X-Nico

4 unusual facts about Fort Monroe


Jimmy Carter Regional Airport

Major Souther had been killed earlier in the line of duty at Fort Monroe, Virginia.

Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad

Combined with carefully placed misinformation to those manning the shipyard, the ruse worked, and not a single Confederate soldier was lost as the Union authorities quickly set fire to the yard and ships and abandoned the area, retreating to Fort Monroe across Hampton Roads.

Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad

Without a single shot fired, he successfully tricked the small detachment of troops holding the Gosport Shipyard (now Norfolk Navy Yard) into abandoning it for the safety of Union-held Fort Monroe across the harbor.

What-A-Burger

U.S. Route 258, later known as Mercury Boulevard in honor of the astronauts of Project Mercury at NASA's center at nearby Langley Air Force Base, led from Fort Monroe to the James River Bridge and has been a major traffic artery in the area for many years.


Daniel Webster Flagler

Recognized as an expert on developing and producing artillery and other weapons, Flagler continued his Ordnance service after the war, including assignments at the Watervliet, Augusta, Rock Island, Fort Monroe, Fort Union, San Antonio, Frankford, and Watertown arsenals.

Elzy Burroughs

Under contract with the young United States Government under President Thomas Jefferson, Elzy Burroughs built three lighthouses along the Virginia coast, at Old Point Comfort at Fort Monroe in 1802, at Smith Point in Northumberland County around 1803 (moved further inland and rebuilt by Burroughs in 1807), and at New Point Comfort, in Mathews County in 1804.

Garrett J. Pendergrast

The first significant victory for the U.S. Navy during the early phases of the Union blockade occurred on April 24, 1861, when Pendergrast and the Cumberland, accompanied by a small flotilla of support ships, began seizing Confederate ships and privateers in the vicinity of Fort Monroe off the Virginia coastline.

Richard B. Fitzgerald

In 1862, he was transferred to the Army of the Potomac's Washington supply base, where he drove mules for the Union army, spending most of 1862 at Harrison's Landing and the Fort Monroe area; he "went to sea" later in the war, likely as a merchant seaman.

Thomas A. Morris

He graduated fourth in the Class of 1834 and became an officer in the 1st U.S. Artillery stationed at Fort Monroe in Virginia and then at Fort King in Florida.

Virginia State Route 168

The SR 168 designation also formerly applied to a routing on the Virginia Peninsula from Anderson's Corner near Toano west of Williamsburg to the Hampton Roads Ferry landing at Old Point Comfort near Fort Monroe.


see also

Contraband

This policy was first articulated by General Benjamin F. Butler in 1861, in what came to be known as the "Fort Monroe Doctrine," established in Hampton, Virginia.

Emancipation Oak

In November 1861, the American Missionary Association asked Mary Smith Peake (1823 to 1862) to teach children of freedmen at the contraband camp related to Fort Monroe.