The Exchange Hotel and Medical Museum

In March of 1862 the Confederacy converted the Exchange Hotel (660 South Main Street, Gordonsville, VA) which sat near the junction of the Orange and Alexandria and Virginia Central Railroads into the Gordonsville Receiving Hospital under the supervision of Assistant Surgeon B.M. Lebby.

Wounded and sick Confederate soldiers and Union prisoners were transported here from battlefields and camps throughout central Virginia. It had a capacity of 125 beds and treated between 15,000-24,000 patients between June of 1863 and May 1864. At least 28 surgeons were employed during the war. Four nuns also served as nurses and they stayed in a room on the third floor. More than 70,000 soldiers were treated in total and over 700 were buried on the surrounding grounds. Approximately 900 men died here. A tabulated roster of the individual soldiers that died and the units that they were a member of can be viewed in the surgical exhibit room at the museum. A list can also be found online here. Soldiers were also cared for in tents on the property providing a capacity for another 1200 men. There was also a quarantine camp and a pest house to care for those with smallpox.

Above is a map of Gordonsville Hospitals and Cemeteries during the war created by Patricia Hurst. Route 678 does not exist on modern maps on older maps it appears to be the present day Hanback Road. The pest house and cemetery are on private property. It is estimated that about 232 men are still buried there.

By the end of the Civil War there were 53 Receiving Hospitals in Virginia, all were burned to the ground by the Union except for one, the Gordonsville Receiving Hospital. The facility is now a Civil War medical museum.