By Tom Perry
Many people helped save the Laurel Hill Farm, the birthplace of James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart. Here is the story of two historians who helped us in those early years and encouraged us to tell the many histories of the site. In the last book about Laurel Hill’s Many Histories, I wrote about the assistance that James I. Robertson, Jr., of Virginia Tech gave us, and, continuing that, I wanted to share what Robert K. Krick and Gary Gallagher both did for us.
I first met both of these historians at the Stonewall Jackson House in Lexington, Virginia, in the early 1990s. I told them what we were trying to do, and they both embraced the idea, as they were both involved in the preservation of Civil War battlefields across the country through the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites (APCWS).
Robert Kenneth Krick was the Head Historian at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park for 30 years, beginning in 1972, after working at Fort McHenry and Fort Necessity in the National Park Service. I believe that Bob Krick knows more about Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia than any human alive today.
On the day I met Bob, he had just published Stonewall Jackson at Cedar, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1990. When he discovered that I had graduated from Virginia Tech, his eyes lit up, and a wry grin came across his face. He told me to look up Virginia Tech in the index of his book. When I did just that, I found a mention of James H. Lane in the text, referring to Lane’s knowledge of human frailty. “He later taught at Virginia Tech.”
It has been said that I lived to be abused by Bob Krick, or so his son Robert E. Lee Krick once observed. Another example occurred on the Wilderness Battlefield during a tour by the late Bob Maher’s Civil War Education Association. Krick showed the two busloads of us a picture of what I can only describe as the ugliest woman I have ever seen at the Higgerson Farm. With a straight face, Bob looked at me and said, “Her descendants became cheerleaders at Virginia Tech.”
I deliberately set out to earn what I consider a master’s degree in Civil War history to assist in my efforts to preserve Laurel Hill Farm by touring every battlefield Stuart fought on with Krick and Gallagher, sometimes more than once. Learning what J. E. B. Stuart and the Army of Northern Virginia did during the war helped me explain why we wanted to save the Laurel Hill Farm.
When not making fun of my alma mater or North Carolina. Krick said the tarheels earned their license plate motto “First In Flight” on several battlefields or cavalry in general. Krick taught me how a great historian does his work. He sent me to the National Archives to discover communications Stuart had in the United States and Confederate States armies, especially in the letters sent and received to the Secretaries of War. Many of these communications have never been used by Stuart biographers. He shared the files he had spent decades collecting with Stuart, material never seen by other historians. I was allowed into the inner sanctum of a master historian. He connected me with many other historians who helped me with Stuart, and he is always bluntly honest about people, past and present.
Not only did he mentor me, but he came to Mount Airy to speak and help us raise money for the efforts at Laurel Hill. I knew that was unique because he hates to travel. He smoked a cigar at my former home on Glass Road in Mount Airy while talking to my dog, Stonewall. Krick is an expert on Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. Krick has written so many books that I could not begin to write about them all. One I really like is The Smoothbore Volley That Doomed the Confederacy: The Death of Stonewall Jackson and Other Chapters on the Army of Northern Virginia, published by Louisiana State University Press in 2002. I devour anything Bob writes with the “feckless awe of a neophyte.” He has a massive vocabulary that requires me to bring a dictionary to those readings or when I listen to him give a talk about Civil War history.
I once got to roast Bob at a CWEA Sarasota seminar. I remember telling the audience that Bob, like another, was born in New Jersey, moved to California, came back to Chancellorsville, and got very confused: “Fighting Joe” Hooker. He took it stoically while his wife, Barbara, laughed hysterically. During those many hours touring with Krick and Gallagher, I came to appreciate their comedy routine together. The hilarious barbs would fly in good fun during those memorable tours. Gary W. Gallagher will be the subject of my next chapter, remembering those who helped us save the birthplace of J. E. B. Stuart.
