McNeill’s Rangers

Harrisonburg is associated with the exploits of McNeill’s Rangers, a famous Confederate partisan unit. In 1862, John Hanson McNeill, a native of Hardy County in present-day West Virginia, recruited men for Co. E, 18th Virginia Cavalry. With McNeill as captain, the unit entered Confederate service on September 5, 1862, as partisan rangers under Gen. John Imboden’s nominal command.