On February 12, 1863, on a cold, snowy day, sixteen men gathered in a small schoolhouse behind Deep Creek Friends Meetinghouse, including Quakers such as brothers Jesse and William Dobbins, men opposed to slavery and fighting, others angry at Confederate conscription, and a Confederate deserter, all planning to flee west across the mountains. Confederate Capt. James West arrived with militia and surprised them, and when he stood on the rock doorstep and ordered everyone out, someone inside shot him in the head and mortally wounded him. In the exchange of gunfire that followed, militiaman John Williams was killed and several others were wounded; inside the schoolhouse, Solomon Hinshaw and Eck Allgood were killed, and Enoch Brown and Benjamin Willard were wounded. In the confusion, the surviving fugitives escaped through a window. Jesse Dobbins led four men across the mountains to Tennessee, while several others were captured in Yadkin County; two later served in the Confederate army and two remained hidden until the war ended. After the war, a Union officer compelled the county clerk to drop charges against the men who had been in the schoolhouse. Jesse Virgil Dobbins, born in 1830, had hauled salt from Virginia until he was conscripted into the Confederate army, then hid from January 20 until February 1, 1863, when snow drove him to take refuge in the schoolhouse. After the skirmish, which he said was self-defense, he, his brother William, his brother-in-law James Caswell Wooten, Thomas Adams, and Robert E. Hutchens fled to Kentucky. Jesse Dobbins later enlisted in the 4th Ohio Battery and transferred to the 1st Tennessee Battery, and after the war he became a successful businessman but lived under suspicion for the rest of his life over the death of Capt. James West.