Shortly after the Battle of Shiloh on April 6-7, 1862, the Confederate army near Corinth in northern Mississippi learned that a large store of Union supplies worth $3,000,000 was at Paducah, Kentucky. On April 29, Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard ordered Col. Thomas Claiborne of the 6th Tennessee Cavalry to attack the Union garrison there. Claiborne marched from Trenton and reached the railroad junction at McKenzie's Station on May 3. After learning that Col. William H. Jackson of the 7th Tennessee Cavalry was on the way, he waited there until Jackson and his regiment arrived the next day. The two regiments joined forces on the Harris farm, now the Holland Farm, north of McKenzie, then moved north toward the Paris road. Confederate forces sometimes bivouacked on the Harris farm, whose owners were Southern sympathizers, and Gen. Nathan B. Forrest also stopped there while en route to Parker's Crossroads in December 1862. Cavalry horses were likely watered at two old ponds near the roadbed. As the Tennessee regiments marched north, they surprised a Union patrol from Fort Heiman on May 5 at Lockridge Mill on the Obion River in Weakley County. Union Maj. Carl Schaeffer de Boernstein was mortally wounded, about 20 other Federals were killed, and 60 to 70 were captured. Claiborne reported that his side suffered no deaths, only a few scratches. The clash alerted other Federal units, however, and the Confederates abandoned the Paducah raid and withdrew to Trenton.