle, Ramseur escaped the costly Confederate defeat unscathed. And while the army licked its wounds, his thoughts turned to Milton, where he hoped to wed Nellie in mid-September. The date of the ceremony was set for the 17th of that month.

But, with yet another Union army massing in Virginia along the Rappahannock River, poised to strike southward at the Confederate capital of Richmond, Ramseur, his leave papers in hand, felt compelled to remain with his men. “Ah me, this cruel, cruel war,” he wrote to Nellie.

Delayed Nuptials

As blessed fate would have it, no major engagement took place that fall, save for a brisk skirmish at Bristow Station. And so in late October, Ramseur boarded a fast train for Danville.

On Oct. 28, 1863, Dodson married Nellie at Woodside. The newlyweds honeymooned for three weeks in the mountains of North Carolina, where they visited the general's family and friends.

Then a cold, wet winter set in, all but guaranteeing a cessation of hostilities until the spring of 1864. This allowed Dodson and Nellie to pass three glorious months together as husband and wife. He engaged lodging for himself and his bride in a boardinghouse two miles from the Confederate camp on the Rapidan River. And just before leaving his side in the first week of April, Nellie told Dodson she was pregnant.

By early May, the fighting had resumed. Ramseur distinguished at Spotsylvania Court House, where he led a decisive counterattack, driving Union forces from a salient in the Confederate line known as the “Bloody Angle.” His exploits that day earned him a promotion to major general.

Blessed Event

Leading Early's old division, Ramseur marched west to the Valley with “Old Jube” and the Second Corps that summer and participated first in the small army's victories at Lynchburg, Monocacy, and Second Kernstown and then in its defeats at Third Winchester and Fisher's Hill.

But more was on his mind those early fall days than matters military. His wife was more than 200 miles ready to give birth to their first child. “As the day approaches,” he wrote, “I grow more and more anxious to be with you.

But these recent battles and defeats will render it almost impossible for me to leave this army. And then, on Oct. 16, the good news arrived.

Reunion

Three days later, in the swirling combat along Cedar Creek and around the Belle Grove plantation house, Ramseur saw two horses shot from under him. He secured a third, but just as he was mounting it, a bullet tore through his right side and passed through both of his lungs. Shortly thereafter, he was captured and taken to Belle Grove, the Union headquarters.

A Union physician and a captured Confederate surgeon pronounced the wound fatal, and Ramseur was given large doses of laudanum to blunt the pain.

Friends from West Point, Union officers Henry Du Pont and George Armstrong Custer, rushed to his deathbed, but Ramseur drifted in and out consciousness, at times calling for Nellie and the baby.

Carrying On

At 10:20 the following morning, Oct. 20, Ramseur died. His assistant adjutant, R.R. Hutchinson, wrote to Nellie: “He told me to tell you that he had a firm hope in Christ and trusted to meet you hereafter. He died as became a Confederate soldier and a firm believer.”

He was laid to rest in Lincolnton. Later, in 1869, the town of Columbia, N.C., was renamed Ramseur in his memory.

For her part, Nellie Richmond Ramseur never remarried and, for the remainder of her life, wore the widow's black. She died in 1900.

As for Mary Dodson, she never married, but, in time, became an art instructor at Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C.

And, on Sept. 16, 1920, she came to the Valley to dedicate a memorial to her father, sponsored by the North Carolina Historical Commission, at the head of the drive leading to Belle Grove.

The memorial still stands.

Sources: "Stephen Dodson Ramseur: Lee's Gallant General, " by Gary Gallagher, “I Rode With Stonewall,” by Henry Kyd Douglas, “The Guns of Cedar Creek,” by Thomas A. Lewis.