View of the Village of Bloody Run

Description

Watercolor on paper of "View of the Village of Bloody Run", April 11, 1815, by Benjamin Henry Latrobe. In the foreground are three soldiers of the U.S. Army and a horse-drawn covered wagon on a road. The soldiers are volunteers preparing to head home following news of the Treaty of Ghent , which formally ended the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain. News of the December 1814 treaty spread slowly and the final battles of the war were fought in February 1815. In the distance is the village of Bloody Run, Bedford County, Pennsylvania, also known as Waynesboro, a settlement along the Juniata River at the foot of Warrior Mountain. Around 1875, the town was renamed Everett. Latrobe would have viewed this scene when he made a trip from Pittsburgh to Washington in April 1815 to talk with the commissioners about resuming his job as surveyor of public buildings. This job would include overseeing the rebuilding of the U.S. Capitol, which had burned during the War of 1812. Latrobe stayed a month in Washington and returned to Pittsburgh to gather his family for the move to Washington, which occurred in June 1815.