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WE MAKE HAPPY MEMORIES
AT ABETIER PRICE
American history, at the appropriately
named Siege Museum in Olde Towne
Petersburg, on the Appomattox River,
30 miles south of the Confederate
capital, Richmond.
Built in 1839 as a commodities
market and later serving as a bank, the
museum details how the residents' lav-
ish, pre-Civil War lifestyle gave way to
a bitter struggle for survival as Grant
fought to dislodge Gen. Robert TT Lee
from the strategic city.
Under the muse!. m's lovely, Greek
Revival dome, we browse among dis-
plays of hoop skirts, bullets with teeth
marks (signifying no anesthetic for the
wounded), horsehair used to bind up
wounds and a Bible that caught a bullet
during the infamous Battle of the Crater
"and saved a heart as well as a soul."
We learn that chickens in
Petersburg cost $50, salt was obtained
by boiling planks from smokehouse
floors and defiant residents held
Starvation Balls, pretending not to
notice there were no refreshments.
But what really gets the kids' atten-
tion is that all the animals — the
pigeons and rats, even the dogs and the
cats — disappeared during the siege.
Suspicions arose that they wound up in
stewpots, according to a film narrated by
the late actor and native son, Joseph
Cotten, who observes: "It happened in
the best of families."
Our next stop, 1•Lfore leaving
Petersburg, is Old Blandford Church
and cemetery, final resting place of
30,000 Confederate soldiers who died
in the horrific Battle of the Crater, just
a few miles up the road. It's also the
site of the nation's first Memorial Day
observance on June 9, 1866.
Inside the 18th-century church,
which also served as a field hospital,
sunshine glints through 15 gorgeous
Tiffany windows, commissioned by
the Southern states as a memorial to
their fallen soldiers. One window, rep-
resenting Texas, is of a saint who, to
us, looks like a youthful Marlon
Brando. The windows, which cost
$350 each a century ago, are now
worth about $1 billion, according to
our tour guide, Lucy Smith.
After a look at the weathered graves
and ornamental ironwork, it's a sl-ort
drive south to Pamplin Historical Park
CONTINUED on page S16
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