Elden Editions

Civil War Books

2101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 950, Arlington, Virginia 22201, (703) 528-6700

Elden was an Eighteenth-Century plantation house in Herndon, Virginia where Crouch & Crouch partner Thomas Gordon Crouch, his brother, Howard Crouch, and five other brothers and sisters were raised. Herndon in the 'teens and twenties still had many confederate veterans, several of whom had ridden with partisan hero Col. John S. Mosby and held their raucous reunions at the town railroad station. Elden was destroyed in 1964. Elden Editions hopes to maintain something of the presence of that past which so thoroughly pervaded Northern Virginia up through the last decade, but is now being so rapidly and deliberately forgotten.

ROUGH-RIDING SCOUT:

THE STORY OF JOHN W. MOBBERLY, NORTHERN VIRGINIA'S CIVIL WAR GUERILLA HERO
By Richard E. Crouch

Northern Virginia Guerrilla John W. Mobberly earned a reputation as the meanest Confederate east of Missouri. Originally a member of White's 35th Virginia Cavalry, Mobberly ended up leading an independent unit, or gang, in his own home neighborhood during the war's last 2 1/2 years. With Union deserter French Bill and an elusive band of ruthless horsemen, he terrorized Loudoun county and the Harpers Ferry area with lightning raids from their mountain hideouts. Mobberly was known for miraculous feats of horsemanship, a very full social life, foolhardy risk-taking, narrow escapes, and some sadistic killings that seemed to resemble murder more than warfare. A comrade wrote in "Prince of the Daredevils," XXVII Confederate Veteran 288, that this young man was the bravest of the brave, and probably personally killed more Yankee soldiers than any man in Lee's army. Though reviled by Unionists as an illiterate, illegitimate bandit, no gentleman, and perhaps a Jew, Mobberly was mourned as a romantic hero by impressive crowds of Secessionist ladies when "assassinated" at the war's end.

$12.00 in soft cover. $2 for shipping (Add $1 shipping for each additional book up to $5. Larger orders actual shipping cost.) Virginia residents add 5.0% sales tax, i.e. 60 cents per copy.

50 pp., illustrations, photos, map. 8 1/2" X 11" ISBN NO. 0-9613581-1-4
ELDEN EDITIONS, 2101 Wilson Blvd., #950, Arlington, Virginia 22201

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"The war was their chosen topic; its exploits were their own patent of nobility; and where a man or a race has had but one adventure, and that heroic, we must expect and pardon some prolixity of reference. They told me the country was still full of legends hitherto uncollected ... "

--Robert Louis Stevenson

To e-mail Elden Editions, please use the form on Richard Crouch's law firm web site.