Death of Lt. Meigs

After Union Lieutenant John R. Meigs was killed near this hill, General Philip H. Sheridan, mistakenly informed that civilian bushwhackers were responsible, told General U.S. Grant four days later that all houses within an area of five miles had been burned in retaliation for the act. The area initially was to include Tunkerville, Bridgewater, and Dayton. On October 4-5, the 5th New York Cavalry of General George A. Custer’s division began forcing local families from their homes and burning the houses to the ground. Some residents stayed with relatives and friends, while others joined a 400-wagon refugee train that left Harrisonburg on October 5 for the North. Northern newspapers reported that the devastation had compelled people to leave. Many of the refugees were pacifist and antislavery Mennonites and Brethren, commonly called Dunkards or Tunkers. Union soldiers wrote of the area’s productive farms and of the inhabitants’ good treatment of Federals; Quartermaster Sergeant Ezra Walker of the 116th Ohio Infantry, who bivouacked in Dayton, later recalled returning from a farm with honey, apple butter, bread, sweet potatoes, cabbage, and chickens, and said he paid for what he took. Others were less considerate, and widespread looting occurred. After the war, Mennonites and Brethren rebuilt barns, mills, and, in this area, houses. Samuel Coffman, a thirty-year-old newly called bishop of the Middle District of the Mennonite Church when the war began, held to adult baptism, opposition to slavery, and pacifism, and told his men to hide or flee rather than submit to Confederate conscription, bringing later threats against his life for following his conscience.

Virginia · United States