On October 6, 1864, Union soldiers reached the Breneman-Turner Mill while marching from Harrisonburg to Broadway during “The Burning,” U.S. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan’s two-week campaign to end the Shenandoah Valley’s role as the “Breadbasket of the Confederacy” by destroying mills, barns, and farm buildings. George Shaver, the 70-year-old miller who lived nearby, was seriously ill, so his 77-year-old wife, Hannah, pleaded with the soldiers not to burn the mill. Though sympathetic, they obeyed orders, set it on fire, and left. Mrs. Shaver beat out the flames with a broom, and later, when embers from a burning barn ignited the mill again, she blew a horn for help. Jacob Wenger, a farmer living over the hill, rushed over and put out the fire. Abraham Breneman had settled here in 1770 and built the mill about 1800. The mill ground corn meal, hominy, and grain, and produced high-quality flour for export through the harbors of Alexandria and Baltimore. The Breneman family operated it until 1849, when Shaver bought it. J. Howard Turner bought the mill in 1933 and ran it until his death in 1988; as late as 1973, it was still producing 500 pounds of flour weekly. Donated in 2003 to the Valley Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, it survives today as Rockingham County’s only antebellum grist mill with its original equipment, including three sets of French burr grind stones, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register.