Welcome to the Best Farm here at Monocacy National Battlefield.
Now, the Best structure was actually built in the late eighteenth century
by the Vincendière family, they had fled to the Haitian and also
the French revolutions and had come to the United States by way of Baltimore. Now the
Vincendière's, they're actually going to try to
recreate the plantation society that they had
in Haiti. They would build this very large dwelling
in stages and they're also going to have a significantly
large slave population. Upwards to ninety enslaved individuals would be here at
this site throughout the years. If you would like to know more about the Vincendière and
enslaved individuals here at the Best Farm, check out the Monocacy Moments
video series in the multimedia tab of our website.
Now in front of you would have been about three hundred Union
skirmishers made up from three different regiments. The Nineth New York Heavy Artillery,
the First Maryland Potomac Home Brigade and the Tenth Vermont Infantry. These
Union soldiers will be the troops that received the Confederate advance first.
Those Confederates are going to be pushing right down the Georgetown Pike, what is today modern Three Fifty Five.
Pushing
southward, they're going to begin to slowly drive those Union troops back
across these fields
through the Best property where we are now at.
Now, as those skirmishers are pushed off the immediate area of the fields in our
front, Confederate guns are going to begin taking postion on the high ground.
These twelve pound Napoleons, again out there on the high ground, are going to help drive
the Federals from this part of the battlefield pushing them back to immediately behind you
in the railroad cut of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
These Union skirmishers will hold on within the railroad cut for much of the rest of the
day, eventually be driven down towards the
two bridges themselves. Both the wooden covered bridge and the
iron railroad bridge of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
Heading this direction is Confederate Infantry specifically
their sharpshooters, moving from north to south, pushing across the
Best Farm fields towards the farm buildings of Best Farm.
Now, today we have the main house and the secondary structures,
but eighteen sixty four off to the north of the main house would
have been another barn, a barn there is no longer there. It was actually
burned during the battle by Union artillery fire.
What's going to happen is, is that those Confederate Sharpshooters will get up into the barn.
They will begin picking off the Union artillerymen,
the artillerymen initially can't even tell where the
fire is coming from, until one of their officers will see puffs of smoke coming out
from underneath the tiles of the barn that would've been behind me. Now this
barn, the artillerymen would later write, that once they drew
fire upon it, first a shell then a second and third
burst within it and soon we had the pleasure of seeing several of them,
meaning the sharpshooters, being carried away on a litter. That
barn was burned down due to the fire of these artillery shells.
With Union infantry resisting as hard as they are here around the area of
the Best Farm, Confederate forces need to find another way to get
across the Monocacy River. By doing so they're going to shift
west trying to find a way to flank this Federal line.
This movement will cause
Lew Wallace to make a drastic decision about the bridges over the Monocacy.
That bridge in the distance today carries route three fifty-five across
the Monocacy River. During the battle nearby was a wooden covered bridge that
carried the Georgetown Pike. That bridge, along with an iron railroad bridge,
were two major roots of transportation that
Lew Wallace was attempting to defend during the battle here on July Nineth.
Across the river from us
are those three hundred or so Union soldiers from New York and Vermont and the
Maryland Potomac Home Brigade, led by Lieutenant George Davis. Davis
is trying to defend that covered bridge. When Jubal Early shifts
his attention due west along the same river to ford it,
Lew Wallace, whose up here on the high ground around us, is going to make a decision to
burn that covered bridge and shift his full attention towards the Worthington attacks.
When Lew Wallace burns that covered bridge word is sent to the far side of
the river and many of the soldiers that are with Davis will retreat to our side of the river
here, leaving though George Davis
and a band of soldiers from the Tenth Vermont Infantry, around seventy five or so men
that will be left guarding now the railroad bridge across the river.
Attention is going to shift from this covered bridge, Davis now
falling back to hold that railroad bridge against a full Confederate division. While the
threat has changed to the west, Davis still
has to contend with thousands of Confederate soldiers coming out of Frederick against him.