We had another cousin, Thomas J. Moncure, Lieutenant in the Engineer
corps of McLaw's Division, and I remember piloting him and an
assistant named Nock in our boat down to the site of Carrs Bridge
on the North Anna River. The bridge had been recently destroyed by
a Federal raiding party from Fredericksburg and it was now needed to
be rebuilt for Confederate military use. On this trip down the river
with Lieut. Moncure he gave me a lesson in bridge building I had
never thought of. The old bridge had been arched high above the
abutments, but Cousin Tom replaced it with a perfectly level
structure, as he said, "to avoid 'lateral strain' on
the piers". This bridge certainly proved his good judgment, for it
lasted longer than any other ever built there that I remember. He
was after the war long employed in R.R. bridge building work.
It served to keep open army communication with the Va. Central R.R.
(now the C.&O.) and was also intended, possibly, for use in retiring
to the line of the North Anna in case of need, as it seems Gen. Lee
contemplated at one time. This might have made a battlefield of our
home again, and called for another move, but we were never under fire
at Belair. The next year cavalry raiders had a skirmish on the
adjoining plantation, and we heard a pitched battle was planned there
later, but it was not pulled off.
When the armies settled down again about 30 miles away on the Rapidan
in the fall and winter of 1863 we got well mixed up with our military
friends and their movements again.
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