Researched and written by Donna Leight, 2025

The Civil War Era

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Magill Home on Fort Hill, 1863

Reverend John A. Broadus, a prominent Virginia Baptist minister, was in Winchester the summer of 1863 preaching to various units of the Confederate Army. He spent several days at the home of Mrs. Magill and recorded his experience. Note that this house was right across from 419 N. Loudoun Street. As neighbors, what were Norval and Cornelia Wilson’s role in the below event?

“Winchester, Va., July 8, 1863:  After dispatching my letters yesterday, I went to Mrs. Magill’s. Mrs. M lives on the main street, which is the turnpike, right at the north end of the town, and all the wounded soldiers who are coming from Gettysburg via Martinsburg, passed right by her door. I found the family busy in preparing and handing out slices of buttered bread to the poor fellows and took hold to help. Money had be placed in Mrs. M’s hands for this purpose, by persons aware that she always did this, and so we went into it largely. When the bread got low, she sent to the baker’s for a great basket full of loaves. Pound after pound of butter was brought out with bowls of scrambled eggs to be spread on the bread instead of butter… every now and then there came out a pot of coffee, and a neighbor several times sent in supplies, including some buttermilk. The result of it was that we worked there, stopping for dinner, until five o’clock, when the supplies were exhausted and everybody broken down, and still the wounded were pouring in, on foot, on horseback, in ambulances or wagons. They ware sending on toward Staunton all that are able to go, most of them on foot; and the hospitals here, with the basement of one church, are overflowing.” ³

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The bodies of thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers were buried in shallow, temporary graves in fields, roadsides, and churchyards. In April 1866, Winchester’s National Cemetery was dedicated and almost 4500 Union soldiers were reinterred, 2400 of whom were unknown. In June 1866, the Stonewall Cemetery, on the east side of Mount Hebron Cemetery, was dedicated and almost 2500 southern soldiers were reinterred there. The invocation for the Stonewall Cemetery was delivered by Rev. Norval Wilson, whose story is below.⁴

Winchester changed hands many times during the war and hostilities ran deep. It is hard to imagine being forced to leave your home or watching your neighbor’s house destroyed. The war pitted neighbor against neighbor and tore families apart. And after the war, it was hard to put those feelings aside and rebuild what was lost.

Several families lived at 419 N. Loudoun Street during the war. They experienced the chaos, uncertainty, and death. They were surrounded by it. Leaders from both sides made their headquarters just blocks away. The sounds of battle could be heard through their windows. Soldiers entered their home and used their well. This is the story of the Wilsons.

From Baker to Wilson

In late 1859, Catherine Baker sold her home on Fort Hill to Methodist preacher Norval Wilson and his wife Cornelia. The Wilson’s would only own the home for 3 years, selling it to William R. Denny on September 7, 1863, who immediately then sold it to Hugh and Anna Maloy the next day.⁵

Reverend Norval Wilson (1802-1876) was a respected minister, a prominent leader in the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and “was known as a preacher of more than ordinary force.” ⁶ The Daily Dispatch referred to him as “the venerable Norval Wilson, who has been one of the most zealous and efficient apostles of Methodism in the South for forty or fifty years… A man of eminent ability and of sterling piety, he is one of the ablest men in the body.” ⁷

Who Was Norval Wilson?

A look at Norval’s family helps us understand what shaped his life.⁸

Norval’s father, the Honorable Thomas Wilson, was a politician. He studied law in Staunton Virginia and was admitted to the bar in 1789, relocating to Morgantown to establish his practice. He served two terms in the State senate from 1792-1795 and 1800-1804; two terms in the State house of delegates from 1799-1800 and 1816-1817; and one term in the US House of Representatives from 1811-1813. He continued to practice law until his death in 1826 at his home in Morgantown, Virginia (now West Virginia).⁹

Norval’s mother, Mary Belle “Polly” Poage Wilson died in 1817, at the age of 40. Norval was just 14. Accounts vary regarding how many children Thomas and Polly had, but it was somewhere between 9 and 14. Three died in their first year and Polly died the same year as the birth of her last child Richard, who died before reaching two years of age. All but one of Noval’s siblings preceded him in death.

Three of his older brothers would follow the path of their father. Alpheus, the oldest, became a lawyer and served in the House of the General Assembly. He fell from a barge and drowned in 1832, at the age of 37. His brother Eugenius Marcus died suddenly just one year later at age 33, in Norval’s home. He was a lawyer and was a member of Congress in Virginia. His brother Edger would also become a lawyer and go into politics, as a Whig elected to the 23^rd Congress. He would live until 1860.

