Catalpa Trees

Located across the Rappahannock River from the city, two Catalpa Trees stand as living but slowly dying witnesses to incredible events. They appear in wartime photos of Chatham Manor and are just feet outside of a room the soldiers called “the surgery.” Walt Whitman, who came here around the battle in December 1862 to volunteer as a nurse, likely described what he saw at their base: "At the foot of a tree, immediately in front, a heap of feet, legs, arms, and human fragments, cut, bloody, black and blue, swelled and sickening–in the garden near, a row of graves.”

Since the National Park Service has acquired and taken over the management of this property in 1975, staff have overlooked their care. A metal brace supports one of the trees that is leaning while the other stands on its own. They are some of the most memorable and well known in the area.