Virginia Lomax and John Mosby graves

[Susan Higginbotham]

While scouting around Virginia this weekend looking for a likely place to move, I stopped by Warrenton Cemetery and took some pictures (or, rather, my husband took some pictures).

Below is the tombstone for Virginia Lomax and her sisters, as well as that of their brother Lindsay Lunsford Lomax. Virginia was imprisoned at the Old Capitol around the same time as Mary Surratt and shared a cell with Nora Fitzpatrick for a short time. After the war, Virginia taught school in Baltimore for a while, then moved to Warrenton, where she and her sisters operated an academy for young ladies. (The building where the academy was located still stands, but has been so heavily remodeled it is unrecognizable from the days where Virginia lived there.)

Anne Green, the first of the sisters listed on the tombstone, was married to Thomas Green, whose connections with David Preston Parr and John Surratt brought him under suspicion after the assassination. It was probably Virginia's relationship to the Greens, who were also imprisoned after the assassination, that got Virginia into trouble, although this was not her first arrest for disloyalty. It didn't help matters that the ladies' brother, Lindsay Lunsford Lomax, was a major general in the Conderate army.





This gentleman needs no introduction:



Thomas Green is also buried at Warrenton Cemetery. He spent his last few years at the Government Hospital for the Insane (St. Elizabeths), where he died in 1883. I don't know whether his grave is marked.

[BettyO]

You should move to Warrenton, Susan - or Paris, VA. Both wonderful places....Thanks for the photos! I notice that General Lindsay Lunsford Lomax was married to Elizabeth Winter Payne. She was a kinsman of Bette Winter Meredith on her mother's side. Bette was Lew Powell's Virginia girlfriend. He gave her his diary and photograph before he left Northern VA to join the conspiracy kidnap plot. As late as 1906, the diary and photo still existed. Don't know what happened to them, as Mr. Hall attempted to find out through one of Bette's surviving sons, but nothing ever came of it. I have her will, but it's not listed in that. I'm still digging around.... Bette and her husband, Captain Robert Howson Hooe are buried in the very same cemetery.

   

[L Verge]

Virginia Lomax also wrote a wonderful book called Leaves from an Old Washington Diary. And, I think I'm right on this that the Greens lived in the old Van Ness Mansion and it was thought that the captured Lincoln might first be taken into hiding there. There was supposedly an underground passage that led out to the nearby Potomac. The Pan American Union building and Constitution Hall now stand where the mansion once stood.

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post...ess-house/

[L Verge]

(11-30-2015 10:01 AM)L Verge Wrote:  Virginia Lomax also wrote a wonderful book called Leaves from an Old Washington Diary. And, I think I'm right on this that the Greens lived in the old Van Ness Mansion and it was thought that the captured Lincoln might first be taken into hiding there. There was supposedly an underground passage that led out to the nearby Potomac. The Pan American Union building and Constitution Hall now stand where the mansion once stood.

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post...ess-house/

Oops, I apologize for giving you bad information. Virginia Lomax did not write Leaves from an Old Washington Diary. That was written by Elizabeth Lindsay Lomax (maybe of the generation before Virginia's??).

[Susan Higginbotham]

(11-30-2015 07:00 PM)L Verge Wrote:  

(11-30-2015 10:01 AM)L Verge Wrote:  Virginia Lomax also wrote a wonderful book called Leaves from an Old Washington Diary. And, I think I'm right on this that the Greens lived in the old Van Ness Mansion and it was thought that the captured Lincoln might first be taken into hiding there. There was supposedly an underground passage that led out to the nearby Potomac. The Pan American Union building and Constitution Hall now stand where the mansion once stood.

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post...ess-house/

Oops, I apologize for giving you bad information. Virginia Lomax did not write Leaves from an Old Washington Diary. That was written by Elizabeth Lindsay Lomax (maybe of the generation before Virginia's??).

You're half right! Elizabeth was Virginia's mother. The bulk of the book consists of Elizabeth's diary, but there are also a few excerpts from a diary that Virginia kept after the war.

[L Verge]

(11-30-2015 07:32 PM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  

(11-30-2015 07:00 PM)L Verge Wrote:  

(11-30-2015 10:01 AM)L Verge Wrote:  Virginia Lomax also wrote a wonderful book called Leaves from an Old Washington Diary. And, I think I'm right on this that the Greens lived in the old Van Ness Mansion and it was thought that the captured Lincoln might first be taken into hiding there. There was supposedly an underground passage that led out to the nearby Potomac. The Pan American Union building and Constitution Hall now stand where the mansion once stood.

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post...ess-house/

Oops, I apologize for giving you bad information. Virginia Lomax did not write Leaves from an Old Washington Diary. That was written by Elizabeth Lindsay Lomax (maybe of the generation before Virginia's??).

You're half right! Elizabeth was Virginia's mother. The bulk of the book consists of Elizabeth's diary, but there are also a few excerpts from a diary that Virginia kept after the war.

Thanks, Susan. It's good having you as my wing man to keep me on a straight flight pattern through history!

[Gene C]

You were close Laurie. Virginia Lomax wrote "Leaves From the Old Capitol Prison Diary" which was changed by the publisher to
"the Old Capitol and it's Inmates"

https://archive.org/details/oldcapitolitsinm00loma

[L Verge]

(12-01-2015 07:50 AM)Gene C Wrote:  You were close Laurie. Virginia Lomax wrote "Leaves From the Old Capitol Prison Diary" which was changed by the publisher to
"the Old Capitol and it's Inmates"

https://archive.org/details/oldcapitolitsinm00loma

Yes, I know, Gene. I believe I have her book in my collection as well as her mother's. Lots of familiar family names in both for those whose family history goes back to the antebellum days in D.C., Maryland, and the upper regions of Virginia. The Lomax family tree is draped in many old, old names in the area.

[maharba]

I have tried off and on over the years to discover the genealogy origins (if any) of the Singleton middle name of Mosby. Several older folks had been claiming in correspondence to 'have the connection and would send it on'
to me. But never quite got around to it --if they ever really had such a connection.

[L Verge]

Following traditions of that time (and especially in the South), there's a good chance that Singleton was his mother's maiden name??

---

(12-02-2015 07:28 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Following traditions of that time (and especially in the South), there's a good chance that Singleton was his mother's maiden name??

John was named for his paternal grandfather - another John Singleton Mosby. From his memoirs, "My grandfather Mosby was also a native of Powhatan. He lived at Gibraltar, but moved to Nelson County, where my father, Alfred D. Mosby, was born. When I was a child my father bought a farm near Charlottesville,"

His memoirs have a picture of him at age 55, which I had never seen before.

[RJNorton]

(12-02-2015 07:28 PM)L Verge Wrote:  His memoirs have a picture of him at age 55, which I had never seen before.

The photo was a new one to me, also. I tried to find it on the Internet, and there is one (at least the one I think you mean) on the Son of the South website. It is on this page.

[L Verge]

(12-03-2015 04:58 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(12-02-2015 07:28 PM)L Verge Wrote:  His memoirs have a picture of him at age 55, which I had never seen before.

The photo was a new one to me, also. I tried to find it on the Internet, and there is one (at least the one I think you mean) on the Son of the South website. It is on this page.

Thanks for finding the same photo that is in the Mosby memoirs. I tried to transfer it to the forum, but couldn't. I also enjoy learning from the Son of the South website. I had not seen the photo of Mosby at 80 that is shown on that page either.