He saw this as an opportunity and he penned a letter on impressively embossed official railroad stationery listing him as VP to Ellen. Not only did he praise her father’s heroism but he soothed the daughter’s fears. He let her know in a brotherly fashion that things were going very well for him, but added, “I hate to think of the future now—it seems so blank—no goal to reach, no object to strive for…So life passes —we wish and dream—build castles in the air, grasping at shadows all of our lives.”

Miracle of miracles, she answered his letter and they began corresponding. After four long heart-lonely years McClellan was corresponding directly with the beautiful Ellen. He was getting in subtle hints and all she had to do was read between the lines to know he was her most faithful and persistent admirer.

Another window of opportunity opened in the fall of 1859. Major Marcy was promoted and assigned to Minnesota. Ellen and Mrs. Marcy had decided to spend the winter with him. McClellan immediately fired off an invitation for them to stop over in Chicago as his guests as he had plenty of room in the large house on the lake he shared with Ambrose Burnside. 

Major Marcy hadn’t seen McClellan in years but they had maintained a correspondence and he was happy when McClellan left the army, and let his daughter know so. 

As Ellen stepped down from the train in Chicago on Oct. 20, she saw a new McClellan, but with the same desire for her burning in his eyes after 5 hopeless years. She had always liked him, but had never loved him. He was more mature, impressively prominent, and he obviously loved her with a doglike fidelity. There was no indication that he had ever loved anyone else. 

She was wavering. We have to wonder what was going on in her mind. At 24, she had received 8 marriage proposals and her beloved A.P. Hill was now a happily married man. Did her maturity tell her that her parent’s choice was indeed the right one? Could she be in love with McClellan after all? 

Four days later McClellan provided a private rail car and accompanied the family to St. Paul. En route he charged the ramparts again, risked it all, and proposed. This time Miss Nelly said yes. 

However, she requested that their engagement be kept a secret until Christmas because she had a bit of tidying up to do. There were two suitors eagerly awaiting her response to their marriage proposals and she had to clear the field before announcing her engagement to McClellan. 

After waiting 6 years he was anxious to tie the knot. He began his lifelong practice of writing to her every day they were separated. His wartime letters have given historians a clear and candid picture of his thoughts while commanding the Union Army. He kept nothing from Nelly. 

But at this point he’s trying to urge her down the aisle. “Don’t talk to me about going east to prepare for the wedding. I don’t want any preparation, I want you and you alone. I want you just as you are…we don’t need a trousseau. I want Nelly Marcy just as she is.” 

However, as you might guess Nelly held out for an impressive wedding in New York City and finally walked down the aisle May 22, 1860. Many dignitaries attended and among the groomsmen was A.P. Hill whose wife would soon deliver their first child. 

But oh how different would be the fates of the Hills and the McClellans as the winds of war began to stir across the country. Dolly Hill was widowed at age 30. But Ellen McClellan lived a life of luxury and spent most of her later years in Europe. 

George and Ellen McClellan

*From “The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appomattox” by John Waugh (Highly recommended)

Lovely young Kitty married her first cousin Calvin McClung and moved with him to Louisville. But he died early in their marriage and then their infant son died. Overcome with grief, she returned to Hopemont. Her sister insisted that Kitty accompany on her on a visit to Washington hoping the exciting new social circuit would lift her out of her grief. And there she met A. P. Hill, a dashing army officer nine years her senior. It was love at first sight. 

The couple married in the parlor of Hopemont July 18, 1859. George McClellan did not travel from Illinois to attend the wedding. Thus the oldest of Dolly’s six brothers, John Hunt Morgan, was best man. As she stood between her brother and husband who would both gain fame as Confederate warriors, little could the new bride imagine that both would give their last full measure of devotion to the Confederacy. 

When the war erupted, John Hunt Morgan and her older brothers stole the rifles from the Lexington armory and headed south to fight for the Confederacy. Morgan became the first partisan ranger and began striking Union supply lines in Kentucky. He was called the “Rebel Raider” and the “Marion of the West.” His exploits are legendary but he was ultimately betrayed and shot in the back in Greenville, Tennessee in 1864. Today Hopemont, now called the Hunt-Morgan House, is open to the public. 

