spottsylvania county – Offbeat NOVA

By Matthew T. Eng, Offbeat NOVA

Have you ever had that feeling when you’re having a panic attack and your heart is jumping into your throat? You feel like you can’t breathe and your mind is spinning out of control? That’s how I would describe listening to the mathcore band Dillinger Escape Plan.

And honestly, I am probably being conservative with my explanation.

If you put on any Dillinger record, you are in for a wild ride. Throughout their twenty-year career, the New Jersey band brutalized audiences large and small with their aggressive blend of mathcore and metalcore, often using odd time signatures and elements of progressive rock, bossanova, and jazz intermixed with piercing vocals. They aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but they were for me. Their debut album, Calculating Infinity, is still in my goto rotation when I am mad at the world and just want to listen to somebody else scream so I don’t have to. If you ever feel that way, I highly suggest it.

If you were into underground or indie music in the early 2000s, you knew of two main bands you didn’t want to sit in the front for. The first was Les Savy Fav. Of course, the performances I saw were always electric and fun, but that didn’t stop the lead singer Tim Harrington from trying to suck face with you while wearing only underwear. The other was Dillinger Escape Plan. No, the lead singer would definitely not make out with you, but he might violently attempt to bash your head in with a microphone stand.

Anybody who saw Dillinger in the early 2000s knew to stand clear of the front, because everyone from the singer to the guitarists would repeatedly smash their instruments like weapons on unsuspecting fans. I can recall seeing a young fan get hit in the head with the backside of a guitar neck in the early 2000s. If metalcore had a “most dangerous band” award, they would be the undisputed winners. I only managed to see them a few times before they broke up a few years ago, but every time was both impressive and scary to watch. Who doesn’t like a band that keeps you on your toes, right?

So why bring this up on a blog for Northern Virginia history? Although their connection to the area is minimal at best (one of the original guitar players used to play in a seminal hardcore punk band in the early 1990s in the Hampton Roads area called Jesuit), an act of theft occurred in Fredericksburg in 2006 that LITERALLY lived up to their name.

On June 10, 2006, Dillinger Escape Plan traveled down to begin their tour in Fredericksburg, VA, at KC’s Music Alley, a medium-sized music venue just off the main downtown area of the historic district on Princess Anne St. The band was just a few days away from releasing a digital EP of cover songs, called Plagiarism. It was the first time the band had performed in the area since they formed. Needless to say, kids who attended the show were not ready. They did not get the memo about the front row that I had known about.

The band performed in their usual fashion. A YouTube video from user “Metal Nick” has the first two songs of that concert.

From their official press release of the show:

This was their first show ever in these parts and it wasn’t too much unlike any other Dillinger show prior. Greg climbed on the P.A., hung from the ceiling, blew fire… Ben swung his guitar violently and jumped off of his gear a lot. The band has been doing this for several years and it’s part of what people come to expect when paying to see DEP live. Any damages incurred by the venue always get covered from the band’s guarantee.
lambgoat.com

A few people in the audience apparently took the violent stage act as a threat of violence. Dozens of people huddled around their tour bus and threatened violence of their own against the band after they finished playing. Although nobody was hurt, somebody managed to snag fill-in guitar James Love’s guitar, a custom pink Ibanez, in the process. The thief only just managed to escape, as a member of fellow touring band Cattle Decapitation put a hammer through the window of his blue Cooper Mini. Apparently, the thief’s name was “Jeff.”

The Ibanez Guitar (Flickr)

I do not know if the guitar was ever recovered. If you look at age-old message boards on the topic (yes, they were very big in 2006), you will see everything from sympathy and anger to expressing that the band was due for a “good old fashioned ass kicking” anyway.

KC’s Music Alley is now known as “KC’s Music Alley at Central Station and is still open today. It seems like a typical sports bar and venue during the week. You have standard poker nights, comedy nights, and other assorted events reminiscent of similar venues. There is full restaurant there, as well. Feel free to visit them and get some loaded cheese fries or a “Central Station Burger” and think about that time you almost got your head sliced open by a guitar. Just don’t, you know, steal it.

Offbeat Postcripts is a series of short posts where we cover small topics of offbeat history in Northern Virginia.

George and Evy Doswell, Fredericksburg City Cemetery (John Hennessy/FredericksburgHistory)

By Matthew T. Eng, Offbeat NOVA

In a year that seems like twenty, I catch myself thinking about what life was like before Coronavirus. At the beginning of March, I can faintly remember hearing about the first reported case of Coronavirus in Virginia from a Marine in Quantico. That particular individual was of course not “Patient Zero,” but the first of many that tested positive for the deadly virus in the months since.¹

I remember talking to others at work in January and February about how the virus had isolated itself in the Pacific Rim, and it would never make its way over here. Boy, was I wrong. I’m sure nervous Americans felt the same thing about the A/H1N1 “Spanish Flu” happening overseas in 1918, even if the first cases were likely in the United States. Well, no one ever said Americans were ever right, or could believe their own naivety.

But what do you do when it’s inescapable? Movies featuring deadly worldwide viruses treat it like some invisible monster wreaking havoc over populations, leaving death and destruction in its wake. It’s the Motaba virus in Outbreak. Captain Trips in The Stand. The T-Virus in Resident Evil. And now we have Coronavirus. But it’s not Hollywood. It’s actually happening, and the reality is far different and more terrifying.

I began to think about other epidemics in American history and their connections to Northern Virginia. Talking about the “Spanish Flu,” while tragic, is not necessarily offbeat.

Then I found a story first written about by John Hennessy, Chief Historian of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.

The story involves a short outbreak in Civil War-era Fredericksburg of scarlet fever, a disease that acts much like Coronavirus, and the man who performed a large number of burials for the unfortunate children who fell victim to it between 1861 and 1862.

