Deadly Encounter

On the evening of October 3, 1864, as rain fell on a grassy hill near Harrisonburg, Union Lieutenant John Rodgers Meigs was killed in a fight with three Confederate scouts while he and two assistants were mapping the area for General Philip Sheridan. It is unclear who fired first, but Meigs was shot in the head and chest and died on the ground there. Meigs, the eldest son of U.S. Army Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, became the focus of a violent retaliation after an orderly mistakenly reported that civilian bushwhackers had murdered him. Enraged, Sheridan ordered Dayton and surrounding areas burned, and General George Custer's 5th New York Cavalry began displacing local families and burning their homes. On October 5, 400 wagons carrying refugees left Harrisonburg for the North, and although Sheridan soon rescinded the order concerning Dayton, much of the surrounding area had already been destroyed in what became known as the Burnt District. Meigs had graduated first in West Point's class of 1863; after his death he was posthumously promoted to major, and his body was buried in Plot 1, Grave 1, at Arlington House in the Lee rose garden, then under his father’s jurisdiction as a military cemetery.

Virginia · United States