McNeil's Last Charge

In the predawn darkness of 3 Oct. 1864, Capt. John Hanson McNeill led thirty of his Partisan Rangers, including local resident Joseph I. Triplett, against a hundred-man detachment of the 8th Ohio Cavalry Regiment that was guarding the Meems Bottom bridge on the Valley Turnpike. The attack ended in fifteen minutes with most of the guard captured and McNeill, among the best-known Confederate partisan commanders, mortally wounded. Taken first to the Rev. Anders R. Rude's house a mile south, McNeill was moved on 20 Oct. to Hill's Hotel (Stoneleigh) in Harrisonburg, where he died on 10 Nov. His body was later reinterred in Moorefield, W.Va., his home.