 The marriage of Dolly and A. P. Hill was exceedingly happy from first to last.  Dolly’s income eased financial pressures and the Washington social whirl was exciting for the couple who made friends so easily because they loved each other so obviously. A daughter later said, “Their union was ideal as Father was a man of unusually fine traits, gentle and courteous, a wonderful sense of humor, and a charming man.” 

The two became inseparable—not even war could keep them apart. Theirs would become one of the truly great love stories of the Civil War. 

Where, you may be wondering, was George McClellan all this time? He had left the army to take a job as chief of engineers of the Illinois Central Railroad. But in March 1858 he was still pining away over Ellen Marcy.  

Stay tuned for “McClellan Perseveres.”

Everyone was through but Hill. He had been clearly rejected, but there was still the matter of his honor to be settled. He was a proud man who valued his honor, so much so that he would later challenge fellow Confederate General James Longstreet to a duel. He wrote a letter to Captain Marcy demanding justice and accusing Mrs. Marcy of starting the rumors. He demanded “That Mrs. Marcy correct this false impression with anyone who may have heard it and she should make known the name of the informant to be used by me as I may see fit.”

Captain Marcy, a man of honor, wrote his wife demanding to know if Hill’s charges were true. If so, he would insist upon Ellen marrying Hill as reparation. However, Mrs. Marcy was able to explain it away to her husband’s satisfaction.

Hill returned to the Washington social circuit and within a year spied across a crowded room the woman who would hold his heart until death.

He wrote his favorite sister Lucy, “You know that I am so constituted, that to be in love with someone is as necessary to me as my dinner, and there is now a little siren who has thrown her net around me, and I know not how soon I may yield up my right to flirt with whom I please. She is a sensible little beauty, and if the spasm will stay in me long enough, and she will say yes, why I don’t believe I could do better.” Hill courted her throughout 1858. To him, she was always “Dolly” the nickname given her by her Mammy. That is the name she became known by in Virginia.

Late spring 1859 Hill wrote McClellan, “I’m afraid there is no mistake about it this time, old fellow, and please God, and Kentucky bluegrass, my bachelor life is about to end, and I shall swell the number of blessed martyrs who have yielded up freedom to crinoline and blue eyes. She is young—24 yrs. 7 mos. gentle and amiable, yet holy, and sufficiently good looking for me—and what’s more—I know that you will like her and when you come to know her, say that I have done well. I believe her income is close to mine—and if this be so I am glad for her sake, and if not I will not be disappointed. I expect to be married in Lexington, Kentucky on July 18, and if you could ride down from Chicago, you know there is no one whose presence would delight me more.”*

Stay tuned for “McClellan Perseveres”

*From “The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appomattox” by John Waugh (Highly recommended)

 Above all else, George McClellan was a gentleman. He withdrew and accepted his fate. Hill was now seething about the rumors about him swirling in Washington and he considered Mrs. Marcy the source. She spoke disparagingly of Hill in two letters to McClellan and now McClellan was also seething that she would defame his dear friend. Amazingly and to his credit, his friendship for Hill overrode his desire to see Ellen available again.   

 He wrote a stiff reply to Mrs. Marcy, “As a matter of course I transmitted to Hill none of the remarks you made: I thought that you would regret what you had written before the letter reached me—that reflection would convince you that you had been unjust to him, and that you had said unpleasant and bitter things to me in reference to one of my oldest and best friends. I shall destroy your letter and never allude to its contents to any human being.” 

McClellan was caught in the middle. Ellen even wrote to him for counsel about her engagement to Hill. He blandly advised her “To govern yourself by the dictates of your good sense and true woman’s feelings.”

 McClellan had had it. He was through with this entire depressing business and he retreated to Philadelphia and a self-imposed loveless life. He threw himself into writing his brilliant Crimean report.

 After less than a three month engagement, Ellen Marcy was also sounding the retreat. With rumors about her intended flying, she wrote her father a letter of surrender and reluctantly returned the ring to Hill. He gave it to his beloved sister Lucy. *

Stay tuned for “Hill Moves On.”

*From “The Class of  1846: From West Point to Appomatax” by John Waugh (Highly recommended.)

Suitors were swarming around her like moths to a flame. Ellen and her mother spent the winter of 1855-56 at the Willard Hotel in Washington. Who should be assigned to duty in Washington but McClellan’s close friend, the charming and dashing A. P. Hill. 

