Dear Dr. Piazza:

The Central Virginia Battlefields Trust wishes to extend to you its sincerest thanks for your recent new donation. It is the generosity of persons such as you that inspires us in our efforts to save hallowed ground. As you know, we have previously acquired land at Fredericksburg as well as Chancellorsville. Our most recent acquisitions include two 20-acre sites on the Po River, our first acreage on the Spotsylvania Courthouse battlefield, and a 5-acrea site (donated to CVBT) know as Grant’s Knoll near the Wilderness battlefield. I hope you’ll have the opportunity to visit these sites to see how your donations are being used.

The planned Town of Chancellorsville, a development of over 1,200 homes and thousands of square feet of commercial/retail space, was denied a rezoning request early in 2003. As part of the coalition fighting this we were extremely pleased with the outcome but we anticipate more work in our efforts to convince the property owner to preserve the core battlefield portion of the site. We’ll continue to keep our members updated via newsletter and our website.

We’ve also just about completed the clean-up of the 11-acre Smith’s Run site and two smaller sites in Spotsylvania County at Nine Mile Run, all three part of the Chancellorsville campaign, and we anticipate making them more accessible to visitors in the very near future.

The Internal Revenue Service requires us, when acknowledging your donation, to state specifically that we provided no goods or services in return for your donation. You should keep this letter with your tax records, as a charitable deduction could be disallowed if you are unable to produce this letter in response to an IRS request.

My thanks to you for all your continued interest and support.

Sincerely yours,

Michael P. Stevens
President