Death of 2d Lt. James "Big Yankee" Ames

Sgt. James F. Ames of the 5th New York Cavalry deserted the Union army in Feb. 1863 and joined John S. Mosby’s Partisan Rangers (later 43d Cavalry Battalion). Nicknamed “Big Yankee,” Ames rose to the rank of 2d lieutenant. On the night of 8-9 Mar. 1863, he guided Mosby’s Rangers on the Fairfax Court House raid in which Mosby captured Union Brig. Gen. Edwin Stoughton. On 9 Oct. 1864, when Mosby was in this area to disrupt railroad repairs, a Union scout shot and killed Ames northeast of here at a farm along the road from Delaplane to Upperville. Ranger Ludwell Lake Jr. then shot Ames’s likely killer. Ames was buried near where he fell. Mosby wrote of Ames, “I never had a more faithful follower.”

Department of Historic Resources, 2025