The polished Virginia cavalier hailed from a prominent Culpeper family. Known at West Point for his “amiability of heart” and “amenity of manners that endeared him to all his acquaintances,” the smooth dancer was also a polished horseman. And yes, Hill loved women. So much so that a youthful indiscretion during his first furlough at West Point sent him to the brothels of New York. That night of passion left him with a “disease” that forced him to drop out of West Point for a year and would dog him the rest of his life. 

In the fall of 1848 when his favorite sister was in school in Ellicott City, Maryland. Hill, who had just returned from West Point, began courting one of her friends, Emma Wilson, a dazzling brunette. She fell in love with him and accepted his marriage proposal. But her parents, who considered Hill beneath them socially, cut it off. 

But now he turned his charms on the prize—Ellen Marcy. It was not long before Miss Nelly was seeing a lot of Lieutenant Hill. Captain Marcy, who was home on a temporary assignment, noted their closeness with an uneasy eye. He cautioned Ellen that surely this romance would not get serious. She replied, “Oh, no Daddy, you mustn’t worry.” He returned to the frontier not fully convinced. 

Soon Hill was the officer in charge of Miss Nelly’s heart and when he proposed in the spring of 1856, she immediately accepted the engagement ring—without first clearing it with her father. 

When Ellen’s letter announcing the engagement reached her father in Laredo he could scarcely believe what he was reading. “Astonished” was the first word that burst from his angry pen. In a marathon heated 11-page letter he in essence said, “How could you do this to us?” 

In mounting recrimination and rage he continued, “I could never have supposed after the repeated conversations I have had with you upon the subject of marriage, and your knowledge of my opposition to your uniting yourself to a profession which has caused so many privations and separations in families that you would desire to do the very act of all others that is the most objectionable to me.” 

His chilling conclusion stated, “I thought I could confide in you and that I had nothing to fear but I find instead of that, you must have been holding out encouragement to him from the time I left. …I forgive you, but I shall expect that you at once abandon all communication with Mr. Hill. If you do not comply with my wishes, I cannot tell you what my feelings toward you would become. I fear that my ardent affection would turn to hate. Do nothing therefore my dear child without choosing between me and him.” 

A week later he wrote a more conciliatory letter and asked her to make no decision for six months. He needed to know if Hill had sufficient means to support her without his pay. He received a letter from Hill indicating he was worth about $10,000. “That is something,” Captain Marcy conceded, “but not much.” Moreover, the fact that Hill was a southerner concerned her father in the heated political climate. 

Now Ellen was fighting back for the man she loved. She reminded her father that McClellan was in the army and he had not objected to him. 

Meanwhile, in Washington Hill was feeling a strong sense of Deja-vu. Was this Emma Wilson and her snooty parents all over again? But the worst was yet to come. Mrs. Marcy was ready to unload on Hill personally with great vengeance. She had somehow learned of his indiscretion at West Point and she would see that the word got out.*

Stay tuned for “McClellan Returns”

*From “The Class of  1846: From West Point to Appomatax” by John Waugh (Highly recommended.)

He forewarned Mrs. Marcy that he was about to storm the redoubt. If she had any objections, she should state them now since Capt. Marcy was on the frontier. Now that he had shown his flag, it remained only for her to give her permission for him to “carry on the war as best I may.” He had no doubt that he would win this skirmish and that Miss Nelly would soon be his. 

George McClellan was never known for modesty. In fact during the upcoming war, many considered him pompous, ego centered, the Little Napoleon, and the only officer who could strut while being seated. This was perhaps the one time in his life when he misjudged the battle and suffered from severe overconfidence. For the rest of his military career he would see an imaginary enemy that he believed outnumbered him and he would suffer from what Lincoln would call, “the slows.” 

Since Mary Marcy shared her husband’s high opinion of McClellan, she granted her permission. Her husband wrote from the frontier that he was delighted McClellan was so pleased “with my dear Nelly. “ He hoped she would like him as much, for he was talented, good looking, and agreeable.” Mr. Marcy could not conceive that Ellen would not fall immediately in love with McClellan. He was everything the Marcy’s hoped for. They loved him very much. 

Unfortunately, their daughter didn’t. After a very short courtship, less than 2 months, he popped the question and to her parent’s utter horror, she turned him down. McClellan was unaccustomed to failing at anything, and that he should lose the only woman he’d ever loved was unthinkable.

