On June 26, 1862, A. P. Hill opened the fighting by sending his division across the Chickahominy River, driving Union outposts through Mechanicsville and back beyond Beaver Dam Creek. Roswell Ripley’s brigade closely supported Hill, and when Ripley’s Georgians and North Carolinians reached this ground they met withering fire. Private Edgar A. Jackson of Ripley’s brigade later wrote that as they approached, bullets flew in torrents, the men exchanged shot for shot with the Yankees, and soldiers fell around him as they loaded and fired by the light of the enemy’s guns. Near this spot, Jackson’s regiment, the 1st North Carolina Infantry, suffered 125 casualties, while the 44th Georgia, fighting beside them, lost 65 percent of its 514 men. For many Southerners, Beaver Dam Creek was their first action of the war. Captain Tristram L. Skinner of the 1st North Carolina, photographed shortly before the battle with Lieutenant John A. Benbury and Lieutenant Lemuel C. Benbury of Company A, wrote his wife that he was confident in the army’s success but not hopeful of being spared, and that he would go into action with as brave a heart as he could command. Skinner was struck by enemy fire while leading his men against entrenched Federal troops across the creek and died urging them to rally around the flag. Lemuel C. Benbury died of wounds received at Malvern Hill five days after the fighting here.