“Let the damn Yankee die!” So declared an outraged teenager named Josephine Boteler of Friendly Hall in Maryland’s Pleasant Valley. Why such a harsh pronouncement? She, a member of a slave-owning, southern-sympathizing family, was being asked to care for the captured and wounded Union officer, Captain Daniel Wade Lapham of the Ninth New York calvary. It was 1864 and Captain Lapham had been captured in Virginia and conveyed to the Boteler farm, then in Confederate hands. Her older sister Annie was also an ardent Secessionist, known to ferry messages to Confederate troops across South Mountain in a hidden pocket of her shawl. Josephine could hardly deal kindly with yet another Yankee soldier in her home that had seen the ravages of war over the past three years.
Fairlight Farm is the 62-acre remnant of that Boteler family farm, established in 1820 by Hezekiah Boteler, son of a soldier of the French and Indian War who was the first European settler in Pleasant Valley. The main house, built out in the 1850s, was named Friendly Hall and strived to be a place of welcome. Unfortunately, that welcome was stained with the sin of slavery and it paid a price for that sin as the Civil War surged back and forth across Pleasant Valley, Maryland, from 1861-1865. Friendly Hall was conscripted by both sides to serve in turn as field hospital or prison throughout those 4 years.
Captain Lapham had the seeming misfortune of being one of those held in the Boteler home. Did he hear Josephine’s impassioned cry? Did he feel hopeless? Angry?
In a romance novel this might be the beginning of a terribly unrealistic but ever so gallant love story as two enemies learn to love one another. In real life, we cannot imagine, as we look at the division all around us, two such opposing forces ever crossing the divide to friendship, let alone love. But against the odds, this was a true love story. Josephine Boteler, slave owner, Confederate sympathizer, Rebel, married Captain Daniel Wade Lapham, Union officer and abolitionist, in 1867. Eventually, they returned to Lapham’s home state—where their family home took the name Friendly Hall in honor and memory of Josephine’s family and the bond they shared.
What prejudices did they overcome? Did Josephine recant her belief in slavery or her support for the Confederacy? Did Daniel overlook her beliefs and love her anyway? Is that even possible in today’s divided and angry world? Is it possible today to recognize the human dignity of the other in the midst of hate, fear, anger, and discord?
The Fairlight Forum was created to make that possibility real.