On March 24, 1865, Union Gen. George Stoneman led 6,000 cavalrymen from Tennessee into southwestern Virginia and western North Carolina to disrupt the Confederate supply line by destroying sections of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, the North Carolina Railroad, and the Piedmont Railroad. His raiders passed through Rockford along the north bank of the Yadkin River on April 1-2, 1865, on their way north to Virginia, and stopped at Mark York's tavern, a Federal-style building constructed about 1830. According to local tradition, York's wife was churning butter in the front yard with her young son, Jasper, when troopers demanded that she reveal where local residents had hidden animals and valuables; she refused even after they threatened to take her son away, and finally retorted, "And you'll pay the devil," after which the soldiers left. When a Federal officer fell ill nearby, he sent a courier to summon Dr. Milton Folger of Rockford to care for him, and Folger's six-year-old daughter Molly later recalled sitting on the Union cavalryman's knee while he spoke of his own little girl; Folger rode off on his good horse and returned on a broken-down cavalry mount after treating the officer. The raiders then continued down the north bank of the Yadkin River, had a brief encounter with Confederate troops at Siloam about five miles east, and turned north toward Virginia. In 1789, Rockford became the seat of Surry County and flourished as a governmental and trade community on the Yadkin River, but after Yadkin County was created from the southern half of Surry in 1850 and the court was moved to Dobson three years later, Rockford entered a period of decline.