Trees Planted to Commemorate Soldiers Lost in Civil War

The Living Legacy Project is an initiative to plant 620,000 trees — one for each soldier who died during the Civil War — between Gettysburg and Charlottesville. Madison Garden Club members approached Woodberry Forest School earlier this year about serving as the planting site for trees donated to the initiative by the club. Nine larger trees came from the Garden Club, while eight saplings were selected by members of Mr. Lewis Affonti’s environmental science classes and donated by Bartlett Tree Experts. Lewis, who studied forestry at Sewanee: The University of the South, teaches an extensive unit each fall about the trees found around Woodberry’s campus.

Students and members of the Woodberry Forest grounds crew joined two experts from Bartlett for Tuesday’s planting, braving rainy weather to prepare the site. The new grove of trees is located along US 15 in an open field next to the school driveway. The trees will be geotagged and linked online to the biographies of individual Union and Confederate soldiers who died during the Civil War.

A ceremony followed in the Wall Room and featured remarks from several involved in the project.  It closed with the national anthem, sung by Woodberry's acapella group, The Dozen.

The road between Orange and Culpeper, now US 15, passes along the western edge of Woodberry’s property and was used frequently by both armies during the war. Many have found relics from those marches in the woods that separate today's highway from the heart of campus.