In 1831, Jackson’s Mill became the home of six-year-old Thomas Jonathan Jackson and his four-year-old sister, Laura Ann Jackson, after their father, Jonathan Jackson, had died in poverty in 1826 and their mother, Julia Beckwith Neale Jackson Woodson, who had married Blake G. Woodson in 1830, sent them to live with relatives. They lived with Cummins E. Jackson, who operated the mill, several other bachelor uncles, and at least a dozen slaves. Thomas Jackson left in 1842 to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. After graduating in 1846, he served in the Mexican War and later taught at the Virginia Military Institute. When the Civil War began, he joined the Confederate army and commanded a brigade at Harpers Ferry. On July 21, 1861, he led his unit at the First Battle of Manassas, where he received the nickname “Stonewall.” His military career ended with his death on May 10, 1863, after being wounded during the Battle of Chancellorsville. He and his sister remained close until the Civil War placed them on opposite sides. Laura Jackson, who married Jonathan Arnold in 1844, opened their house in Beverly to Federal troops as a hospital and nursed them herself, and her outspoken Unionism estranged her from her brother. Three generations of Jacksons operated mills here, beginning with Col. Edward Jackson before 1800. Jackson’s Mill included saw and gristmills, a carpenter shop, blacksmith forge, slave quarters, barns and other outbuildings, and a general store on 1,500 acres of forest and pasture land. The farmstead was later subdivided and passed through several hands. In 1921, the State of West Virginia acquired the remaining property and entrusted it to the Extension Service of West Virginia University for a youth camp. The property became the nation’s first state 4-H camp. Most of the early structures, as well as the slave cemetery, have been lost; the gristmill and Jackson family cemetery remain.