Fairview, the stone home of Thomas McKay, stood at the site where Union Col. John R. Kenly rallied the 1st Maryland Infantry for a last stand as Confederates approached during the Battle of Front Royal. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson had ordered Col. Thomas S. Flournoy's 6th Virginia Cavalry in pursuit as Kenly's troops retreated from Guard Hill north on the Front Royal Turnpike toward Winchester. As Kenly tried in vain to deploy his men in the fields and orchard there, Flournoy's cavalry struck before they could fix bayonets or form a front. Kenly ordered the 5th New York Cavalry to countercharge, but its troopers instead raced north in panic, running over Kenly's men as they struggled to form a battle line, and in the confusion some of the Marylanders fired at New Yorkers and many fell. The charge of the 6th Virginia, which Jackson afterward called the most gallant and effective he had ever seen, overwhelmed Kenly's force, which grounded its weapons and surrendered, while Kenly himself was severely wounded and captured. Federal losses in the Battle of Front Royal were 904 killed, wounded, and captured out of Kenly's 1,000-man garrison, while the Confederates suffered fewer than 100 casualties. By the end of the engagement, the Confederates had occupied Front Royal, seized some $300,000 worth of U.S. quartermaster and commissary stores, flanked Gen. Nathaniel Banks's main force at Strasburg, and cleared the way to Winchester. Many wounded soldiers were cared for at the McKay house, where blood stained the floors for years. Dabney Eastham of Co. B, 6th Virginia Cavalry, was believed mortally wounded and left in the yard, but when his father arrived the next morning from Rappahannock County to claim the body, he found that grass and mud had clotted the wound and saved his life; to avoid reopening it, the sod beneath him was carried into the house with him, and Eastham survived and left descendants in Rappahannock and Warren Counties.