Mill Creek Church of the Brethren stands on the site of an antebellum house of worship that served as a hospital during the Battle of Cross Keys on June 8, 1862, where amputated limbs were dropped from a window and piled to the sill, and where Confederate Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson asked a wounded staff officer about the battle’s progress. On September 30, 1864, it became the center of a wide area in which barns and mills were destroyed by order of Union Gen. Philip H. Sheridan to deny food to the Confederate army. Brethren Church members had farmed here since the 18th century and were called “Dunkers” for their belief in adult baptism. Their articles of faith forbade taking another man’s life, holding slaves, or rebelling against established authority. After Virginia seceded on April 17, 1861, young men unable to prove church membership before that date were liable for military service, and some who tried to flee the state were captured and imprisoned in Richmond. Temporary exemption acts later excused Dunkers and other conscientious objectors from service if they confirmed church membership and paid a fee or fine, but the act was discontinued late in 1864 as Southern enlistments declined. Throughout the war, Brethren farmers who refused to sell produce to army agents risked confiscation of their goods, yet their productive farming helped make the Shenandoah Valley the “breadbasket of the Confederacy.”