During the Civil War, this then-treeless hill overlooked Moorefield, with the confluence of two watercourses beyond the town forming the South Branch River as it flowed north through a fertile valley. The Harness family cemetery stood at the northern end of the knoll. On September 10, 1863, Union Maj. Edward W. Stephens, Jr., with six companies of the 1st West Virginia Infantry and a company of cavalry, was ordered here to surprise a Confederate camp on the South Branch, but after bivouacking and entrenching on the hill that night, his force was itself surprised. Just before dawn on September 11, Capts. John H. McNeill, George W. Imboden, and McNarey Hobson led an attack that overran Stephens's position. The Confederates captured 8 officers and 152 enlisted infantrymen and cavalrymen and seized two ambulances, 9 wagons, 46 horses, 123 rifles, 112 pistols, and 10,500 rounds of ammunition. A Union officer at first refused to surrender to a Confederate private, Mark Westmoreland, but changed his mind when Westmoreland leveled his carbine and said that it equalized their ranks. After the war, the cemetery gradually expanded to forty acres and was named Olivet. An obelisk erected in 1873 honors Confederate war dead buried here, including McNeill, although it is uncertain whether his remains were reinterred here from Harrisonburg. Oak Hill Cemetery, across the drive, contains the graves of slaves, former slaves, and their descendants.