The Warren Rifles Museum
Near Front Royal, Virginia
On Chester Street stands a small museum devoted to the men and women of Warren County who lived through the Civil War. The Warren Rifles were an infantry company raised right here in Front Royal in eighteen sixty one, at the very start of the conflict. When they marched off to war, they were folded into the Confederate army in Virginia.
The museum that carries their name gathers together the relics of that generation. Inside you will find memorabilia connected to Belle Boyd, the Confederate spy who did her most famous work in this town, along with items tied to John Mosby's Rangers, the guerrilla cavalry who haunted this corner of Virginia, and artifacts associated with Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis.
There are uniforms, small arms, artillery relics, and historic documents, but there are also everyday objects from local civilians, the letters and household things that show how ordinary families endured a war that came right to their doorsteps. The collection was founded and is cared for by the Warren Rifles Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Whatever you make of the cause these soldiers served, the museum preserves a strikingly personal record of a small Southern town swept into the center of the fighting.
