Reenactment, other events to mark 160th anniversary of Perryville

Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site in Kentucky's Boyle County will host a Civil War reenactment next month for the 160th anniversary of the battle. Perryville became the site of the most destructive battle in Kentucky, which left more than 7,600 killed, wounded or missing. The two-day event, October 8-9, includes tours, battle reenactments, lectures, museum exhibits, educational programs, food and other vendors. -- Article

Abraham Lincoln statue moved to battlefield in Kentucky

A replica statue of Abraham Lincoln in Kentucky has been moved to a permanent home at a Civil War battlefield. Floyd County Judge-Executive Robert Williams told WYMT-TV that the statue is now at the Middle Creek Battlefield in Prestonsburg. The site is where Union forces halted a Confederate advance into Kentucky in 1862. The statue depicting the president seated is a replica of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. It was removed in 2019 from the law office of Eric Conn. Conn was sentenced to prison for Social Security fraud. -- Article

You can learn the story of a rural Kentucky doctor who saved souls and also saved soldiers after the bloody Battle of Perryville

Bryan Bush at the Polk home (Kentucky State Parks)

At age 60, Dr. Jefferson Johnson Polk had all but retired, after having treated thousands of patients and delivering more than 800 babies in his hometown of Perryville, Ky., and surrounding communities. He concentrated on saving souls as a preacher.

But when the Civil War arrived in Perryville in October 1862, Polk joined other military and civilian physicians who rushed to save the wounded after the battle left 7,600 casualties and a strategic Union victory.

The role of Polk, a staunch unionist, in the clash’s aftermath will be presented Saturday (Jan. 25) at Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site by park manager Bryan Bush, who has experience in portraying historical figures. Other dates for the presentation are Feb. 15, March 14 and April 11. Perryville is 45 miles southwest of Lexington.

“Besides his medical practice, Polk was also a traveling minister, newspaper publisher, temperance lecturer and abolitionist,” says a press release about the talks. “His account of the aftermath of the Battle of Perryville is one of the more vivid and horrifying descriptions of the destruction resulting from a major battle during the Civil War.”

Dr. J.J. Polk

Polk and his son, William Tod Polk, also a doctor, treated the wounded at makeshift hospitals and the elder Polk’s home and office in Perryville. The two structures survive and are part of the town’s Merchants Row, a collection of buildings that are more than 170 years old. Many are occupied today by businesses catering to tourists and residents.

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Dr. J.J. Polk documented some of what he saw in his autobiography.

“The first hospital I entered was Mr. Peters’ house. Here were about two hundred wounded soldiers, lying side by side on beds of straw. Notwithstanding they were wounded in every possible way, there was not heard among them a groan or complaint. In the orchard close by a long trench had been dug, in which to bury the dead; about fifteen were lying in a row, ready for interment.”

According to one history, Polk treated the wounded in a barn at the Goodnight property, where the farmer played a fiddle and gave the wounded whiskey to dull their pain. The musical group Granville Automatic recorded the song “Goodnight House” a few years ago about the scene.

The doctor wrote other vivid passages about what he encountered.

“I noticed at one spot six dead horses, the entire team of a rebel cannon. Turning my steps south toward Perryville, I saw dead rebels piled up in pens like hogs. I reached my home, praying to God that I might never again be called upon to visit a battlefield.”

The Polk home is part of Merchants Row, below (Courtesy of  Main Street Perryville)

Polk, a Presbyterian, moved to Perryville, then a bustling farm community in southwest Kentucky, about 20 years before the Civil War began. The community had mixed sympathies at the time of Fort Sumter.

The doctor is believed to also have treated soldiers at his home and tiny office about 25 feet away, says Vicki T. Goode, executive director of Main Street Perryville, which leases the Merchants Row buildings from the town and promotes preservation and economic growth in the small downtown district.

Wounded soldiers, mostly Union, were cared for at nearby homes, she told the Picket. “Some of them were there for a year following the battle.”

