July 24, 1861
A most gallant achievement was performed the day before in the same section [as Scary Creek], by eighty-two dragoons under the command of the intrepid Col. Clarkson, (aid to Gen. Wise) while on a scouting expedition. Dividing his command into equal parties, he took command of one himself and assigned the other to Captain Brock, of the Rockbridge Cavalry. Advancing upon a body of the enemy by the direct road, he sent Capt. Brock around the hill.
The enemy discovered Col. Clarkson, when 200 yards distant, and they retreated rapidly up the hill, followed by the gallant Colonel. The enemy lost seven killed in their retreat. Captain Brock attempted to charge up on the other side of the hill, but it was too precipitous to allow it. Col. Clarkson, in the meantime, discovered that the retreating party was falling back on a camp of fifteen hundred men, notwithstanding which he continued the charge and, at the head of his noble little band, rushed through the startled camp like a whirlwind, firing right and left into their ranks, killing eighteen or twenty; wounding, perhaps, as many more, and, before the enemy could collect their scattered senses, effected a retreat, single file, down the hill, without the loss of a single man, and but one horse killed and another wounded. Some of our men, it is said, actually snatched the guns from two or three of the Yankees before they could shoot. The escape of the command is almost miraculous, several platoons having fired at them. The enemy had two pieces of artillery. They had trained them upon Capt. B.'s men armed with a double barreled shot gun.
In the battle at Scarey creek, Col. Anderson, of Nicaraguan notoriety, commanded a battalion of two companies from Albemarle.
Timeline of West Virginia: Civil War and Statehood: July 1861