Amid the rugged terrain of Cheat Mountain, a deadly ambush at Hanging Rock left soldiers on edge as Confederate guerrillas vanished into the wilderness. This small but impactful action marked a dramatic moment in the struggle for control over northwestern Virginia’s strategic mountain passes.
The death of Brigadier General Robert S. Garnett and the crippling of the Army of the Northwest at Corrick’s Ford temporarily ended organized Confederate resistance in northwestern Virginia. A flurry of letters and dispatches from Confederate commanders urged someone to hold Cheat Mountain Pass, but the 14th Indiana Infantry Regiment secured it first. Cheat Mountain, strategically positioned astride the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike about 80 miles northwest of Staunton, gave the Union uncontested control of more than 10,000 square miles of Trans-Alleghany Virginia.
Under Colonel Nathan Kimball, the 14th Indiana began constructing Cheat Summit Fort (also known as Fort Milroy) on July 16 at the 4,000-foot summit of Cheat Mountain. They were soon joined by Captain Cyrus O. Loomis’ Battery A, 1st Michigan Light Artillery, and Captain Henry W. Burdsall’s Independent Company of Ohio Cavalry, also called Burdsall’s Dragoons.
In northwestern Virginia, where most residents were Unionists, the Union Army was welcomed with recruits, supplies, and intelligence. However, resistance stiffened as the troops moved deeper into the interior. Virginians unaffiliated with formal military units began harassing Union forces by cutting telegraph wires and sniping from mountain crags and dense forests.
This guerrilla activity became so pernicious that on June 23, Major General George B. McClellan issued an open letter condemning such tactics. He warned that anyone firing on sentries or pickets, burning bridges, or harassing Unionists “will be dealt with in their persons and property according to the severest rules of military law.”
By July 19, 1861, Confederate Brigadier General Henry R. Jackson reported from Monterey that the “débris of General Garnett’s command are constantly pouring in.” To counter Union advances, Jackson formed a composite unit of cavalry and militia under Major Alexander C. Jones of the 44th Virginia Infantry, a Virginia Military Institute graduate. Their mission was to patrol the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike near Cheat Mountain and monitor Union movements. A group of 80 riflemen were to “annoy the enemy from the hills and bushes.”
That same day, a seven-man patrol from Burdsall’s Dragoons, led by Sergeant William D. Gault, rode south along the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike toward the Greenbrier River. On the south side of the Greenbrier’s East Fork stood Travellers Repose, a well-known inn and post office marking the no man’s land between Union and Confederate positions.
Turning back north, the patrol approached the bridge over the Greenbrier River’s West Fork near modern-day Durbin. Just north of the bridge was a rocky outcrop known as Hanging Rock. Unbeknownst to the patrol, approximately ten Confederate guerrillas, likely Major Jones’ riflemen, were hidden in the wooded hills nearby. Among them was 47-year-old Ewing C. Devier, who lived in Highland County.
As the river was low, Burdsall’s Dragoons crossed downstream from the bridge and stopped to water their horses. The hidden riflemen opened fire, killing Sergeant Gault and wounding Privates Seeley E. Mensch, William A. Kennedy, and Bernard Straight. Kennedy reportedly was shot in the hand while raising his carbine to return fire. After the war, historian William T. Price wrote a florid account of the incident based on Devier’s 1862 recollection, inaccurately claiming six or seven horsemen were killed, including two who died in each other’s arms.
Brigadier General Jackson also exaggerated the ambush’s success, reporting that “[The enemy’s] scouts have been roaming the country on this side of it, and yesterday a party of nine of them were taken in ambush by a party of our scouts, who killed seven of them and wounded the eighth.” In reality, after firing a few shots, the bushwhackers melted into the wilderness, not staying to verify the number of dead or wounded.
Two uninjured dragoons remained with the wounded while the third raced back to Cheat Mountain to report the ambush. Colonel Kimball immediately dispatched Lieutenant Nathan Willard and 50 men from Company E (“Crescent Guards”) along with a wagon to recover the casualties. The regiment’s surgeon, Joseph G. McPheeters, met the returning party on the road and escorted Private Mensch to a house where he tried to make him comfortable. Despite the efforts, Mensch, who had been shot in the back, died shortly after midnight.
In the long term, the Greenbrier River ambush had little strategic impact, though it made Union forces more cautious about advancing further until the fall. Just days later, news of the Union defeat at Bull Run led General Winfield Scott to recall McClellan to Washington, D.C., with Brigadier General William Rosecrans replacing him. No more battles occurred in northwestern Virginia until late August.
Sources
Landon, William, ed. “The Fourteenth Indiana Regiment on Cheat Mountain.” Indiana Magazine of History 29, no. 4 (1933): 350-371.
Lesser, W. Hunter. Rebels at the Gate: Lee and McClellan on the Front Line of a Nation Divided. Naperville: Sourcebooks, Inc., 2004.
Marshall Statesman (Marshall, MI) 7 August 1861.
The Daily Wabash Express (Terre Haute, IN) 31 July 1861.
The Evansville Daily Journal (Evansville, IN) 2 August 1861.
The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. II. With additions and corrections. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902.
The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. LI, Part II. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1897.
Price, William T. “Guerrilla Warfare: The Ambush on Greenbrier River in Which Seven Troopers were Killed.” The West Virginia Historical Magazine Quarterly 4, no. 3 (1904): 241-249.
Zinn, Jack. R.E. Lee’s Cheat Mountain Campaign. Parsons: McClain Printing Co., 1974.
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