Keyes' Switch Engagement-The Last of the Loudoun Rangers - Millville WV - U.S. Civil War Sites on Waymarking.com

Keyes' Switch Engagement-The Last of the Loudoun Rangers

This is the site of the last Civil War engagement in Jefferson County and one of the last fights involving Col. John S. Mosby’s Rangers. It also marked the end of the Independent Loudoun Rangers, a small cavalry unit recruited in 1862 from Loudoun County’s Unionist residents to serve as “border police” and scouts for Federal forces. The opposing rangers had clashed once before at Point of Rocks during Gen. Jubal A. Early’s Washington Raid in July 1864.

On April 5, 1865, just four days before the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House, Mosby mustered Co. H into his 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry in Loudoun County. He selected a Charles Town native, George Baylor, as the new company’s captain and ordered him to “go out and see what he could do.” Baylor, who had served previously in the Stonewall Brigade and the 12th Virginia Cavalry, rode west with his company and learned that the Loudoun Rangers were camped here.

According to Baylor’s account, at 10 A.M. the next morning he and his men charged into the camp and caught the Loudoun Rangers “completely off guard…The loss of the enemy was 2 killed, 4 wounded, 65 prisoners, 81 horses equipments; our loss, one wounded, Frank Helm of Warrenton.” Three days later on the morning of Lee’s surrender, Baylor’s company was routed in a Federal attack in Fairfax County. Mosby disbanded the Rangers on April 21, 1865, rather than surrender.

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Date Logged Log User Rating   07/08/2023 Don.Morfe visited it