On July 26, 1863, Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan altered his plan to lead his Confederate raiders through Salineville after scouts reported Union troops in the village. Major General Ambrose Burnside, commanding the Department of the Ohio, used Ohio's railroad system to move Union forces ahead of the raiders. Protected by Colonel Leroy Cluke's rear guard, Morgan's main column rode southwestward across country to avoid Union infantry at Salineville and Union cavalry north of Monroeville. Trying to cut Morgan off, Major William B. Way's 9th Michigan Cavalry retraced its route through Monroeville and then turned west on Opal Road, where Way's troopers caught Cluke at West Grove Cemetery. After a spirited running fight, three Confederates were seriously wounded and left behind, while the rest of the rear guard retreated northwest toward Norristown on a different route from Morgan's column. Union cavalrymen carried the wounded Confederates to the porch of the nearby John Moore farmhouse, where two died of their injuries and were buried in the rear part of West Grove Cemetery. Their graves remained unmarked until 1910, when a local historian uncovered their story. One grave was identified as that of Private John Miller, while local citizens remembered the other dead soldier only as "Unknown -A Mere Boy." Both graves face south rather than the cemetery's usual eastward orientation. The third wounded Confederate, Frank Bixby of Company B, 8th Kentucky Cavalry, survived only to die in captivity at Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio, in January 1864. Morgan had begun his raid with several thousand raiders, but by the time they reached Jefferson County his command had shrunk to several hundred, exhausted after riding hundreds of miles with little sound sleep or regular provisions since leaving Confederate lines.