At the former schoolyard of the Masonic Female Institute, Confederate troops defended Blountville on September 22, 1863. That morning, Col. James E. Carter's 1st Tennessee Cavalry withdrew from the Watauga River to prepared positions intended to block the Union cavalry brigade of Col. John W. Foster after it crossed the river. Early in the afternoon, Foster took position on Cemetery Hill at the western end of town, and a destructive artillery duel followed. After four hours of fighting and shelling, the Confederates withdrew to Carter's Depot on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad a few miles east as Federal troops charged through town near dusk. Carter lost a cannon and about fifty men captured in the battle. The next day he evacuated the depot, leaving it to Foster. White Side Lodge No. 13 built the Masonic Female Institute in 1855 to promote female education. Jefferson Academy, a boys' school near Cemetery Hill, helped fund the girls' school. About 1900 the academy closed, and the girls' school became the Masonic Institute for both girls and boys until 1919.