By the time Ashby was killed, leading his men at the Battle of Good's Farm near Harrisonburg, he had received his general’s star.

[1] As a child he often played in the waters of nearby Goose Creek, and had a pet wolf named "Lupus" that neighbors demanded he get rid of.

[2] His father died when he was young, so his mother hired Mr. Underwood as a tutor for Turner and his brother, then sent him to Major Ambler's school nearby, but Ashby preferred wandering the countryside rather than classes.

An accomplished horseman at an early age, Ashby often participated in tournaments, and won many, including once dressed as an Indian chief and riding with neither bridle nor saddle.

[3] With Mr. Sommerville as partner, Ashby ran a mill on his father's property until his mother sold it to neighbor Edward Carrington Marshall of the Manassas Gap Railroad.

After the start of the Civil War, though he'd disapproved of secession, when it became obvious that Virginia would secede, Ashby told his Mountain Rangers to again meet at Harper's Ferry.

When secession was approved, Ashby made his move, but U.S. forces burned most of the arsenal buildings and 15,000 small arms before he could arrive.

Ashby was initially assigned to guard fords across the Potomac River and bridges from Harpers Ferry to Point of Rocks, Maryland.

Hearing rumors that his brother had been bayoneted while trying to surrender, Ashby examined the corpse, came to hate Northerners and became obsessed with revenge.

Stonewall Jackson, in overall command of the Shenandoah Valley, tried to strip Ashby of his cavalry forces, ordering them to be assigned to two infantry brigades.

Jackson continued to resist Ashby's promotion to brigadier general, due to his informal military training and lax discipline.

As Jackson's army withdrew from the pressure of Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont's superior forces, moving from Harrisonburg toward Port Republic, Ashby commanded the rear guard.

Stonewall Jackson's report of the engagement sums up the man (although considering Jackson's resistance to Ashby's promotion, the eulogy might be an exaggeration in favor of the young man): As a partisan officer I never knew his superior; his daring was proverbial; his powers of endurance almost incredible; his tone of character heroic, and his sagacity almost intuitive in divining the purposes and movements of the enemy.Ashby was buried at the University of Virginia Cemetery, but in October 1866, his body was reinterred at the Stonewall Cemetery in Winchester, Virginia, next to the body of his younger brother Richard Ashby, who was killed in Hampshire County in a skirmish with Union soldiers in 1861.