Just before the rebels evacuated the village of Waterford, near Leesburg, they openly avowed they would burn it to the ground, as it was nothing more than a “cursed Quaker settlement.” A noble-hearted Quaker woman, whose husband had been chased from his home by the rebels some months before, besought a gentleman of her faith to hasten over to Col. Geary’s camp, some eight miles away, and ask him to send a force to Waterford to prevent the threatened conflagration. He had a fine horse, but declined the duty, owing to the dangers of getting through the rebel pickets. “Lend me thy horse, then,” she said. He declined again. “Then I will steal thy horse,” she said, “and go myself.” She forthwith directed a servant to take the horse to a neighboring wood, to which the owner made no resistance. Another servant took her side-saddle to the horse, when the heroine appeared, and, mounting the animal rode off in open day right through the pickets, who did not stop her, strange to say. When she got to Geary’s camp she met her husband, and being brought into the presence of the Colonel, she made known the object of her mission, which was quickly complied with, and she rode back to Waterford at the head of a detachment, which got into the village just in time to see the rebel force leaving the opposite end of the town as fast as their heels could carry them. And thus this pretty little village was saved from conflagration by the resolute conduct of a Quaker lady.
– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Wednesday Morning, April 9, 1862, p. 2
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