On May 4, 1864, Union Gen. George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac crossed the Rappahannock River to engage Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and destroy it, beginning the Overland Campaign as part of Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's plan to strike Confederate forces simultaneously throughout the South. Some of the bloodiest fighting of the war followed as Grant and Meade pursued Lee south at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, North Anna River, and Cold Harbor, and in mid-June the ten-month siege of Richmond and Petersburg began. On the morning of May 11, 1864, Union Gen. Philip H. Sheridan and two divisions of his cavalry corps passed here during a raid toward Richmond that had begun two days earlier and was intended to locate and defeat Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry corps. Sheridan sent elements of his corps to Ashland, Allen's Station (Glen Allen), and Hungary Station to destroy the Richmond, Fredericksburg, & Potomac Railroad track, while he and the other two divisions continued down Mountain Road toward present-day U.S. Route 1. Later that afternoon, Sheridan's men caught up with Stuart's corps at Yellow Tavern four miles southeast of here; Stuart was mortally wounded and died the next day. Meadow Farm was home to Dr. John Mosby Sheppard, his wife, Virginia Young Sheppard, and their nine children. Their eldest son, Alexander Hamilton Sheppard, was a guard at Libby Prison in Richmond, where captured Union officers were confined. Like other farmers, the Sheppards paid a tax of a tenth of their crops and meat for the common defense and to carry on the government of the Confederate states, and such taxes, along with shortages of consumer goods and rampant inflation, contributed to the deteriorating quality of Southern life.