Mosby’s Treasure
John Singleton Mosby was a Virginia-born lawyer who studied the law while he was imprisoned for shooting a man in the neck, albeit in an act of self-defense. During the Civil War, he was ordered to form and command a raiding group of cavalry which was officially the 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry but was unofficially and to posterity known as Mosby’s Rangers. The Rangers were irregulars in the sense that they did not encamp with the army but lived outside of the military camps and forts, among the civilians, and except when mustered for a raid they had no military duties. The Rangers roamed northern and central Virginia conducting hit and run raids.
In March 1863, the Rangers swung around the Union lines near Washington and attacked an encampment of Union troops at Fairfax Court House. Mosby and his men captured Union General Edwin Stoughton during this raid, as well as two other officers and about 30 enlisted men. The general was an important enough prisoner that Mosby decided to escort him to Culpeper Virginia. As he went through Stoughton’s belongings he found a bag containing gold, silver, artifacts, and jewelry which had been looted by the Union troops from homes in the area. Mosby took the bag with him.
As the Confederates were preparing to march towards Culpeper reports reached Mosby of a Union cavalry patrol searching for him in the area. Believing he would have to fight, Mosby sent Stoughton ahead under guard and told his men to bury the bag between two large pines which he marked with his knife. He then deployed his troops west towards Manassas and eluded the Union patrol. Mosby later sent a squad of men back to Fairfax Court House to retrieve the bag. The men were caught by another Union patrol and as irregulars, they were hanged.
During the rest of 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia was engaged in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and Mosby was unable to return to the area around Fairfax Courthouse, which after the failure of the Gettysburg campaign remained firmly under Union control. After the war, Mosby became a Republican and eventually a loyal supporter of President Grant. He served as consul to Hong Kong beginning in 1878. Mosby never returned to Fairfax Court House to retrieve the treasure he had buried there though he lived much of his life following the Civil War in Washington DC, only a few miles away.
So the treasure remains where he left it, somewhere in the vicinity of the Fairfax Court House in today’s Washington suburb of Fairfax, Virginia. It is usually estimated to be in the range of $350,000 in value in today’s currency, though its value as heirlooms may exceed that, depending upon which families they were originally taken from. The Fairfax Court House of 1863 still stands, part of the larger overall Fairfax Courthouse.