New book delves into tragic stories of Front Royal
- By Laura Ruby The Northern Virginia Daily
- Mar 19, 2026
- https://www.nvdaily.com/nvdaily/new-book-delves-into-tragic-stories-of-front-royal/article_508cf14e-3217-55fe-88d0-227331202e37.html
A new book from local history enthusiast Teresa Henry recounts a number of untimely and tragic deaths in Front Royal’s distant past.
With 21 tales dating back to the town’s pre-Civil War era, “In the Quiet Between: Hauntings and Historical Memory in Front Royal” relies on archival research and stories handed down over generations. A first-time author and president of the Warren Heritage Society’s board of directors, Henry leans into first-hand accounts to explore how places attached to tragedy hold the weight of the past.
Henry initially started pulling stories together in early 2024 to be shared on the ghost tours that the Heritage Society offered late in the summer and into the fall, but she soon saw the opportunity to cement them in a more permanent fashion with the book.
She noted that while the ghost tour versions of each story leaned into spooky and scary aspects, the book takes a different approach.
“In the book, the focus is on the history of what happened and leaves some quietness for that eerie feeling throughout. I really did want to pay homage to these people. They’re real people,” she said.
One of Henry’s favorite stories, she said, is the tragedy of Young Henry Rhodes, a 17-year-old local boy who was captured and killed by Union officers in September 1864.
She wrote: “He was not a soldier. But when Mosby’s Rangers rode through town — hooves striking sparks against stone, leather and sweat sharp in the air — something in him followed.
He borrowed a horse. He rode toward Chester Gap, chasing men already swallowed by distance. The rhythm beneath him, the metallic scent of the bridle, the urgency of motion — it must have felt like movement toward something larger than himself.
The horse collapsed before he reached them.
The Union cavalry found him tangled in reins and dust. He was not armed. Not uniformed.
They bound him anyway. They brought him back through town.”
Henry goes on to describe a scene of terror as the town watched helplessly as one of its own was paraded through town. Despite his mother’s pleas, described as “continuous, raw, refusing to stop even when soldiers did not turn,” Rhodes was shot and killed along with five other men, Henry wrote.
Saying that she was moved by the “injustice” of the story, Henry added, “He wanted to be Mosby Ranger. That was like GI Joe in our day. And so, he thinks he’s doing something cool and then he ends up just being an example.”
Henry said she relied on the Heritage Society’s Laura Virginia Hale archives, The Virginia Chronicle, The Warren Sentinel and Hale’s book “On Chester Street” for her research and then tried to bring the stories to life as much as possible.
“I really tried to capture some of that — I read a lot of newspaper articles and tried to pull from everywhere that anybody had written anything. I looked in diaries and tried to get a really good view of what they were seeing and feeling,” she said.
The book includes stories about each home that is part of the Warren Heritage Society’s Chester Street campus — the Ivy Lodge, Belle Boyd’s Cottage and the Balthis House, the oldest remaining home on the street. Many stories are set during the Civil War, but tragedy endured in the years after as lives were lost to accidents, by suicide, and through murder.
Henry said that in the early days of the project, she spoke with Keith Menefee, local historian and owner of Down Home Comfort Bakery on Main Street, and Jan Long, a former Heritage Society archivist, both of whom shared local stories.
“And then people realized that I was looking for stories and they started coming out of the woodwork telling me things,” she said, adding that she also used information that she had heard from her parents and grandmother, who lived on Main Street for many years.
“These are real people or real tragedies that have happened here,” she said, adding that a couple of stories lean into folklore. “I tried to do as much research as possible … where there were holes, I gently mended them together. It’s not all fact. It’s not all story. It’s somewhere in between the two. That’s where the title of the book comes from.”
An artist and graphic designer, Henry not only researched and wrote the book, she also did all of the design work herself, featuring an image of Ivy Lodge shrouded in darkness on the cover.
Noting that she hated history in school, Henry said that she became interested in the subject in her early 20s when she and her husband, Patrick, started taking regular trips to Williamsburg. In early 2021, after having recently closing her business, Henry was looking for something to “dig into.” She started researching her family’s genealogy at the Heritage Society and volunteered that summer for its history camp. She joined the board in 2023 and became president in January 2024.
The book is available in the Heritage Society gift store and on Amazon for $19.99. It is also available for Kindle for $9.99. All proceeds will benefit the Heritage Society.
— Contact Laura Ruby at lruby@nvdaily.com
