The Weir cemetery at the bottom of the hill is shaded by a lugubrious tree in the corner, leaning at a 45-degree angle and exposing its roots like a trailing mantle, delivering the nutrients of plant life. Not even sunshine can make this tree look inviting in this symphony of early spring colors.
If Liberia House
could talk, it would enumerate an endless list of famous and ordinary Americans
who have walked through its doors: Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln, Gen. P.G.T.
Beauregard, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, Gen. Irvin McDowell, and countless unknown
soldiers who were wounded in the Civil War and sought refuge and care in Liberia.
The house was
built in 1925 by W. J. Weir on land formerly owned by “King” Carter. It was
Gen. Beauregard’s headquarters from May 1861 until after the First Battle of
Manassas, July 21, 1861.
According to archives, Jefferson Davis “watched the First Battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861, and then came here to Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard’s headquarters to meet with him and Gen. Joseph E. Johnston before returning to Richmond on July 23. Lincoln came here with his Secretary of War on June 19, 1862, to visit Gen. Irvin McDowell, who was recovering after his horse fell on him.”
During restoration of Liberia, numerous signatures were found on the walls on the second floor, written by Union soldiers stationed here. They wanted to be remembered; that they were alive in that moment in time. A graffiti from March or August 1862, written by Pvt. Adam McKelvey, Co. G. 12th Pennsylvania Infantry Reserve Regiment, can be found among others who signed their names for posterity, knowing that death was stalking them.
Liberia was
the place where the Weir family raised their children and grandchildren. The plantation
was so vast, it encompassed most of the land of Manassas today. There were
slaves in bondage here, and “a beer baron from Alexandria operated a dairy farm
on the property.”
An archive photograph from 1862 shows Liberia with an intact kitchen wing on the right. The museum curators believe that it was probably destroyed during the war and never rebuilt.
Liberia’s owners, William James Weir, and Harriet had planted daffodils alongside the
front walk of the house. A photograph from March 1862 shows the yellow blooms
when the house was occupied by Union troops. The daffodils somehow survived the
encampment of two armies amid the Civil War.
The
Turberville Memorial Garden today is planted with common plants in Virginia
that are supporting pollinators of the current apiary.
William J. Weir complained to Confederate soldiers early in the war about the loss of his fruit trees. In 1863, an edition of Harpers New Monthly Magazine reported that Weir was said to have been ‘shut up in the guardhouse for saying, as he witnessed his fruit trees being made into firewood, that he didn’t know as he would be used any worse by the Yankees than he had been by those who professed to be his friends’.
Private
George Bagby of Virginia’s 11th Infantry wrote in 1861 during his
time in Liberia: “At night I would walk out in the garden and brood over the
possible result of this slow way of making war. The garden looked toward the
battlefield. At times I thought I detected the odor of the carcasses, lightly
buried there; at others I fancied I heard weird and doleful cries borne on the
night wind.” (Museum Archives)
The Weir family owned 2,000 acres of farmland and forest so far from settled areas that it required barns, a dairy, a gristmill, a laundry, a kitchen, slave quarters, a school, a general store, and a post office. The labor to maintain such a vast plantation was provided by “enslaved and white laborers and skilled craftsmen, alongside members of the Weir family.” They lived here for thirty-six years.
During the Civil War, the family was divided. William did not want secession, but his three sons served in the Confederate Army. The family moved to Fluvanna County. Walter inherited the property after his father’s death in 1867 but the farm never returned to its pre-war wealth.
Before the City of Manassas acquired the property in 1986, records show that:
1. The property owned by William Weir
encompassed most of modern-day Manassas (1825-1888) – Library of Congress
2. Liberia was a dairy farm when owned
by Alexandria businessman Robert Portner (1888-1947); the Portners never lived
on the property – Manassas Museum
Collection
3. Liberia was owned by the Breeden
family (1947-1986) – Manassas Museum Collection
There is
evidence from an ad placed in 1847 in the Alexandria Gazette that William Weir
operated the Liberia Mathematical and Classical School on the premises. A donation to the museum of a math exam with
the words at the top of the page, ‘Liberia School,’ became further evidence of
the school’s existence.
The Weir Cemetery appears too close to the house; that is because it was moved here in 1989 from its original site, Point of Woods East/Lakeside. With the family’s permission, 24 graves and headstones were moved by specialists at the Smithsonian Institution according to the original burial plans and plots. The exhumation revealed that only Walter’s remains were well preserved because he was buried in a cast iron coffin with a glass viewing pane. Walter’s body was so well preserved that forensic analysis revealed that “he died from an infection, likely caused by an abscessed tooth.”
Note: Museum archive photos are black and white, color photographs: Ileana Johnson April 2023
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