The Gray Ghost of Great Falls

Boom! A single canon shot rang out, breaking the early idyllic silence. Residents of the small town of Falls Church, Virginia and surrounding areas could hear the battles from their own homes. They were only miles away from many key battle sites, such as Fairfax Court House and The Battle of Vienna, both Confederate victories during June 1861. Located in the infamous region of Mosby’s Triangle, the area was full of marching troops from Col. John S. Mosby’s army.

Colonel John Singleton Mosby led the 43rd battalion of the Virginia Cavalry, known as Mosby’s Raiders. Mosby was born to an old Virginia family in Powhatan County, Virginia on December 6, 1833. He attended University of Virginia and studied law while in jail. He said, “My father was a slaveholder and I still a strong affection for the slaves who nursed and played with me in my childhood. That the prevailing sentiment in the South not peculiar to myself but one prevailing in all South toward an institution which we now thank Abraham Lincoln for abolishing.” in his autobiography The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby.

The name “Gray Ghost” did not come from nothing. Northern newspapers called him a variety of names; “the devil,” “rebel assassin” and “marauding highway man” are just some. However, in the South he was hailed a hero, and many people are said to have named children after him. One woman is said to have been asked by a Union general if Mosby was there. She answered yes, and he returned with troops. When he asked to see Mosby, she showed him her newborn son, saying “That’s Mosby sir.” “All historic doubts about my own existence, I believe, have been settled,” Mosby once wrote in response to people who claimed he was a myth. Considering how many stories were written about him, some true and some false, this isn’t surprising at all. He also said, “It isn’t necessary that any history should be written; let the story tellers invent it all.”

Mosby supposedly once shot a man he was having an argument with.

Similarly to himself, his area of operation was also given a variety of nicknames. They ranged from “Mosby’s Confederacy” to “The Trap.”

We know for a fact that he hung Union spies from the notorious Hangman’s Tree after the local Battle of Peach Orchard. The Hangman’s Tree was an old pin oak located on the intersection of W.