Norval’s brother George Washington Wilson would take a different path. He joined the Confederacy and died in 1861 while Norval was living on Fort Hill. His sister Louisa Ann became a missionary. She died in Calcutta India of tuberculosis in 1833 and was buried in a Scottish Cemetery there.

From reading this, we know that Norval suffered much grief early in life. Tragedy may have influenced his decision to become a minister.

There are many newspaper articles that document Rev. Wilson’s activities in the Baltimore Methodist Conference, beginning in 1827. Speaking about a Winchester revival of 1832, Rev. Jonathan S. Martin “drew a picture of the prayer meeting at that church under Rev. Wilson during the cholera of 1832, when he believed the town was saved from such a visitation of the cholera as swept over Washington and Georgetown by these prayers. He saw Mr. Wilson standing in the aisle crying out ‘There is faith enough in this church to save the town from the cholera’.” ¹⁰

Rev Wilson was the preacher at the Methodist Episcopal Church in Winchester during various periods.¹¹ The schism over the morality of slavery and its place in the church and society divided the Methodist Episcopal Church into North (antislavery) and South (proslavery) in the mid-1800’s and it impacted Winchester. Preachers were required, under threat of suspension, to free their slaves. But the negative reaction to this requirement was so strong that it was abandoned. In 1858, some members of the church on Market Street (now Cameron Street) formed a new congregation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. William R. Denny (next story) organized the effort and supervised the construction of a new church on Braddock Street.¹² It is documented that the split of the congregation was the result of a dispute over the seating of students from the Valley Female Institute.¹³ Rev. Wilson and his son Alpheus supported the new church, which closed in 1862 when the pastor, J. Lester Shipley, joined the Confederate Army.¹⁴ It reopened after the war.

During the years of the Civil War the congregation at Market Street held together. By 1875, differences were more heated, and three-quarters of the congregation left and joined the new church on Braddock Street.¹⁵

Rev Wilson’s power to preach came into question during the Civil War. In 1862, the Alexandria Gazette reported with news from Winchester on June 6 that “Norval Wilson, a Methodist clergyman, who removed thither from Baltimore last year, was before the provost in regard to his loyalty. The case will be tried tomorrow. He returned home upon his parole of honor that he would be forthcoming at any moment the provost marshal desired.” ¹⁶ On June 20, they published that Rev. Norval Wilson, in Winchester, had been released on his parole.¹⁷ The Alexandria Gazette of November 1865 states “Rev. Norval Wilson, who was prevented from preaching in the Methodist Episcopal Church in Winchester, some time since, preached an able sermon in Dr Boyd’s church on Sunday week, to a large congregation.” ¹⁸ The details are unknown but are related to complications of Civil War loyalties to the South.   

In 1867, Rev. Wilson was elected to the Virginia State Convention, representing Frederick County. ^{19 20 21}

A little historical background

In June 1866 Congress submitted the Fourteenth Amendment to the states for ratification, which made African Americans citizens. In the spring of 1867, Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act, requiring the former Confederate states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before their representatives and senators could be seated in Congress. It also required the states to hold conventions, in which African Americans were eligible to serve, and to write new state constitutions. In October 1867, African American men voted in Virginia for the first time. Many white Virginians who opposed Republican Reconstruction policies refused to take part in the 1867 election. As a result, Republican reformers won a majority of seats in the convention, including twenty-four African Americans. Soon after the constitutional convention began its work, a large gathering of white men met in Richmond to form a new political party in opposition to the Republicans in Congress and in the convention. They created a new Conservative Party that united members of the two prewar political parties, Whigs and Democrats. Most of them opposed African American suffrage and had difficulty accepting the new reality created by the abolition of slavery. Propaganda was circulated to white men who feared “negro suffrage, negro office-holding, and negro equality.22

Virginia and other southern state newspapers referred to the Republican reconstruction supporters as “radicals” while the opposition was referred to as “conservatives”. Articles of the time were often harsh and racist, and this author chooses not to quote them. Suffice it to say that Rev. Wilson was in the minority anti-reformer party and was against “Negro suffrage” and their rights to vote.^{23 24}

In the 1870’s, Norval was a leader in the Temperance Movement, which fought to reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption.²⁵ He helped form a “committee on Temperance” within the church, of which his son Alpheus was the bishop. In March 1873, Rev. Wilson slipped on ice and broke his leg while attending a Methodist Conference in Baltimore and never fully recovered.²⁶ In April 1873, he lost his wife Cornelia who had been ill for some time. Norval died  at the residence of Jales M. Brown, near Charlestown West Virginia in August 1876.²⁷

