Qualla: Jackson's Mill https://qualla.com/jackson-s-mill en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:07 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/y/jackson-s-mill-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Jackson's Mill https://qualla.com/jackson-s-mill Jackson's Mill: Introduction https://qualla.com/jackson-s-mill/ Photo credit Kathy from just livin' in a small town in SW PA, USA, CC BY 2.0. He read by the light of burning pine knots. After both his parents died - his father of typhoid fever in 1826, his mother of complications from childbirth in 1831 - the orphaned boy was sent at age six to live with his uncle Cummins Jackson at the family mill in Lewis County. Formal education was scarce in this corner of frontier Virginia in the 1830s, so Thomas Jonathan Jackson taught himself to read and then kept teaching himself, sitting up at night in the loft with whatever books he could find. One of his uncle's enslaved men brought him the pine knots in exchange for reading lessons, which Virginia law forbade. The boy taught the man anyway. Decades later he would become Stonewall Jackson, one of the most consequential generals of the Confederacy. The mill where he grew up is still standing.

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Image: Kathy from just livin' in a small town in SW PA, USA | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/y/jackson-s-mill-wp/dnyy-jacksons-mill-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Jackson's Mill: The Mill on the West Fork https://qualla.com/jackson-s-mill/ Photo credit Kathy from just livin' in a small town in SW PA, USA, CC BY 2.0. Edward Jackson built the original sawmill and grist mill on the east bank of the West Fork River in 1809, three years before he would build the family house on a knoll across the river. The site sat on a peninsula formed where Freeman's Creek joins the West Fork - a natural choic...

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Image: Kathy from just livin' in a small town in SW PA, USA | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/y/jackson-s-mill-wp/dnyy-jacksons-mill-the-mill-on-the-west-fork.mp3 0:06 2 full Jackson's Mill: An Orphaned Boy https://qualla.com/jackson-s-mill/ Photo credit Kathy from just livin' in a small town in SW PA, USA, CC BY 2.0. The Jackson family had its share of nineteenth-century catastrophe. Jonathan Jackson, the future general's father, was an attorney in Clarksburg when he died of typhoid in 1826, leaving his wife Julia Neale Jackson with three young children and significant debt. Julia struggled t...

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Image: Kathy from just livin' in a small town in SW PA, USA | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/y/jackson-s-mill-wp/dnyy-jacksons-mill-an-orphaned-boy.mp3 0:06 3 full Jackson's Mill: A Secret Reading Lesson https://qualla.com/jackson-s-mill/ Photo credit Kathy from just livin' in a small town in SW PA, USA, CC BY 2.0. Cummins Jackson held a small number of enslaved people on the farm. One of them, whose name is not preserved in the historical record, became a participant in one of the more striking episodes of young Thomas Jackson's boyhood. The teenage Thomas had developed an intense, self-di...

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Image: Kathy from just livin' in a small town in SW PA, USA | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/y/jackson-s-mill-wp/dnyy-jacksons-mill-a-secret-reading-lesson.mp3 0:06 4 full Jackson's Mill: From West Point to Chancellorsville https://qualla.com/jackson-s-mill/ Photo credit Kathy from just livin' in a small town in SW PA, USA, CC BY 2.0. In 1842, Thomas Jackson received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. He was poorly prepared by his irregular education and arrived behind the other cadets; he graduated four years later in the middle of his class only by sustained, disciplined effo...

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Image: Kathy from just livin' in a small town in SW PA, USA | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/y/jackson-s-mill-wp/dnyy-jacksons-mill-from-west-point-to-chancellorsville.mp3 0:06 5 full Jackson's Mill: What the Mill Is Now https://qualla.com/jackson-s-mill/ Photo credit Kathy from just livin' in a small town in SW PA, USA, CC BY 2.0. In 1921 the owners of the Jackson farm deeded the property to the State of West Virginia. The mill was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, and the site now operates as the centerpiece of the Jackson's Mill Center for Lifelong Learning and State 4-H Camp - ...

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Image: Kathy from just livin' in a small town in SW PA, USA | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/y/y/jackson-s-mill-wp/dnyy-jacksons-mill-what-the-mill-is-now.mp3 0:06 6 full