Dr. Polk's office in 2007 (Courtesy of Main Street Perryville)

Polk treated and befriended a captured Confederate officer from Prussia – Karl Langenbecker – who eventually helped treat others but died two months after the battle. “He is buried in Dr. Polk’s plot with a very nice headstone right next to Dr. Polk’s monument,” says Goode. Polk died at age 79 in 1881.

The Polk home and office are not currently being used. Some of his effects are in the 10-feet by 14-feet office, which needs restoration.

The office interior

Main Street Perryville has also maintained the home, including performing structural repair of the foundation, installing a new roof and making window repairs. The “mothballed” home is in good shape but still needs an interior restoration, Goode said. 

A postwar addition on the back of the home deteriorated and was removed.

Main Street Perryville has helped restore some of the old structures downtown and Goode says new businesses catering to businesses are set to open.

The one-person interpretations of Dr. Polk are on Jan. 25, Feb. 15, March 14 and April 11 at 1 p.m. Tickets are $4 for adults and $3 for children ages 12 and under. The state historic site is near the town of Perryville.

Working to bring American chestnut back to glory it had during the Civil War

A chestnut burr at breeding farm (American Chestnut Foundation)

It may be fitting that the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, the man remembered for rising from humble beginnings to great heights, will be the planting ground for 20 saplings that are part of a broad effort to bring the American chestnut back to its former glory.

Volunteers at Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park in Hodgenville, Ky., on Saturday will plant year-old American chestnuts in the park’s picnic area.

Officials hope the young chestnuts, part of the American Chestnut Foundation’s breeding and testing program, will grow to be resistant to the blight that wiped out hundreds of millions of their ancestors early in the 20^th century.

This will be the second such planting at the site in the past seven years.

Symbolic birthplace cabin in Kentucky (NPS)

Several buildings there are made of chestnut, as is at least part of the “Symbolic Cabin” that represents the tiny abode where the future 16^th president and commander in chief was born to Thomas and Nancy Lincoln in 1809.

During the Civil War, chestnuts made up about one in four hardwoods in the Appalachian region that stretches from Maine to Alabama.

"Families in rural America, including the Lincoln family, once depended heavily upon the American chestnut for both food and shelter. The trees grew straight and tall and were rot-resistant, making the wood desirable for construction. The small nuts were sweet and fed entire families, as well as livestock and many species of wildlife," says park Superintendent Bill Justice.

Straight-grained chestnut timber was ideal for furniture, telephone poles, railroad ties and plywood. Lighter than oak, chestnut logs were used for river rafts.

(Lynn Garrison)

But the blight’s fungus and another malady, root rot, conspired against the fast-growing American chestnut.

Stacy Humphreys, chief of interpretation and resource management at the federal site, says about 200,000 people come annually to Sinking Spring Farm, the birthplace, and Knob Creek, where the family moved when Lincoln was about 2. They moved to Indiana when he was 7.

Many visitors are surprised the actual birth cabin no longer exists. That was confirmed when a test in 2004 showed the structure placed in a stone memorial hall was actually from the 1840s. “We have to disappoint a lot of people.”

Still, visitors, through a film and exhibits, gain insight into the early days of Lincoln, who later became famous as the “Rail Splitter” by splitting wood for rail fences.

Humphreys said that the planting and mulching will begin at about 10 a.m. Saturday. Wire cages will be placed around the 2- to 3-feet-tall saplings (above) “so the deer don’t eat them. We have a very robust deer population.”

The blight-resistant trees, known as Restoration Chestnuts 1.0, aren’t guaranteed to not become diseased, but continued breeding and testing will increase the variety’s chances in the coming years.

A study last spring on Restoration 1.0 found 16% are highly resistant and 50% moderately resistant, says Mila Kirkland, director of communications for the American Chestnut Foundation, based in Asheville, N.C.

Giant chestnuts in the Great Smoky Mountains (ACF)

“Now and the coming years we are going to hone in on that 16 percent and continue to breed with those trees,” she says.

The foundation’s effort involves crossing the American chestnut with the Chinese chestnut, which is resistant to the devastating blight. Many of the resulting trees are grown at the organization’s farms in Meadowview, Va.

The foundation is doing “test” plantings all over the country. Patience is required because the blight can take a while to develop, says Kirkland, and the Restoration 1.0 program only began in 2005.

