Battlefield Guide Services

Battlefield Guide Services

     As of January 1, 2022, I have retired from providing private tours of the battlefields.
     After over 20 years of doing so, I look back with fondness and gratitude for all my clients.
     Many thanks to everyone of you.
     My name is John Cummings, and I would like to share with you my lifelong passion for Civil War history and the human experiences that shaped our region and nation. I have conducted tours since 1994, and have focused my research over the past eighteen years on the Spotsylvania area. I am the author of three books on the local history and have written numerous articles for national publication. My concentration of study has been on the visual record of the war, produced in photographs chiefly, and also in the works of newspaper "Special Artists" who sketched the scenes of battle on the ground, as it happened. 
     Come out for a two hour tour of the Spotsylvania Courthouse neighborhood and battlefield. The basic tour rates start at just $67.50 and will provide a fast-paced look at how the citizens, and the soldiers fared during the two week struggle of May 1864. Do you have an ancestor who fought here? I can customize your tour to allow you to walk in their footsteps, dependent on property accessibility. Give me at least one week notice and I will make the arrangements. Send me an email at spotsylvaniacwblog@gmail.com, or call 540-455-0228. All tours start from the historic Spotsylvania Court House area, where Confederate forces dug in to protect the vital crossroad from the advancing Federal Army of the Potomac. 
     Visits to Chancellorsville and the Wilderness battlefields are also available with advance notice. 
Walk where the armies advanced, and struggled to gain ground.

Hear the stories of the people who lived here before war's intrusion.

Experience "then and now" imagery, and see how much has changed.

See what the passage of one hundred and fifty years has done to the community.

Learn the truth behind the scenes.

Walk away with a better understanding of the field of battle.

Stand on the very ground where history was recorded.