As Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s army pushed into Front Royal, Col. Bradley T. Johnson’s 1st Maryland Infantry (CSA) confronted Col. John R. Kenly’s 1st Maryland Infantry (US) in fierce street fighting between the Warren County Court House and the Confederate military hospital across the street to the west. Federal troops fired hot musketry from the large windows of one of the two-story hospital buildings, threatening the Southern advance, until Gen. Richard S. Ewell asked Johnson if he could take the building and Johnson answered that he could do so in five minutes. His Marylanders, led by Capt. William H. Murray, charged and captured it in half that time. The fighting then moved north from the courthouse area along Crescent Street toward Chester Street, with house-to-house combat as the Federals retreated to Richardson’s Hill. Confederates also found themselves dodging enthusiastic civilians as secessionist women ran into the streets to greet their liberators, waving bonnets, cheering, screaming, pointing out where some Yankees had hidden, and encouraging the soldiers despite bullets flying in every direction. Soon many of these women would care for the wounded of both sides. In June 1861, the Confederate government had established three military hospitals in Front Royal, and during the battle on May 23, 1862, Federal troops used the two-story barrack-style hospital building for cover while the antebellum courthouse was also occupied by the 1st Maryland Infantry, USA. Warren County, formed in 1836 from parts of Frederick and Shenandoah Counties, was named for Gen. Joseph Warren of Massachusetts, who was killed at Bunker Hill in 1775.