After an American and Chinese chestnut are crossed, the resulting tree is crossed back with the American, resulting eventually in a product that is 15/16^th American.

The Chinese chestnut is shorter, with spreading branches. “The wood is not the beautiful chestnut colored wood of our native trees. It is much more inferior as a forest tree because it is an orchard tree,” says Kirkland.

Restoration 1.0 seeds (ACF)

While the American chestnut can be found in commercial nurseries, the hybrids developed by the foundation and other groups are the best chance to develop characteristics that will help the tree rebound in the coming generations.

The native range is in the Appalachians. “They prefer slopes and well-drained soils. They don’t like water and soggy bottom land,” says Kirkland.

She, too, emphasizes the importance of the tree to man and wildlife during the mid-19^th century. “They were definitely prevalent at Lincoln birthplace.” Animals and humans prized the nut as a food source.

“(Settlers) would take these wagons full of chestnuts into cities and sell them as a cash crop or trade for things they needed.”

The American chestnut isn’t the only tree that has been ravaged by disease. A canker devastated the butternut, a hardwood tree. During the Civil War, the color of Confederate uniforms was created using butternut husks as a source of dye. 

The chestnut foundation’s 16 state chapters, from Alabama to Maine, do the ground work of breeding regionally adapted chestnuts. “A tree that is native to Georgia is not going to work so well in Maine, for many reasons,” says Kirkland.

Lynn Garrison, president of the Kentucky chapter, says he has high hopes for trees being planted Saturday, but acknowledges it is still part of a larger test.

“You can’t tell when it shows up,” he says of the blight. “It varies somewhat.”

He says his chapter’s goal is to cross trees that can work in all 20 eco-regions in Kentucky

  

The American chestnut is a fast grower (ACF)

“We will have trees …. that will be mostly Kentucky genotypes. We want to preserve as much genetic information as possible.”

The best hope against the blight is through the breeding program, rather than fungicides and other chemicals, says Garrison. “They tried to cut every chestnut tree and they thought it would stop migration of the blight, but it didn’t.”

“We think the answer is in developing a resistance,” he says. And while the foundation is moving forward with caution, it is hopeful about restoration.

“We think it won’t be long before we are ready to start restoring them in the forest.”

The Kentucky chapter has planted about 1,000 trees in controlled settings over the past year.

The planting at the Lincoln birthplace can help educate generations that were born long after the blight virtually wiped out the American chestnut population. The effort has both historic and ecological lessons, Garrison says.

In their heyday, chestnuts could live up to 300 years. Some reached 120 feet and they were opportunistic mainstays in the forest canopy.

Of course, there will be setbacks along the way, as some chestnuts succumb to the blight. But the breeding program will produce thousands of hardy trees that will thrive.

Kirkland says the hope is that 50 years from now, the American chestnut will be restored to the forest – “that it is a common tree people talk about, interact with and use in their daily lives.”

Camp Nelson a National Historic Landmark

A celebration is set for Saturday at Camp Nelson in Jessamine County, Ky., to mark the site’s designation as a National Historic Landmark. The designation covers 525 acres of the Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park, the original site of  Camp Nelson National Cemetery, as well as an African-American village that grew up on the former military site after the war ended. The camp, established in 1863 as a depot, became a recruiting station for escaped slaves and freedmen. • Article

Remembering training post for black troops

This weekend's Civil War Days in Jessamine County, Kentucky, will mark the 150th anniversary of the creation of Camp Nelson, a Union recruiting center for black troops. The camp was established in June 1863. As many as 10,000 black troops trained there. Eight regiments of U.S. Colored Troops, as the regiments were called, were founded at Camp Nelson, and five others were stationed there. • Article

Mystery of the Lincoln family cabin

A letter written during the Civil War may shed light on where Abraham Lincoln's parents lived immediately after marrying. History scholars have debated the precise location of the couple's cabin. A Kentucky history museum received transcribed copies of letters written during the Civil War by a Union soldier stationed in Elizabethtown that mentions the cabin's location. • Article

Artifacts displayed at Kentucky State Fair

Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan’s sword and Colt revolvers once owned by Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge (photos below) are among the artifacts displayed this month at the Kentucky State Fair in Louisville.