He was still reeling when he was sent to Pensacola Florida for temporary duty. He now shifted to the only strategy left to him. He began courting her mother through a letter writing campaign. At least Mrs. Marcy was a sympathetic back door to his intended target and a co-mourner with whom he could share his anguish. 

“I succeeded in making a very great blunder and doing a very foolish thing in the way of pushing too far and too quickly.” He feared he had blown his chances and would regret it forever. But he would not give up. He would try to undo the unfavorable impression he had made. In his many letters to Mrs. Marcy he kicked himself again and again but vowed to wait as long “as there was a shadow of hope.” 

It promised to be a long wait. Miss Nelly would not give McClellan the time of day—no encouragement of any kind. She simply didn’t love him and no matter how much Daddy liked him, she wasn’t going to marry him. 

By the following spring he was coming to the conclusion that there was no hope. The only good effect “in giving my vanity so good a lesson.” He would soon leave for faraway places which he mused would “be a relief to the young lady that I will soon be out of the way.”*

 Stay tuned for the next episode: Enter A. P. Hill

*From “The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appomatax” by John Waugh (highly recommended!)

George McClellan entered West Point when he was only 15 yrs. 7 months old. The gifted son of a prominent Philadelphia physician was precocious bordering on genius. He had passed 2 years at the University of Pennsylvania and then graduated 2^nd in his West Point class. 

His first-year West Point roommate, A.P. Hill of Culpeper, Virginia, described McClellan as “of gentle nature and high culture.” They quickly became on “terms of great intimacy.” 

Several years after graduation, on March 5, 1852 McClellan reported to West Point graduate Capt. Randolph Marcy to serve as second in command on expedition to discover sources of Red River. Before departing for the expedition, at Fort Smith he met Mrs. Marcy and her younger daughter Fanny and was shown picture of 16-yr old Ellen who was in school at Hartford, Connecticut. He considered her very pretty. 

McClellan was impressed with all the Marcys. While on the trail he wrote his mother, “Randolph Marcy is one of the finest men I ever met with, and never saw one better fitted to conduct such an expedition.” 

Capt. Marcy was also duly impressed with young George McClellan. In fact he named a tributary of the Red River McClellan’s Creek in his honor. He assured his wife, “He is generally regarded as one of the most brilliant men of his rank in the Army and one any young lady might be justly proud of. His family connections are unexceptional and his staff position is such that his wife would always have a good and comfortable home.” 

Randolph Marcy had ambitious plans for his first-born daughter. He doted on Ellen, his “precious child.” By the time she turned 11 she was a stunner and he saw in her the potential for widespread devastation of masculine hearts. He wrote to her, “You can make almost anyone love you if you choose.” 

He wrote her long letters of fatherly advice from his frontier posts in the West. When the time came, he wanted her to marry well and as high up the social scale as possible. He warned her against marrying an army officer of any kind, but especially an officer of the line, who like himself, would be gone to the frontier for months or years on end. Or worse, who would marry her and take her with him. There were few officers who could give Ellen the high social position and comfortable life he so coveted for her. It was also a duty, in Marcy’s way of thinking for a daughter to consult her parents on the important business of picking a husband. 

George McClellan was one of the few exceptions on Capt. Marcy’s short list. He thought that it could be a match made in heaven and that she should meet him. 

In the spring of 1854, McClellan’s mother in Philadelphia thought so too. She had met 18-year-old Ellen several times. When McClellan returned east he received her note which said, “She is beautiful, and she has heard so much from her father that she was just ready to fall in love with you.” 

McClellan was very much open to the idea, and the first week of April, 1854 the handsome twenty-seven year old first lieutenant went to Washington and gained his first vision of this young lass. She had blue eyes, blonde hair, and a gentle sweet smile. Her many suitors called her Miss Nelly. When George McClellan saw her rockets went off. It was love at first sight. He was instantly deranged, but then who wasn’t? But he knew he had an inside track and he also understood protocol.*

Stay tuned for the next issue: “Miss Nelly’s reaction!”

From “The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appomattox: Stonewall Jackson, George McClellan, and Their Brothers ” by John Waugh (highly recommended!”

I had goose bumps when I stood on the front porch where on Sunday, June 8, 1913 the Lord brought the Reverend Stringfellow home. He was serenely sitting on the porch when he passed on to paradise almost instantly from a heart attack at age 73. And I imagine like Stonewall Jackson, he rejoiced that his homecoming was on the Sabbath.

