Last Union Raid

Last Union Raid. End of the War in Pendleton County. On the evening of January 13, 1865, Union Maj. Elias S. Troxel, 22nd Pennsylvania Cavalry, was leading a two-hundred-man scouting expedition south from New Creek in present-day Mineral County. After passing through Petersburg, he joined Capt. John Boggs and forty members of the Pendleton County Home Guard near present-day Seneca Rocks. From Boggs, Troxel learned that Confederate soldiers and artillery were in Franklin. As Troxel later reported, "After a toilsome march across mountains during the night, I arrived near the place about 5 o'clock in the morning and ... charged the town, expecting to find the enemy quartered in the courthouse, but to my disappointment found the place evacuated, the enemy having received notice of my coming a few hours previous, and fled to the mountains." The disappointed Troxel retraced his steps to Seneca Rocks, where he scattered a detachment of Lt. Jesse McNeill's Rangers and then returned to New Creek., Troxel's failed attack at Franklin--the last such raid into Pendleton County--was attributed to two resourceful women, Phoebe and Mary Jane Warner. They lived in the valley below you, and learning of Troxel's approach, the mother and daughter decided to alert the Pendleton County Dixie Boys and the Pendleton Reserves. They walked over snow-covered North Mountain on foot. Phoebe borrowed a horse at the home of John Bowers and rode into town. She informed John Wilson, who spread the word. Troxel took local resident Jacob F. Johnson prisoner, but Johnson escaped when Confederate sympathizers fired on Troxel's column near Ruddle.