About mid-morning on August 7, 1864, Confederate soldiers ran for the hills during the Battle of Moorefield. Confederate Gen. John McCausland's cavalry brigade was camped in fields on this side of the South Branch of the Potomac River while McCausland slept in Samuel A. McMechen's house in Moorefield, two miles away. His brigade and that of Gen. Bradley T. Johnson, bivouacked in the Old Fields area two miles ahead, had taken part in Gen. Jubal A. Early's raid on Washington, D.C. They had burned Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, after unsuccessfully trying to extort money from the town fathers in retaliation for Federal depredations in the Shenandoah Valley, which had likewise been in retaliation for Confederate atrocities elsewhere. Union Gen. William W. Averell, pursuing the Confederates, surprised them at Old Fields and pushed them here. Johnson's men forded the river and tried to form a defense with McCausland's brigade, but they were outflanked and outgunned. The 3rd West Virginia Cavalry charged three times across the river and drove the Confederates into the hills. In The Meadows, the brick house to the right, the Williams family sheltered in their cellar during the fighting. Averell captured four cannons, more than 400 men with their weapons, and about the same number of horses. Early later claimed that the engagement had seriously damaged the effectiveness of his cavalry arm for the rest of his Shenandoah Valley campaign.