Cornelia Wilson

Cornelia (1804-1873) was born a quaker in Baltimore. She converted to Methodism in 1819 and met Norval in Baltimore in 1824. They married in 1826 and moved to Washington D.C. where Rev Wilson was assigned to a church at Ebenezer Station. Over the years, they would live in Georgetown, Winchester, Alexandria, Baltimore, and many other places. In 1869, she suffered a series of strokes that left her paralyzed and unable to speak yet kept “her strong mental faculties quite unimpaired.” They raised nine children but lost four prior to Cornelia’s death.²⁸

Note that Cornelia’s father, Capt. Daniel Howland, was the Master of the first ship to cross the Chinese seas with a cargo of tea consigned to the port of Baltimore.²⁹

The Children

Their son Alpheus Waters Wilson, named after Norval’s oldest brother, followed in the footsteps of both his father and grandfather. He attended The Columbian College (now George Washington University) University. Like his father, he was a member of the Baltimore Conference Methodist Episcopal Church and took Episcopal tours around the world from 1886 to 1907. He was a delegate to the Ecumenical Conference in London, Washington, and Toronto and wrote many religious articles and papers.³⁰ He practiced law during much of his life.

Son Edmund died in 1871, preceding his parents. Cause unknown. Daughter Augusta would become a missionary in Mexico.³¹

Norval, Cornelia, and children Alpheus, Edmund, and Augusta Virginia are buried at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Winchester Virginia.

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1. Quarles, Garland R. Occupied Winchester, 1861-1865. Prepared for the Farmers and Merchants National Bank, Winchester, Virginia. 1976 ↩︎
2. Green, Katherine Glass Greene. Winchester Viriginia an Its Beginnings 1743-1814. Shenandoah Publishing House, Strasburg, VA. 1926 ↩︎
3. Quarles, Garland R. Occupied Winchester, 1861-1865. Prepared for the Farmers and Merchants National Bank, Winchester, Virginia. 1976 ↩︎
4. Ibid. ↩︎
5. Winchester Virginia Deed Book 11, pages 30,163, and 171 ↩︎
6. People’s Advocate, Volume 1, Number 19, 19 August 1876, ↩︎
7. Richmond Daily Dispatch, Volume 44, Number 57, 7 March 1873 ↩︎
8. Ancestry.com. Thomas Wilson Family History & Obituary, from the History of Monongahia Co, Virginia, by Michael Core. Book located in the Calhoun Co. Library ↩︎
9. United States House of Representatives, History, Art & Archives. History.House.gov/People/ ↩︎
10. Winchester News, Volume 12, Number 39, 23 March 1877, Page 3 ↩︎
11. Norris, J.E. History of the Lower Shenandoah Valley, Counties of Frederick, Berkeley, Jefferson, and Clarke. A. Warner & Co., Publishers, 1890, Classic Reprint Series by Forgotten Books ↩︎
12. Morton, Frederic. The Story of Winchester in Virginia: The Oldest Town in the Shenandoah Valley. Heritage Books, 2007. ↩︎
13. Market Street United Methodist Church, The Heart of Winchester, website https://www.marketst.org/history ↩︎
14. Braddock Street Unite Methodist Church, website https://braddockstreetumc.org/about-us/history ↩︎
15. Market Street United Methodist Church, The Heart of Winchester, website https://www.marketst.org/history ↩︎
16. Alexandria Gazette, Volume 63, Number 150, 13 June 1862, Page 1  ↩︎
17. Alexandria Gazette, Volume 63, Number 156, 20 June 1862, Page 2  ↩︎
18. Alexandria Gazette, Volume 66, Number 223, 23 November 1865, ↩︎
19. Virginia Herald, Volume 81, Number 84, 28 October 1867, Page 3  ↩︎
20. Virginia House of Delegates website https://history.house.virginia.gov ↩︎
21. Richmond Daily Dispatch Newspaper Archives December 4, 1867, Page 3  ↩︎
22. African Americans Vote · Remaking Virginia: Transformation Through Emancipation · Online Exhibitions website https://www.virginiamemory.com/online-exhibitions ↩︎
23. Charles Town Virginia Free Press, 7 May 1868, pg 2 ↩︎
24. Richmond Daily Dispatch Newspaper Archives February 27, 1868, Page 4  ↩︎
25. Richmond Daily Dispatch Newspaper Archives March 7, 1873, Page 4 ↩︎
26. Charles Town Spirit Of Jefferson Newspaper Archives March 18, 1873, Page 3 ↩︎
27. People’s Advocate, Volume 1, Number 19, 19 August 1876 ↩︎
28. Virginia Free Press, 26 April 1873, Page 3 ↩︎
29. Ibid. ↩︎
30. FindaGrave.com ↩︎
31. Charles Town Virginia Free Press Newspaper Archives Nov 27, 1895, Page 2  ↩︎