This 1866 photo shows Rev. Melzi S. Chancellor and six members of his family outside Dowdall’s Tavern.
American Antiquarian Society
In the spring of 1863, the Civil War arrived at the doorstep of the Rev. and Mrs. Melzi S. Chancellor and their 11 children. The family lived in a large home known as Dowdall’s Tavern, having formerly been such an establishment, on Orange Plank Road in Spotsylvania County, Virginia.
The house, which was located behind Union lines, served as the headquarters of XI Corps commander Oliver Otis Howard during the Battle of Chancellorsville. After Stonewall Jackson’s fearsome flank attack on the engagement’s second day, panicked Union troops fled across Chancellor’s property. Some of the men demanded shelter, and although the Baptist circuit preacher was an ardent Confederate sympathizer (three of his sons served in Virginia regiments during the conflict), he directed them to his cellar before securing the door. Confederate troops arrived soon thereafter and took 30 of them prisoner.
The Chancellor family escaped the battle unscathed. The following year, Melzi was arrested by federal authorities and confined for six months at Fort Delaware as a “citizen hostage.” After his release, he resumed his work as a minister. In the early 1880s he and his wife moved to Fredericksburg, where he died in 1895.
This 1866 photo shows Chancellor and six members of his family outside Dowdall’s Tavern, around which the Battle of Chancellorsville had raged three years earlier. The young boy at his feet appears to be Melzi Jr., the family’s 11th child, who was born in 1859.
Bob Zeller is president of the nonprofit Center for Civil War Photography, which is devoted to collecting, preserving, and digitizing Civil War images.
