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Edward Hatcher owned 1300 acres of land on the north side of the James River beginning next to Lily Valley. It was a long, narrow crooked piece of land. Fort Gregg and Fort Gilmer are on it. (Fall of the last stronghold. Until the very last, Fort Gilmer stood impregnable against attacks by Northern troops. Not until April 3, 1865 when Richmond was burning and Lee was retreating from Petersburg, did its gallant garrison withdraw from it and march sorrowfully westward. Before they left they spiked their guns and blew up their store of ammunition. When or where they surrendered, if ever, is not known. Enemies swarmed over the breastworks and marched up the roads and across the fields in a wild scramble to reach the stricken city. These were the first Yankee troops to enter Richmond.)

It (Edward’s land) extended on both sides of Mill Road almost to the Varina Road, then slanted across country to include Holly Springs and Laurel Hill on which the Methodist Church of that name stands, crossed the Newmarket Road to embrace the lands on both sides of Cornelius Creek, before the War between the States the property of Alexander Turpin. It seems that Edward Hatcher and Mary Bacon??, his wife, lived on this property for some years, and much of it went to their descendents. (In a paragraph about William Hatcher where Pauline Pearce Warner describes how William was fined for his part in Bacon’s Rebellion, Warner says, “His son Edward later married Mary, only surviving child of Nathaniel Bacon, Jr, the rebel”.)