Battle of Moorefield
Where the Fighting Started
The Confederate cavalry brigade of Gen. Bradley
T. Johnson bivouacked in the fields to your left
on August 7, 1864. Willow Wall (built ca. 1830), visible to your left down the road, was Johnson’s headquarters. Johnson’s brigade and that of Gen. John McCausland (bivouacked closer to Moorefield) had taken part in Gen. Jubal A. Early’s
raid on Washington, D.C., and had burned Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in retaliation for Federal “depredations” in the Shenandoah Valley,
which had likewise been in retaliation for Confederate “atrocities.” Union Gen. William W.
Averell, whose command was in pursuit, surprised the Confederate pickets north of here by
attacking
with “Jesse
Scouts”
(Federal
soldiers in
Confederate
uniforms).
He drove
Johnson’s
men south through
here toward Parson’s Ford. Averell captured four cannons, more than 400 men with their weapons, and—about as bad for the
Confederates at this
stage of the war—an
equal number of hard-to-replace horses. Early
claimed that “this
affair had a very damaging effect upon my cavalry for the rest of the campaign” in terms of both
morale and horses. That campaign ended with
the loss of the Shenandoah Valley, the “breadbasket of the Confederacy.”
This community, remarkably undamaged
by the fight, was home to the Van Meter and
McNeill families. Isaac “Big Ike” Van Meter lived
at Fort Pleasant (constructed 1833, behind you
and to your right) and enlisted in Co. F, 7th Virginia Cavalry, in the summer of 1862. The unit
fought in the Shenandoah Valley and in several
other campaigns. According to Van Meter, “We did
not surrender at Appomattox, but came home, giving Grant’s army leg bail to save our horses and
private effects, and then surrendered in squads at
New Creek or elsewhere, when more convenient.”
(sidebar)
The other buildings that you see around you include Old Fields Church (1812), the second-oldest church in West Virginia; the Garrett Van Meter House (1835); Buena Vista (1836), built for William T. Van Meter, killed in Gen. Wade Hampton’s “Beefsteak Raid” behind Union lines near Petersburg, Va., in 1864; and Traveler’s Rest (1856), constructed for Garrett
Van Meter’s three unmarried sisters: Ann, Rebecca, and Susan Van Meter.
Marker is on U.S. 220 just north of Rolling Acres Drive, on the right when traveling north.
Courtesy hmdb.org
