8 The Rappahannock Valley Garden Club
JACKSON SHRINE
1
12019 “Stonewall” Jackson Rd
Woodford 22580
In this quiet place, the shuffling of visitors
competes only with the clock ticking on the mantel.
It’s the same clock Jackson heard as he lay here dying
of pneumonia, which set in after the amputation of
his shattered left arm at Chancellorsville in May
1863. The building that stands today was a farm
office on Thomas Chandler’s Fairfield Plantation.
When Jackson and his ambulance arrived here on
May 4, 1863, his doctor, Hunter McGuire, deemed
the main house too noisy and busy for Jackson.
Instead, he put Jackson in the farm office. The clock
on the mantel counted the last moments of Jackson’s
life on May 10, 1863. Chandler’s house and the other
outbuildings that once surrounded the building are
gone. The farm office stands alone, managed by the
National Park Service. As they have since Ulysses
Grant visited here in 1864, visitors come from
around the world.