Dayton

In the fall of 1864, Confederate raiders and bushwhackers angered Federal officers in the Shenandoah Valley. On September 22, Union soldiers captured Davy Getz near Woodstock wearing civilian clothes and carrying a squirrel rifle. When Union Gen. George A. Custer ordered his execution as a bushwhacker, town elders pleaded for leniency, saying that Getz had only the mind of a six-year-old, but Custer ignored them. On October 1 or 2, Getz was forced to dig his own grave in an orchard a hundred yards away and was shot to death. Adolph Heller of Woodstock, who had unsuccessfully tried to secure Getz's release, warned Custer, "You will sleep in a bloody grave for this." On October 3, Union Lt. John R. Meigs, son of U.S. Army Quartermaster Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs and a young officer on Gen. Philip H. Sheridan's staff, was killed in a brief fight with Confederate scouts north of Dayton. Believing that civilian bushwhackers had murdered Meigs, Sheridan ordered all houses within a three-mile radius of Dayton burned in retaliation. When soldiers of the 5th New York Cavalry came to burn a large two-story brick house, a 70-year-old woman, Abigail Lincoln Coffman, stood in the doorway and declared, "You cannot burn this house. I am a first cousin of the president." Her statement, and perhaps the discovery of her husband's Masonic apron by ransacking soldiers, saved her house while others nearby burned.

Dayton, Virginia · United States