On March 28, 1862, two days after his appointment as cartographer on the staff of Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, Jedediah Hotchkiss judged the Valley Army’s position at Narrow Passage Creek, four miles north of here, to be unfavorable for defense. Jackson then moved his infantry to Rude’s Hill, two miles south of Mt. Jackson, and directed Col. Turner Ashby to hold the line of Stony Creek. On April 1, a section of Capt. Roger P. Chew’s horse artillery battery took position on Cemetery Hill south and west of the creek and opened a furious cannonade with the advancing Federals under Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks. George Neese, a gunner in Chew’s Battery, recalled, “We shelled the Yanks and the Yanks shelled us. The firing was rapid for a while, and right across the center of town.” Ashby burned the bridge over the creek and extended his defensive position south of the creek from the Shenandoah River westward. His cavalry, supported by a brigade of infantry with attached artillery, held the Federals at bay for more than two weeks. During this period, observers also noted repeated examples of Ashby’s bravery, including an incident in which, while Ashby, Hotchkiss, and a courier rode along the Stony Creek Line, a Federal sharpshooter killed the courier’s horse and Ashby called the man back to retrieve his saddle, coolly waiting under continued sharpshooter fire.