Rhodes Family - Maryland and Pennsylvania

My 3x great grandfather George Rhodes (1783-1847) was a stonemason and house builder, who contracted for the U. S. Naval Shipyard at Gosport, Virginia.  He married Anna Maria McCabe in 1805.  Their third  son George (1813-1885) married Elizabeth Cunningham  at Georgetown, Washington, DC, in 1838, and took up farming around Hyattstown, Frederick Co., Maryland. George and Elizabeth had nine children, the eldest being my great grandfather William Lee Rhodes, born at Hyattstown in 1840.

William Lee Rhodes (1840-1902)

Maryland, being a slave state, but not in rebellion, had divided loyalties during the American Civil War.  Their father being a slaveholder, William Lee and his brother George joined the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, William attaining rank of captain, his brother that of sergeant.  A letter received by William's daughter Nelle in the 1920's indicates that her father served in General Jubal Early's Corps, General Robert Rodes Division.  He may have been at Petersburg at the end of the War.  His father George was held at Fort McHenry, Maryland, for two weeks in October-November, 1862, as a political prisoner, probably because of his sympathies or aid he may have offered the Confederates. (The Battle of Sharpsburg/Antietam was fought nearby in Maryland in September, 1862).


After the Civil War, William returned to Hyattstown for a short time, then moved to Chambersburg, Pennysylvania, where he married Barbara Allen Heayd in 1869.   William's uncle, William Powell Rhodes (1809-1887), had purchased property at Chambersburg in 1849, and it may have been this tie which attracted him there.  (William Powell Rhodes later relocated to Virginia and Missouri).

William Powell Rhodes' daughter Annie (William Lee's first cousin), who grew up near Chambersburg, married a Methodist Minster, Reverend Leonard Marsden Gardner (1831-1925).  They resided at York Springs, Adams County, Pennsylvania, north of Gettysburg.  On the morning of July 4, 1863, as Lee was withdrawing form Gettysburg, a messenger with dispatches for Union commander General George Meade asked Reverend Gardner how to get around the rebel forces and reach Meade's headquarters.  Gardner, being a strong Union supporter, personally escorted the messenger there; and then spent the following week assisting the sick and wounded from both armies who remained at Gettysburg.  He described the scene in an article, "The Carnage at Gettysburg - As Seen by A Minister".  During the Wilderness Campaign of 1864, he again ministered to and aided wounded soldiers, serving with the Union Army of the Potomac.

Of William Lee Rhodes' siblings, his brothers Charles Cunningham Rhodes (1850-1921) and Frank Valerius Rhodes became lawyers and formed the law firm Rhodes and Rhodes in Baltimore, Maryland.  Charles Rhodes met a sad end, when returning home from a store on the evening of November 29, 1921, and crossing the tracks at the Howardville, Maryland, station, he was struck and killed by the mail train of the Western Maryland Railroad.

William Lee Rhodes and Barbara Heayd had nine children, the second youngest being my father's mother Nelle, who married James Cowsill, Sr., in 1913.  The Chambersburg farm was sold in 1917 and is now the Rhodes Grove Camp and Conference Centre, a Christian retreat.