The fair begins Thursday (Aug. 16) and continues through Aug. 26 at the Kentucky Exposition Center.

Kentucky Historical Society staff and volunteers will be on hand to answer questions about the artifacts and to talk about the Civil War tour on the recently launched smartphone app, “ExploreKYHistory.”

The show will be located in South Wing B in the special areas “War Hawks & Valiant Volunteers: Kentuckians in the War of 1812” and “United We Stand, Divided We Fall: Kentucky & the Civil War.”

The Civil War exhibit includes a Kentucky floor map, interactive computer programs, re-enactors depicting Union and Confederate soldiers and graphic panels that introduce various aspects of Kentucky’s Civil War story.

Photos courtesy of Kentucky Historical Society

• Exhibit details | • Kentucky State Fair site

Plans shaping up for Perryville 150th

A re-enactment of the Battle of Perryville is set for Oct. 6-7 with three battles and weekend living history demonstrations. • Article

Calling all corn planters!

Volunteers are needed to help plant corn that will be a key part of an October re-enactment of the Battle of Perryville, one of Kentucky’s best-known Civil War engagements. • Article

Upcoming exhibit: Ordinary Kentuckians, extraordinary bloody divide

Few white Kentuckians, whether they fought for the Confederacy or Union, had an abolition ideal during the Civil War. They longed for the status quo.

That status quo was not to be.

Like Missouri, wartime Kentucky provided a classic example of "brother against brother." Although the slave state was militarily in Federal control by late 1862, Confederate cavalry raids and vicious guerrilla warfare brought chaos and terror until the war's end.

The division is the subject of an exhibit, "Civil War: My Brother, My Enemy" at the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort. The exhibit, opening June 2, was produced by the Frazier History Museum in Louisville. (Photo above, child in mourning dress)

“It’s got a lot of weapons but it is not a battles and generals kind of exhibit," said Trevor Jones, the society's director of museum collections and exhibitions. “It focuses on families and what the impact of the war was on families. Most of those families are not particularly well known.”

The Davidson brothers of Todd County exemplify the fissures within the border state.

The coat and uniform of Maj. John L. Davidson, killed while fighting for the Union, will be on display. His brother, Frank, joined the Confederate army and survived.

“In the postwar, his family never mentions him again. He is ostracized," Jones said of Frank Davidson.

It's interesting that slave-holding families like the Davidsons chose to align with the Union.

“Kentucky tries to stay neutral the first couple months of the war," Jones told the Picket. "A lot of people are supporting the Union as the best way to save slavery.”

Artifacts on display include a casket wagon used to reinter soldiers, slave documents and plantation horns, dresses, flags, horse tack (photo), letters, and other personal objects, including the Mary Todd Lincoln collection.

Visitors will see pieces of the gallows used to hang partisan Confederate guerrilla Champ Ferguson (photo below) in October 1865. Ferguson, tried for 53 murders, was only one of two Confederates executed for war crimes.

“He was too wild even for (Brig. Gen. John Hunt) Morgan," said Jones. "He went around and killed everybody indiscriminately.”

The exhibit includes interactive features, such as iPads.

"You can be a spy and decipher codes," said Jones. "If you are a soldier you can pack your haversack. You can make choices on what to pack. In the end it will evaluate on whether you will be able to march and whether you packed the right things.”

The society is in the process of putting its entire Civil War collection online, including rosters for U.S. Colored Troops, who trained at Camp Nelson in Kentucky. The society's HistoryMobile will have a Civil War theme beginning in August.

Photos courtesy of Frazier History Museum and Kentucky Historical Society. The exhibit runs through Dec. 8 at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History in downtown Frankfort.

• Hours of operation, fees, info on society

Events scheduled at two Kentucky sites

Plans are under way to mark the 150th anniversary of two Civil War battles in central Kentucky. The sesquicentennial of the Battle of Richmond will be Aug. 25 and 26 in Madison County. The re-enactment of the Battle of Perryville, the largest Kentucky conflict, will be Oct. 5-7 in Boyle County. • Article

Ky. posts Confederate pension records

For the first time, the complete collection of Confederate pension application files in Kentucky has been made available online.

