Edward T. Wenzel

Ed Wenzel is one of the originators of the modern battlefield preservation movement. He is a co-founder of both the Chantilly Battlefield Association and the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites, forerunner of the American Battlefield Trust. Wenzel, from Vienna, Va., also was a driving force at Manassas in the Save the Battlefield Coalition, working side by side with Annie Snyder in the late 1980s to fight and defeat a regional mall approved for the Second Manassas battlefield. Now retired as a topographic map compiler with the U.S. Geological Survey, Wenzel joined fellow Bearss Award honorees Clark B. Hall and Brian Pohanka in 1986 to form the Chantilly Battlefield Association and save 4.1 acres at that Northern Virginia battlefield. Since then, Wenzel has remained a tireless advocate for the preservation and commemoration of Civil War history, particularly in Fairfax County, Va. In 2015, Wenzel published the first volume of his authoritative Chronology of The Civil War in Fairfax County Vol. I.