The house faces the railroad where the casket was loaded on a train and taken to Alexandria. The funeral was conducted from the stately Caryle House, his wife Emma’s  home. Stringfellow was buried in Ivy Hill Cemetery, Alexandria, in a most prestigious location. When one enters the circular drive, the Stringfellow marker is immediately visible across the circle. His beloved Emma joined him there on March 24, 1929. The only indication of his extraordinary achievements as a Confederate scout is a small metal marker at the base that says, “Capt. F. Stringfellow, confidential scout under Genl. R.E. Lee.”

 

Frank and Emma Stringfellow's grave

Perhaps the most reliable and greatest tribute to him was written on Aug. 3, 1892 by J.E.B. Stuart’s former adjutant, H. B. McClellan. He wrote, “My position on the staff of General J.E.B. Stuart gave me the opportunity to become fully acquainted with the character of the service rendered as a scout by Frank Stringfellow…I know that he had the confidence of General Stuart and of General R. E. Lee, and that they relied as much upon his accurate judgment in forecasting the movements of the enemy as they did in his courage and enterprise as a scout, in which qualities he was not surpassed by any man in the Army of Northern Virginia.”* 

Medal marker at the base of the headstone

Frank and Emma, rest in peace. Well done good and faithful servants.

*From the Stringfellow papers in the Virginia Historical Society.

 

His lovely daughters had married well. Two of his daughters and their husbands gave Frank and Emma their dream cruise. In 1907, they joined a tour of ministers to Europe and the Holy Land. This life-changing journey in his sixty-seventh year rejuvenated Rev. Stringfellow’s energy to preach and be a faithful servant of the Lord. He wrote to one of his daughters, “How much of the good done to me can I transmit to others? I have had a great spiritual uplift, with it comes increased responsibility. I hope the light within me may never be put under a bushel, but be put upon the candlestand.” 

And for the next six years he let his light shine brightly. Rev. Stringfellow’s philosophy of life can best be summarized in a letter he wrote his grown daughter encouraging her never to complain, “Serve God and your generation with an unselfish spirit, and the same sun which rose often on you in splendor may follow you in life, and come down in a blaze of glory. We can only do our part faithfully, and the thing which befalls us will be the best thing for us in the two lives which we must all live, the here and the hereafter.”*

 *from the Stringfellow papers at the Virginia Historical Society.

Initially he built a one-story structure, later to be the barn, and portioned off a section for his faithful horse, separating the animal’s stall from his own quarters by a windowed wall. Then, he had a photographer snap his picture standing on his side of the wall waving through the window to his horse.

 The clever former spy mailed hundreds of these photographs to everyone he knew—friends, Confederate veterans, and churches—with a solicitation for funds to build a rectory for Saint James so that its minister would not have to sleep under the same roof with his horse! Needless to say, he succeeded in building the rectory. 

The church records from 1905 state, “A first class rectory has been erected at a cost of $2,525. The work was done by students from a school in nearby Lawrenceville. The value of the house is $3,000. Much was given towards it. The Southern Railroad kindly agreed to move all the carloads of materials at half price.” 

One assumes that the students probably stayed in the barn during construction. And Stringfellow could not have possibility found a more convenient location for delivering materials to the building site. The house went up just a few feet from the railroad track. Unfortunately this handsome and remarkable house no longer stands. 

However, Mrs. Amelia Hitchings from Norfolk, who lived in the house, was so fascinated by the Reverend Stringfellow that she penned a book “In the House of the Spy.” In 1988 the Cape Henry Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy placed a plaque in the church to honor Reverend Stringfellow. It reads:

 To the glory of God and in memory of Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow 1840-1913

Captain C.S.A. 1861-1865

Chaplain U. S. Volunteers Fourth Virginia Regiment 1898

Minister of this church 1903-1905

Several years ago this author had the opportunity to walk around St. James Episcopal Church, a beautiful little brick church nestled under huge trees with a cemetery dating back to 1840. It is always a privilege and an inspiration to walk in the footsteps of Frank Stringfellow, and to imagine the impact he had on lives and the service he must have rendered to countless others.*

 *The News Progress, Sept. 21, 1988

The United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine 1988, “Frank Stringfellow: Spy, Priest, Builder”