"The applications are searchable by name, unit and county, and provide invaluable information to genealogists, local historians, and anyone interested in Civil War history," the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives (KDLA)said Monday.

I took a quick look at a few records. They provide a glimpse of the economic challenges and circumstances facing Confederate widows.

In 1929, Mrs. A.T. (Helen) Forsythe, almost 71, applied for a pension in Bourbon County when she was no longer able to work.

Her husband, Alexander, surrendered as a private with the 9th Kentucky Calvary in Washington, Ga., at the end of the war. He died in 1909 (they were married in 1886 when she was 27 and he was 41). Mrs. Forsythe had property valued at less than $500.

Accompanying Mrs. Forsythe's pension application was a statement from a physician, who said the widow, living in Paris, Ky., was no longer capable, because of heart troubles, of working to support herself.

"Three or four years ago, I caused her to break up housekeeping," the doctor said. "She was a running a rooming house and making a good living and because of my advise (sic) she sold out and had to quit because she wasn't able to do it."

Any Confederate veteran or widow of a veteran living in Kentucky in 1912 or after could apply for a pension.

Pensions for Union veterans were funded by the federal government.

In some cases, the application and supporting documents are the only surviving records of a soldier's service, the KDLA said in a press release. More than 60 military units are listed.

• More details | • Search records

Walking the fields at Perryville

His failure to chase Braxton Bragg's army after the Oct. 8, 1862, Battle of Perryville in Kentucky cost Union Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell his job. While brave and organized, Buell was cautious and lacked the ingenuity to overcome unexpected circumstances.

Last month, I finally was able to visit Perryville, stopping at the visitors center for exhibits and a movie, before taking a self-guided tour over much of the battlefied.

It was a beautiful late summer afternoon, puffs of clouds hovering over the green rolling fields. With the exception of one couple, we had Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site to ourselves.

Bragg’s autumn 1862 invasion of Kentucky had reached the outskirts of Louisville and Cincinnati, but his far-outnumbered army was forced to retreat and regroup.

According to a National Park Service summary of the battle, Buell's army, numbering nearly 55,000, converged on the small crossroads town of Perryville in three columns.

The undulating hills in the area had a strange effect, we had learned, making it difficult to hear the din of battle from portions of the battlefield. Buell, who wasn't aware of the fierce fighting until late in the day, failed to send a large number of reserves to stem the Confederate assaults.

We walked up and down the terrain where Maney's men in gray attacked the Union flank and forced it to fall back. When more Confederate divisions joined the fray, the Union line made a stubborn stand, counterattacked, but finally fell back with some troops routed, according to the NPS.

The Yankees regrouped and were able to push some Confederates back into Perryville.

"Bragg, short of men and supplies, withdrew during the night, and, after pausing at Harrodsburg, continued the Confederate retrograde by way of Cumberland Gap into East Tennessee. The Confederate offensive was over, and the Union controlled Kentucky."

Casualties were estimated at 7,407, 4,211 of them Federal.

The Civil War Trust is trying to purchase a 141-acre tract on the extreme southern portion of the battlefield, where Rebels had smashed into the Union line.

A Louisianian described the fighting on this tract as "the grandest but the most awful sight, ever looked upon ... the enemy stood firm," according to the trust's website.

Despite surprising the Federal forces holding the line near the Squire Henry Bottom house, the fighting had quickly devolved to a bloody, stand-up fight. "All along our front, a solid line of dead and wounded lay, in some places three deep, extending to the right from the barn."

Piano that survived Civil War gets attention

New York students are studying a piano hidden in a Kentucky barn where it was not burned as troops crisscrossed the area. The family legend was that someone played “Dixie” when Confederates were within earshot. • Article

Trust gives Perryville land to Kentucky

On Tuesday, the Civil War Preservation Trust will donate 54 acres of the Perryville Battlefield to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The event is open to the public. • Article