The worldwide pandemic of scarlet fever was among many of the deadly epidemics that occurred in Europe and North America in the early to late 19th century (one report approximates the years between 1820 and 1880). Symptoms of the streptococci bacteria in a human body include a sore threat, fever, inflammation of the lymph nodes, and, in some cases, abscesses of the throat and tonsils. Unfortunately, the majority of those who developed the sickness were young children, who would often succumb to the virus within two days of the onset of symptoms.²

Scarlet fever came to Fredericksburg beginning in September 1861. According to Hennessy, the first known death was Wilmer Hudson, an eight-year-old son of John and Pamela Hudson. The deaths continued to increase into the winter of 1861. Countless parents had to watch their children die in large numbers. The only respite for their anguish was the ferocity of the virus, taking those affected quickly. In all, there were forty-one known victims of scarlet fever from September 1861 to February 1862. The devastation of it was so bad that NPS historian John Hennessy said it might have been “the greatest human disaster to ever befall the residents of Fredericksburg.” That was, of course, until December of 1862.³

Either out of grief or worry of spreading disease, the majority of children were buried the following day in cemeteries around Fredericksburg. One of the most popular spots was the Fredericksburg City Cemetery, a small plot of land on the corner of Washington Street and Amelia Street in the heart of downtown Fredericksburg. Most people know the area next to it simply as the “Confederate Cemetery,” an equal parcel of land separated by an invisible dividing line that that splits the area. At least seven of the children who died of scarlet fever were buried there. These burials were performed by one man, a young minister named Alfred Magill Randolph of St. George’s Episcopal Church, less than a half mile away from the burial site. His position at St. George’s was his first after graduating from the Virginia Theological Seminary. He quickly climbed the ladder at St. George’s, becoming a rector after he was officially ordained at the age of twenty-two in 1860.⁴

When the war began in April 1861, the burials he presided over took a different tone. Sporadic fighting was occurred near Fredericksburg in Spotsylvania County, so the likelihood for Randolph to bury soldiers became a reality in the fall of 1861. The first soldier he administered a burial for was Francis Lewis of Company G., 1st North Carolina Infantry Regiment, on October 12, 1861. By the end of the month, Randolph also began burying children from the scarlet fever epidemic.

The rector’s first burial was Sidney Cavell, a two-year old child of Charles Cavell and Emma Huckey, who died on October 27th and was buried the following day. His next two burials were by far the most heartbreaking. Two prominent figures of the Fredericksburg community, J. Temple and Evelina Doswell, lost two of their children within nine days of each other. Randolph presided over the burial of five-year-old George Doswell on November 11, 1861. He did the same for his sister, two-year-old Evy Doswell, nine days later on November 20th. The Doswells were not the only family to lose more than one child, but Rector Randolph presided over the pair.

In all, Alfred Randolph performed burial rites for seven children between October 1861 and February 1862. The last was two-year-old John Edward Haydon._⁵

Sidney Cavell (2 years) – Buried October 28, 1861 (Death 27 October)
George Doswell (5 years) – Buried Nov. 11, 1861 (Death Nov 10, 1861)
Evy Doswell (2 Years) – Buried Nov. 20, 1861 (Death 19 November 1861)
Malvina Meade Hart (5 years, 7 mos.) – Buried December 7, 1861 (Death Dec 6, 1861)
Susan Gill Mander (2 years, 6 mos.) – Buried Dec. 11, 1861 (Death Dec. 9, 1861)
Anne B.H. Scott (10 years, 9 mos.) – Buried Jan 5, 1862 (Death Jan 3, 1862)
Thomas Wolfe (6 years) – Buried February 7, 1862 (Death Feb 5, 1862)
John Edward Haydon (2 Years, 2 Mos.) – Buried February 24, 1862 (Death Feb 1862)

By February, scarlet fever had dissipated in Fredericksburg and Virginia in other hotspots like the Confederate Capital in Richmond. Today, you can see many of the gravestones and pay your respects to these children in the Fredericksburg City Cemetery.

The woes for Fredericksburg only had a brief respite once cases and deaths began to dissipate after Alfred Randolph presided over the burial of John Edward Haydon in February 1862. By autumn of that year, Federal forces were beginning to descend in and around Fredericksburg. A major battle seemed imminent in November. With forces at their doorstep, residents were given the order to evacuate on November 21, 1862. Randolph and his young family departed his wife and day-old son for Danville, where he became a Post Chaplain for the Confederacy until the remainder of the war. He held a number of positions in Alexandria, Baltimore, and Norfolk before passing away after a long career of service to God (and unfortunately the Confederacy) in 1918. He is buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. No doubt he kept his thoughts on the turbulent winter of 1861-1862 in the back of his mind for the rest of his life, and the many poor children he buried as a result of an unforgiving disease.

Reading about this tiny event puts our current troubles into perspective. We cannot justify any death, but the loss of those younger than us are the hardest to bear.

Stay healthy and wear a mask.

Footnotes:

NBC Washington Staff, “US Marine in Virginia Tested Positive for Coronavirus, in State’s First Case,” March 8, 2020. Accessed October 2, 2020, LINK.
Alan C. Swedlund and Ann Herring, Scarlet Fever Epidemics of the Nineteenth Century: A Case of Evolved Pathogenic Virulence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 159-177.
John Hennessy, “The 1861 Scarlet Fever Epidemic,” Remembering, October 15, 2010. Accessed October 2, 2020, LINK.
St. George’s Episcopal, “Alfred M. Randolph.” Accessed October 2, 2020, LINK.
St. George’s Episcopal, “St. George’s Burials, 1859-1913.” Accessed October 2, 2020, LINK.