Civil War Trust - Organization

Organization

The Civil War Trust is located in Washington, D.C., with a field office in Hagerstown, Maryland.

The President of the Civil War Trust is O. James Lighthizer. Lighthizer was a former partner, Miles and Stockbridge; former Secretary of the Maryland Department of Transportation, Anne Arundel County Executive, and member of the Maryland General Assembly.

In December 1999, Mr. Lighthizer accepted the presidency of Civil War Preservation Trust, a new organization created by the merger of two other national battlefield preservation groups, the Civil War Trust and the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites. Mr. Lighthizer had previously served as a member of the Civil War Trust's Board of Trustees.

When Lighthizer took the reins at CWPT in 1999, the fledgling organization had 22,000 members and its predecessor organizations had saved 7,500 acres (30 km2) in the previous 13 years. During Lighthizer's tenure as President of the CWPT and the Civil War Trust, the group has saved more than 22,000 additional acres, and now boasts 55,000 members nationwide. Lighthizer was also the architect of the rescue of the Slaughter Pen Farm on the Fredericksburg Battlefield, the most expensive private battlefield preservation effort in American history.

Henry E. Simpson was elected as Chairman of the Board of Civil War Trust in May 2011. Simpson is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and the University Of Virginia Law School, and an attorney with Adams and Reese/Lange Simpson, LLP in Birmingham, Alabama.