During the Civil War, numerous Americans who lived throughout the Northern and Southern states risked their safety to help free slaves and to aid people who sought an escape from the violence. Despite the South being occupied by those loyal to the Confederate cause, many Southerners opposed the conflict, and they operated right under the enemy's nose to hide escaped slaves and refugees of the war. As the nation pieced itself back together after the war, most of these Americans' stories remained untold to avoid residual conflicts among neighbors. This included the story of Peggy Rhodes, until Karl Rhodes, her great-great-grandson, stumbled upon a piece of long-lost family history.

On May 9, Karl visited Mennonite Life, 2215 Millstream Road, Lancaster, to discuss his novel "Peggy's War," which details Peggy's efforts to help Americans who sought to escape the bloodshed of the Civil War. Peggy was a Union loyalist and Mennonite woman who lived in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia during the war. As violence ravaged the country, Peggy hid other Mennonites and members of the Church of the Brethren who refused to participate in the war in a secret cellar beneath her farmhouse. Peggy protected draft-dodgers until they could safely escape the region, and they often found refuge in Pennsylvania.

"The people who ran the Underground Railroad were mostly Mennonites and members of the Church of the Brethren, and there were large numbers of them in both Virginia and Pennsylvania," Karl said. The event at Mennonite Life also highlighted several Mennonite hymns commonly sung by refugees as they made their escapes.

The current members of the Rhodes family had no prior knowledge of Peggy's story, although a few rumors related to the Civil War circulated among Karl and his siblings. One rumor spoke of caves near the family home that contained stockpiles of weapons abandoned by deserters. When Karl was 4 years old, his brothers convinced him to crawl down a narrow shaft that they believed to be full of Civil War-era weapons. Young Karl never found the fabled arms, but the endeavor sparked his lifelong interest in the history surrounding the Rhodes' family home. While conducting genealogy research many years later, Karl finally stumbled upon a book series titled "Unionists and the Civil War Experience in the Shenandoah Valley." The books contain testimonies from many Southerners who sought compensation for land and livestock that were taken or destroyed by Union forces during battle, including more than 20 pages of testimony from Peggy and her family members. "People often oversimplify life during the Civil War; many Americans in the South didn't want to fight a war or secede," Karl said. "This story gives a very different perspective."

For more information, visit https://peggyswar.com.