Fairview, the stone home of Thomas McKay, stood at the site where Union Col. John R. Kenly rallied the 1st Maryland Infantry for a last stand as Confederates approached during the Battle of Front Royal. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson had ordered Col. Thomas S. Flournoy's 6th Virginia Cavalry in pursuit as Kenly's troops retreated from Guard Hill north on the Front Royal Turnpike toward Winchester. As Kenly tried unsuccessfully to deploy his men in the fields and orchard there, Flournoy's cavalry struck before they could fix bayonets or form a front. Kenly ordered the 5th New York Cavalry to countercharge, but its troopers instead raced north in panic, running over Kenly's men as they struggled to form a battle line. In the confusion, some of the Marylanders fired at New Yorkers and many fell. The charge of the 6th Virginia, which Jackson afterward declared the most gallant and effective he had ever seen, overwhelmed Kenly's force, which grounded its weapons and surrendered, and Kenly himself was severely wounded and captured. Federal losses in the Battle of Front Royal were 904 killed, wounded, and captured out of Kenly's 1,000-man garrison, while the Confederates suffered fewer than 100 casualties. By the end of the engagement, the Confederates had occupied Front Royal, seized some $300,000 worth of U.S. quartermaster and commissary stores, and flanked Gen. Nathaniel Banks's main force at Strasburg, clearing the way to Winchester. Many wounded soldiers were cared for at the McKay house, where blood stained the floors for years. Dabney Eastham of Co. B, 6th Virginia Cavalry, was believed mortally wounded and left in the yard, but when his father arrived from Rappahannock County the next morning to claim his body, he found that grass and mud had clotted the wound and saved his life; to avoid reopening it, the sod was lifted with him when he was carried into the house. Eastham survived and left descendants in Rappahannock and Warren Counties. After Front Royal, Jackson moved to Winchester, where he won a decisive victory on May 25, 1862, forcing the Federals to withdraw across the Potomac River.