On the 1st September the Rangers were involved in another fight, this time with Colonel Munford's 2nd Virginia Cavalry sent forward by General Stuart for that purpose, the encounter taking place between the top of Mile Hill and the Big Spring on the Carolina Road. The Rangers were at the time reinforced by about 125 men of Cole's Maryland Cavalry but the Confederates, by getting in their rear and completely surrounding them, put them to route in a hot sabre fight. Goodhart, the Rangers' historian, comments that these two defeats, coming so closely together, almost broke up that organization and "did to a very large extent interfere with the future usefulness of the command."[160] It continued in service, however, until the end of the war, participating in the battle of Antietam, in the Gettysburg campaign, and in the Shenandoah Valley campaign in September, 1864. [160] _The Loudoun Rangers_, by Briscoe Goodhart, 44. It was in the same September of 1862, it will be remembered, that Lee undertook his first invasion of Maryland. He and General Stonewall Jackson spent the night at the residence of the late Henry T. Harrison on the west side of King Street, now occupied by Mr. Harrison's grandchildren, Mr. Cuthbert Conrad and his two sisters. "The triumphant army of Lee," writes Head "on the eve of the first Maryland campaign, was halted at Leesburg and stripped of all superfluous transportation, broken-down horses and wagons and batteries not supplied with good horses being left behind."[161] It is said that Jackson rose early in the morning from his bed in the Harrison house to examine the several suggested points for the Southern Army to cross the Potomac. He is locally credited with the decision that the place known as White's Ford was best for the purpose and it was there, on the 5th September, that much of the Army crossed. With such a vast number to put across the river, it is probable that all the ferries and fords in the Leesburg neighborhood were used. It is well to note that White's Ford and the present White's Ferry (then known as Conrad's Ferry) are two very different places. The Ferry is at the end of the road now marked by the State, running along the south side of Rockland; the Ford is to the north thereof at the head of Mason's Island. Obviously the depth of the water at White's Ferry would preclude its use as a ford. Goodhart says Edwards' and Noland's Ferries were used,[162] while the report of the Federal Signal Officer (Major A. J. Myers) made to Brigadier General S. Williams, dated the 6th October, 1862, records the Confederates "crossing the Potomac near the Monocacy, and the commencement of their movement into Maryland."[163] Nevertheless the Confederate official reports definitely shew that a great number, probably the major part of the vast host, crossed at White's Ford, including Stonewall Jackson's own men, General Early's Division (which had passed through Leesburg