John D. Billings, The history of the Tenth Massachusetts battery of light artillery in the war of the rebellion

Passing on through Darnestown, Tenallytown, and Rockville, we bivouacked one more night, and the next day, Sunday, Dec. 28, about 11 o'clock A. M., arrived at Poolsville. This was a little settlement, of strong secession proclivities, on the upper Potoillac, near Edwards Ferry, interesting as the scene of frequent guerrilla raids. In the most recent of these Maj. White and a party of his followers, who belonged in this neighborhood, had surprised and captured a body of fifty or seventy-five Union cavalry one evening while they were at church in the town, the officer in command having neglected to leave any one on guard. One of tile assailing party fell. His grave is still to be seen (1879) in the little cemetery near the church.

Partly through the influence of a Mr. Metzger, the postmaster, who, except one Dr. Brace, was the only Union man in the town, more troops were at once sent, and we found already encamped here the Fourteenth New Hampshire and Thirty-ninth Massachusetts regiments, commanded by Colonels Wilson and Davis, respectively. ‘How are you, Boxford?’ was the greeting from the latter regiment as soon as we were recognized, and it seemed like meeting old friends to fall in with those who had been encamped with us on the soil of Massachusetts.

We were now considered to be in the enemy's country, and great vigilance was thought necessary. On the second morning we were aroused at 4 o'clock, and turning out in the darkness, hastily harnessed, only to find when everything was ready, that it was a hoax to see how quickly we could be on hand in an emergency. Such artifices are frequently resorted to by officers when either they or their commands, or both, are ‘green.’