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On the night of June 8, 1863, Union soldiers crashed into the bedchamber of Pauline Clarke Mosby demanding to know where her husband was hiding.
The South's most daring guerrilla commander, John Mosby, the "Gray Ghost," had long wreaked havoc behind Union lines throughout the Virginia countryside, seizing Union artillery, supplies, and payrolls. A week earlier, he and his men had slipped between two camps of Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker's army. They destroyed a train out of Manassas Junction, denying the Federals much-needed supplies. Now, bent on revenge, the Union eagerly sought to capture the "Gray Ghost." Because Mosby's wife and children were known to have recently taken residence in the Fauquier county home of James Hathaway, a detachment of the First New York had stormed in, determined to find the whereabouts of John Mosby.
Outraged, Pauline clutched her bedclothes to her neck, answering her interrogators with bewildered indignation.
The soldiers finally gave up, and rode off. Moments later, her husband emerged through her open bedroom window---where he had been hiding in the walnut tree branches just outside.
His face still bruised from his harrowing escape, the "Gray Ghost" must have seemed a world away from the quiet man Pauline had married.
She met John Singleton Mosby at Howardsville, thirty miles south of Charlottesville, on the upper James River.
Pauline had been staying in town, preparing to leave with her father for the Democratic National Convention in Cincinnati. A native of Kentucky, she was the daughter of an accomplished attorney and politician. Her father, Beverly L. Clarke, had once been a candidate for governor, and later served as U.S. Minister to Guatemala. John Mosby had settled in Howardsville a year earlier, to practice law. After meeting Pauline, he began courting her, traveling to Kentucky to visit her family. They married December 30, 1857 in Nashville, the wedding attended by numerous dignitaries, including U.S senator Andrew Johnson.
During their first year of marriage they lived with John's parents, then moved to Bristol, in southwest Virginia. John opened a law office,
and in the spring of 1859, Pauline delivered a daughter. The Mosby's household, however, was soon disrupted by the darkening clouds of secessional debate.
As Virginia charted its course in the gathering storm, Pauline gave birth to the couple's first son. Soon afterwards, John marched off to war, leaving Pauline behind with their children. Their family life would never be the same.
Throughout the following war-torn years, Pauline remained John's closest confidante. She managed to see him whenever possible, and bore him a
third child as the fighting raged on. Faced with the horrors of war, John found perhaps his greatest source of comfort through Pauline.
Her support did not end with the war. In mid-April 1865, the "Gray Ghost" was considered a fugitive outlaw suspected of complicity in the
assassination of President Lincoln.
Even after formally disbanding the remnants of his 800-man command, a five thousand dollar bounty remained upon his head. In mid-June, he became the last Confederate officer to surrender when he was finally granted parole. But in August, soon after stepping off a train in Alexandria, his notoriety attracted a crowd overflowing into the street, and Union officials seized upon the opportunity to arrest him---citing him for obstruction of traffic. After seeing her husband arrested several times for petty or trumped up charges, Pauline had had enough. She went to President Johnson, a long time friend of her family, a man who had served in the House of Representatives with her father, and attended her wedding. Now increasingly unsympathetic to Rebel leaders, Johnson asked her to leave his office. Undefeated, Pauline went to General Grant. From him she obtained the paper John needed---a handwritten exemption from arrest.
Thereafter, John was able to live in peace with his family. They moved to the town of Warrenton in September of 1865. John practiced
law, forming a partnership with attorney James Keith.
In 1876 John purchased Keith's home for his growing family. By this time, Pauline had given birth to seven children, and was expecting another. In March of 1876 she delivered their eighth child, but never recovered from childbirth. She died in May, her infant son following her in death.
Devastated by his wife's death, John Mosby placed their new home on the market and left Warrenton.
He did not return before his own death forty years later--when his family honored his last wishes, and buried him alongside his beloved Pauline.
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