Mill Island, a Greek Revival mansion built about 1840 for Felix Seymour and his wife, Sidney McNeill Seymour, served during the Civil War as a Confederate hospital, especially for Capt. John Hanson McNeill’s Rangers, a locally recruited partisan band. According to local tradition, the Hardy County court clerk also stored records there for safekeeping during Federal incursions out of fear that the courthouse might be burned. In 1861, Seymour’s widow lived there with her daughter and son-in-law, Margaret Ann and George T. Williams, and their two children. More than 20 slaves and a paid laborer helped George Williams cultivate 1,500 acres in this fertile valley, producing corn, wheat, rye, apples, peaches, and grapes, and raising horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs. Although he did not serve in the Confederate armed forces, Williams sympathized with secession, as did many of his slaveholding neighbors, and he suffered losses of crops and livestock to both sides during foraging expeditions. After the war, Williams helped finance roads to improve shipment of crops out of the valley and served as one of the first commissioners of the county’s new public school system, while the valley soon began returning to its prewar prosperity.