This Shenandoah Valley farmhouse tells Virginia’s most heartbreaking war story

The Bushong House turns 200

You can stand in the cellar of a 200-year-old farmhouse in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and look out the same small windows where a family once watched soldiers fighting across their wheat fields. The Bushong House in New Market has survived two centuries, but one day in 1864 changed everything.

That spring, Confederate forces sent teenage military cadets charging through the mud outside this home, and some of them never came back. The farmhouse still stands, and the story it holds goes deeper than most battlefield tours will tell you.

German settlers put down roots in the valley

German Mennonite and Lutheran families started arriving in the New Market area as early as 1727. Scots-Irish immigrants came later, and the mix created a rough frontier community where everybody farmed.

The town started as a crossroads, literally. Major north-south and east-west routes met here, and people called it Cross Roads until Virginia’s General Assembly gave it the name New Market in December 1796.

The Bushongs were part of this German farming tradition, raising wheat, oats, cattle, hogs, and horses on land their family had worked for generations.

Jacob Bushong built a home for his growing family

Jacob Bushong married Sarah Strickler in 1818, and seven years later, he built a Federal-style farmhouse for her and their children. The land had been in the family since 1791, when Jacob’s father Henry, first patented it.

By 1864, three generations of Bushongs lived on the property, six children in all, plus their parents and grandparents. An 1852 expansion added double porches to fit everyone.

You can still see the bones of that original house today, preserved exactly where Jacob put it down.

A self-sufficient farm with an inventor’s workshop

The Bushong farm ran on its own steam in the 1850s. The family grew what they ate and fixed what they broke.

Harrison Bushong, one of Jacob’s sons, had a gift for mechanics. He designed and built a wheat threshing machine in the 1840s that neighbors came to see.

When folks had broken wheels or busted tools, they brought them to Harrison’s shop. The family worked the land alongside three enslaved people: a man, a woman named Mary, and a boy named Israel.

The Shenandoah Valley fed the Confederate Army

People called the Shenandoah Valley the Breadbasket of the Confederacy, and they meant it. The region grew food for Southern armies and gave Confederate troops a route to invade the North.

By spring 1864, Union General Ulysses S. Grant wanted that supply line cut. He ordered Major General Franz Sigel to take about 6,000 Federal soldiers up the Valley toward Staunton.

Confederate General John C. Breckinridge scrambled to gather whatever forces he could find. He had only a few thousand troops, and he needed more bodies fast.

Teenage cadets marched 85 miles to fight

On May 10, 1864, Breckinridge sent an urgent message to the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. He needed the cadet corps.

All 257 of them. Some of these boys were 15 years old. Their colonel, Scott Shipp, was only in his twenties.

The cadets marched 85 miles north in their clean uniforms, and when they reached the Confederate lines, veteran soldiers mocked them for looking like they had never seen a fight. They were about to.

Rain turned the battlefield to mud

Union and Confederate forces met at New Market on May 15, 1864. Rain had fallen for days, and the roads and fields had turned to thick mud.

Sigel set his troops on high ground north of town while Breckinridge attacked from the south, pushing toward the Bushong farm. Heavy cannon and rifle fire tore into the Confederate line.

Breckinridge kept the cadets in reserve at first, hoping he could win without sending teenagers into that fire. He ran out of options.

Seven family members hid in the cellar

Seven Bushongs took shelter in their sturdy cellar that Sunday morning.

Jacob and Sarah, their son Anderson, his wife Elizabeth, and three others huddled below while cannons boomed and muskets cracked for hours above them.

Through the cellar windows, they watched soldiers fighting across their wheat fields. Smoke filled the air, and the battle raged all around their home.

When the fighting finally stopped, the family climbed out to find their house still standing with little damage.

The mud sucked the shoes off their feet

A gap opened in the Confederate battle line near the Bushong orchard, and Breckinridge had no reserves left except the boys. He reportedly said he could not expose them to such fire, but he had no choice.

The cadets charged across the muddy, rain-soaked field toward Union positions. The mud was so thick it sucked the shoes right off their feet as they ran.

That section of the battlefield became known as the Field of Lost Shoes, and the name stuck.

Ten cadets died proving themselves

The cadets helped close the gap and pushed back Union forces. Sigel ordered a retreat, and Federal troops fled north across the Shenandoah River.

The Confederates won the battle and delayed Union control of the Valley. Ten VMI cadets were killed or later died of their wounds.

Fifty-seven more were wounded in the fighting.

The boys had proven themselves in one of the war’s most unusual engagements, and the school has never forgotten them.

The farmhouse became a hospital

After the guns went quiet, the Bushong house became a hospital. Wounded soldiers from both armies filled the rooms.

Sarah Bushong organized the care and kept a ledger of every patient who came through.

The family moved back down to the cellar while soldiers recovered upstairs, some staying for weeks as their wounds healed.

When it was over, the Bushongs had to rebuild their lives in the war’s aftermath, but they kept farming that same land.

A VMI graduate saved the battlefield

The Bushong family continued farming the land until 1942. Two years later, George Randall Collins, a VMI graduate, purchased the property.

When he died in 1964, he willed the farm and a $3 million endowment to his alma mater.

VMI established the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park on the site and built the Virginia Museum of the Civil War in a distinctive rotunda building.

Today, the park preserves 300 acres, including the core battlefield and the original farmhouse.

Walk the field where the cadets charged

The Bushong House has been restored to look exactly as it did in 1864. Nine reconstructed outbuildings show you how a Shenandoah Valley farm operated back then.

You can walk the same battlefield where the cadets charged through the mud, and the museum shows the Emmy-winning film Field of Lost Shoes every hour.

Every May 15, VMI cadets gather at their campus to commemorate the battle. A cadet calls out the names of the fallen, and another answers: Died on the Field of Honor.

Explore New Market Battlefield in Virginia

The park sits at 8895 George Collins Parkway in New Market, Virginia, and stays open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except major holidays. Admission runs $12 for adults, $10 for seniors 65 and up, and $7 for children ages 5 to 12.

You can drive here in about two hours from Washington, D.C., and the exit off Interstate 81 puts you right at the entrance.

Special events include Christmas on the Farm, where you can experience 1850s holiday traditions with the Bushong family’s story as your backdrop.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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