Fort AP Hill

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Explore this website to learn about the history of Fort A. P. Hill military installation located in Caroline County, Virginia.  The impact of the creation of this installation changed the future of hundreds of families whose ancestors had lived on their "home places"  some since colonial times.  Purcell's family was forced to move to an adjoining county where they lived in a house across the Rappahannock River in Warsaw. From there they moved to Emmorton and from there they moved to Howerton's, Virginia in Essex County. Howerton's  was not much more than a post office and a general store. The area is now called Dunnsville,

http://www.aphill.army.mil/                          

Ambrose P. Hill      click to enlarge
    Areas closer to route 17 can be visited with special permission and an escort. Range and impact areas cannot be visited because of the danger of unexploded ordinance since this area is an armament test ground.  Nothing in the way of buildings, farms or cemeteries exists any longer. Some older residents try to recognize road intersections and the area of Brandywine is identifiable by landmarks. The grid numbered 27 would be the approximate location to look for the old homeplace. All of the original markers and road names have been removed or have deteriorated through time.
Souvenir hunters will meet with stiff penalties. It was not unusual for relatives to come back after the war looking for evidence of the old homeplace and any artifacts left behind. Nearly 60 years later people are still doing just that. If you know where to look, one can find a familiar landmark near a stream, an old oak tree or a bed of flowers still growing in a garden no longer tended. One can try to imagine what it must have been like.

Even the family cemeteries were moved to one central location called Greenlawn Cemetery next to Fort A.P. Hill on Rt. 301. Family members identified the bodies as best they knew and a map was made of each cemetery as it was originally laid out. If there was one good thing that came from this tremendous upheaval, it was the relocation and identification of deceased relatives who would have, in many cases, been long forgotten. So many of the graves had no permanent markers.

 

Map of A.P. Hill

                     

 
 Mica High School - now part of Fort A. P. Hill - graduation class of 1940?  Front of the old Mica High School