Stonewall Jackson House

Thomas Jonathan Jackson spent a decade in Lexington before the Civil War made him a legend. From eighteen fifty-one to eighteen sixty-one, he was a professor at the Virginia Military Institute, teaching natural philosophy and artillery tactics. During those years he joined the Lexington Presbyterian Church, married twice, and purchased the only home he ever owned.

That house, a modest Federal-style town home on Washington Street, is now a museum. Jackson lived here with his family between semesters, tending a vegetable garden and running a Sunday school for enslaved people in the community. He left Lexington in April of eighteen sixty-one when Virginia seceded, and never returned. He was wounded by his own men at Chancellorsville in May of eighteen sixty-three and died days later.

The house was carefully restored in nineteen seventy-nine to its appearance during the Jacksons' occupancy, and has been open to the public since nineteen fifty-four.