In June 1863, Maj. James Nounnan's Confederate cavalry rode onto the property of prosperous Dillsburg resident Michael Mumper and his family, where the Mumper house, Maple Shade, the coachman's house, and the original 1850s barn were part of the farm. Just before the cavalry arrived, the Mumpers had taken in 12-year-old William Caldwell, a refugee who had been kicked by a horse while fleeing the advance of Gen. Richard Ewell's Confederate Second Corps and could no longer ride. As Nounnan dined at the Mumper house, he ordered his surgeon to treat William's injury and wrote him a pass for safe travel to Shippensburg. When Confederate pickets stopped William near Dills Tavern as he headed home, he at first forgot the pass in his fright, but after remembering the signed document in his pocket and showing it to them, he was permitted to continue home. During the Gettysburg campaign, some 6,000 Confederate cavalrymen were in the Dillsburg region, including troopers of Gen. Jeb Stuart's command who camped on the nearby John Mumper farm on July 1 and decimated the family's orchard.