Chapter History

Laura Ratcliffe Chapter Number 2639, McLean, organized 10 June 2003 in McLean, Virginia, is named in honor of Laura Ratcliffe who served the Confederate cause as a spy during the War Between the States. The Laura Ratcliffe Chapter was chartered on 8 March 2004.

Laura, daughter of Francis Fitzhugh Ratcliffe and his wife Anne Robinson McCarty, was born in Fairfax City, Virginia, on 28 May 1836. Later, after Laura’s father died, the Ratcliffe family moved to the Frying Pan area, near Floris, Virginia. The grown-up “Miss Laura” was described as having dark hair and eyes and a handsome face and figure. She often rode with her mother to inspect their large farm.

The Frying Pan area, about ten miles west of Washington, was a hotbed of Union military activities during the early days of the War. The Union forces were concerned with the defense of Washington. Colonel John Singleton Mosby, a Confederate known as the “Gray Ghost”, used the Ratcliffe home as a “friendly” house when he was in the Frying Pan area.

Colonel Mosby credited Laura with saving his life. The event occurred when he and his men were heading towards Frying Pan, where he had heard a cavalry picket was stationed and waiting for him to come after them. When we was within a mile, he saw two ladies walking rapidly toward him. He later wrote “…when fortune brought them across my path. One was Miss Laura Ratcliffe, a young lady to whom Stuart had introduced me a few weeks before, when returning from his raid on Dumfries, with her sister.” Laura told him there was a cavalry post in sight at Frying Pan, but near there in the pines, a large body of cavalry had been concealed and there was a plan to capture him. Colonel Mosby later said the cavalry planned to “pounce from their hiding place upon me.” He wrote, “A garrulous lieutenant had disclosed the plot to the young lady (Laura), never dreaming she would walk through the snow to get the news to me. …But for meeting them, my life as a partisan would have closed that day.”

Colonel Mosby often used Laura’s home as his headquarters and net with his men at a large boulder nearby, which became known as “Mosby’s Rock.” The rock served as a post office for the men and on one occasion served as a bank. It was Laura’s idea to use the rock as a hiding place for some money Colonel Mosby and his men had filched on the raid of a Yankee train. They turned over to her several thousand dollars for safe keeping and she hid it under the rock. When Federal officers searched for the money around the hiding place, they failed to unearth it and later Laura put it in the proper hands.

After the War, Laura and her invalid sister were quite destitute. Their house was dilapidated and overrun with weeds and their once fertile wheat fields reverted to wilderness. An older neighbor and friend, Mr. Milton Hanna, whose northern sympathies had proved economically profitable during the war years, offered to build Laura a house near his own home, where he and his mother could help Laura watch over her sister. She accepted his offer and Mr. Hanna built her a two-story frame house. Laura named her new home Brookside because it overlooked a small brook. After Laura’s invalid sister died, Laura married Milton Hanna. It was around 1886 and she was about fifty years old. They lived at Brookside for seven years until he died. After her husband’s death, Laura continued to live at Brookside and actively managed the farm. Her husband left her a well-to-do widow. Today, Brookside is know as Merrybrook and stands south of the Dulles Toll Road on Centreville Road.

Laura died 3 August 1923 at Brookside. She is buried in a private cemetery in Herndon. The cemetery is in a grove of trees in front of the Washington Dulles Marriott Suites located between Worldgate Drive and the Dulles Toll Road. It contains a single marker inscribed “Ratcliffe, Coleman, Hanna.”