Stonewall Jackson House

The Stonewall Jackson House on Washington Street is the only home Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson ever owned. He lived here from 1858 to 1861, teaching at VMI across town, before leaving to lead Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley campaign. The house has been carefully preserved and restored: the rooms are furnished as they were in Jackson's time, and the guides are knowledgeable about both the man and the context.

The house gives a different picture of Jackson than the battlefield legend — a private, deeply religious man with a methodical domestic life. The garden is particularly interesting; Jackson maintained it carefully and grew his own vegetables. The museum also addresses the history of the enslaved people who worked in the house, which Jackson owned and whom he later freed.

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Jackson lived in this house from 1858 until 1861, when he left to join the Confederate army at the outbreak of the Civil War. It was the only house he ever owned. He famously maintained strict daily routines here — rising early, eating simple food, spending hours in silent prayer — the same austerity that would define his military command. The house is preserved exactly as it looked in his time, down to the garden he cultivated.

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