The Murder of John D Read
October 18, 1864--Fairfax County, Virginia
Step off from Centreville
On October 16, Mosby and a sizable contingent of Rangers left Loudoun County and sortied deep into southern Fairfax County. They were hunting a 50-wagon firewood convoy, which they found in the vicinity of Burke Station. They also found 600 Federal troops encamped around the station. The full detail of Rangers countermarched "toward Centreville," where they bivouaced.
This is probably a generality. Centreville was by then a Federal fortress and the Union Mills complex just south of there was similarly encumbered with Yankees. However, the area between Union Mills and Occoquan was intensely friendly to Confederate Raiders. Prominent members of both Mosby's Rangers and the Chinquapin Rangers owned large swaths of the area including property near the popular crossings at Wolf Run Shoals and Davis Ford.
Rather than hiding over one hundred Rangers within easy grasp of Federal patrols, it's likely that the raiding party was secreted on multiple properties just west of Brimstone Hill, in the vicinity of modern Clifton.
Trek to Annandale
On October 17, Mosby and Company moved toward the stockade at Annandale. The maneuver duplicated a similar effort undertaken in late August, when three hundred Rangers and two cannon were insufficient to reduce the stockade. Upon reaching the same Yankee fortification two months later, Mosby declined to reinvest. Instead he detailed Captain Richard Montjoy to attack a Union camp near Falls Church.
Move to Falls Church
With the shroud of night as cloak and Difficult Run-raised scout Bush Underwood on point, Montjoy and his seventy-five men navigated through the undulating terrain of eastern Fairfax County.
Had he elected to attack Union Camps near Falls Church as directed, Montjoy and Underwood's path would have taken the group up the Columbia Pike toward Bailey's Crossroads. Instead, Company D emerged above Falls Church, nearly four miles northwest.
Proximity to Charlie Binns
The question of why Company D ended up so far afield of Yankee forts is possibly best answered with a bit of inside baseball from the Mosby command.
Hiram Read's property, from which his brother John was abducted, sat a mile east of the home owned by Mary Binns. She was wife to Charlie Binns, the most hated man in the Mosby Sphere.
Once an enthusiastic partisan, Charlie ran afoul of Mosby and deserted to the Yankees, to whom he gave valuable intelligence.
It is rumored that a lieutenant's commission awaited anyone in Mosby's command who brought Charlie Binns to justice.
It's reasonable to wonder if Montjoy's detachment didn't end up near Falls Church on the night of October 18 because of its proximity to Charlie Binns' house.
Byways to Vienna
Aggressive counter-insurgency patrols instituted by the 16th New York Cavalry earlier in 1864 would have made most major roadways hazardous for marauding Confederate guerrillas.
However, substitute thoroughfares came ready made in the form of creeks, railroad beds, and bridle paths on friendly properties.
Considered spatially, it's not difficult to imagine how seventy-five men and two prisoners could have absconded from Falls Church around 2 a.m. only to reemerge on the railroad tracks west of Vienna where John D. Read was executed.
Death of John D. Read
The Connecticut-born schoolteacher died within earshot of the cavalry camp at Vienna.
Major John Birsdall of the 13th New York described the killing:
"There is no doubt concerning the murder of Mr. Reed, as the surgeon who has made an examination of the body states that the skull at the base of the brain is blown to atoms, and the flesh about the wound is filled with powder, as if the pistol had been placed close to the head. "
Attack at the Lewinsville Road
Keen and Mewborn describe what happened immediately after the execution of John D. Read:
"After killing Reed (sic), the raiders rode toward Vienna. Near the intersection of the Lewinsville road and the Alexandria turnpike Montjoy's party captured a picket post composed of four men from the 16th New York Cavalry."
The route described matches a retrograde movement down the Old Courthouse Road and into the depths of the Wolftrap Creek microbasin, which would have led Montjoy and company almost directly to the intersection where the Lewinsville Road his the Alexandria Turnpike.