Off the Wall, Civil War related inscriptions from Mammoth Cave: A biographical roster

OFF THE WALL, CIVIL WAR
RELATED INSCRIPTIONS
FROM MAMMOTH CAVE: A
BIOGRAPHICAL ROSTER

Marion O. Smith and Joseph C. Douglas

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INTRODUCTION

As the world’s longest cave, now 412 plus miles, Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, has been
and will continue to be a subject of studies of all sorts, geological, biological, archaeological,
historical, and social. The study potential is rich beyond belief. This report is a small one in the
historical category.

Although a practice now severely frowned upon, thousands and thousands of Nineteenth
and Twentieth Century excursionists, at least two owners, and various guides autographed the
walls of Mammoth Cave’s passages, both commercial and obscure. Some sightseeing traffic
occurred even while saltpeter (the main ingredient of gunpowder) mining was still in progress.
But when that activity became unprofitable at the end of the War of 1812-15, income for the
cave owner or owners shifted almost exclusively to tourism. Slowly, as Americans became more
affluent and the transportation network improved, the fame of the cave spread through books,
newspaper and magazine articles, letters, and word of mouth. By the middle 1800s Mammoth
became one of America’s celebrated natural attractions, with several thousand visitors annually.

Various scholars, speleologists, cave guides, and other interested researchers have
identified a few dozen of the almost countless numbers of people who left tangible evidence of
their outing. The persons who have already been studied are generally random because the
examiner, for any number of reasons, became curious about a specific individual.

Beginning in 2016, the writers plus Kristen Bobo, all Tennesseans, were granted a permit
to investigate the many miles of Mammoth Cave’s tourist trails for Civil War soldier graffiti
beyond the twenty or so already known. The scope was later modified to include inscriptions by
persons who were not just soldiers at the cave during the war, but had either been there before or
after and had some military or civilian wartime role. The resulting sketches given here represent
only part of our efforts, which in sheer numbers present a more expanded output than by
previous investigators.

These “new” biographical summaries, whether short or lengthy, all concern people who
had some connection to the American Civil War. It did not matter when a name was scratched on
the cave wall, whether it was decades before or after the actual war years. A person was profiled
when it was learned that he either became involved or had been involved with the
“unpleasantness” in some fashion, large or small, or was kin or married to a wartime character of
note or someone who performed necessary functions for the military. One signer each from the
last two categories actually died many years before the conflict.

The population of the United States during the war was about ten percent of what it is
now. That makes it more likely that perhaps the majority of the tourists at the cave during the
1850s, 60s, and 70s were affected by the civil disruption in one way or another. That also means
that we likely failed to research names which would have yielded interesting wartime
participations.

But, in spite of that possibility, we have expanded knowledge about the cave’s soldier
visitations during the 1861-65 years and have “discovered” names of a number of people who
played a part in that turbulent period. We relocated the twentyish already known soldiers’ names
and found twenty or more “new” ones. The names of three future generals and one former
general are noted, along with eight colonels, four lieutenant colonels, six majors, six surgeons,
seven staff officers, three with naval experience, and a sizeable number of company grade

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officers and enlisted men. Participation varied from heavy to slight to having an exemption due
to possessing an essential civilian job. Ten were killed or morally wounded, seven wounded, two
died from disease, a dozen captured, three arrested, two resigned, three visited the cave between
enlistments, three became U.S. senators, four died in post-war accidents, and one was accused of
being a spy. One young woman kept an early wartime diary. In summation, the names from
Mammoth’s walls represent a fair cross-section of experiences during the time of the nation’s
sectional discord.

The sketches are presented in rough alphabetical order when no date is associated with a
name. But the ones with an actual or estimated date are given in chronological order. Some
nineteen states are represented, over half the total number during the 1860s.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors wish to thank Dr. Rick Toomey for granting us permission to work in
Mammoth Cave National Park and rangers Larry W. Johnson, David Spence, and Kelli Tolleson,
and archaeologist Ed Jakitis, who either often, sometimes, or once accompanied us, and pointed
out graffiti we probably would have missed. Dr. Stan D. Sides of Missouri was helpful with the
name of an 1866 lessee of the cave. A special “shout out” goes to Landon D. Medley of Bald
Knob, Tennessee, who as a “silent researcher” provided vast amounts of biographical data from
the internet. Finally, James R. Honaker of Morgantown, Kentucky, greatly aided the project
when he with permission of Western Kentucky University photographed the 1858-60, 1862-66
Mammoth Cave Hotel registers.

J. E. Bailey Tenn”
(Franklin Avenue)

James Edmund Bailey (August 15, 1822-December 29, 1885), son of Charles Bailey
(1791-1863) and Mary Bryan (1798-1878) was a native of Clarksville, Tennessee, and received
his education there and at the University of Nashville. He became a lawyer in 1842 and eleven
years later was elected to the state house of representatives. After service on the Tennessee
Military and Financial Board to create and equip a state army, late in 1861 he was elected
colonel of the 49" Tennessee Infantry, CSA. The following February 16 he was among those
surrendered at Fort Donelson, and held prisoner at Fort Warren, Massachusetts. Exchanged
September 1862, he was with his regiment in Mississippi and Louisiana. On May 13, 1863,
because of “failing health” he resigned, and July 1864 he joined the military court of Genera
William J. Hardee’s command. After the war he returned to Clarksville and resumed his law
practice. He was elected U.S. senator to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of Andrew
Johnson, and served from January 29, 1877, until 1881. On November 7, 1849, he married
Elizabeth Margaret Lusk (1830-1897) and they became the parents of eight children. Findagrave
#8209922 (J. E Bailey); Ancestry.com (Mary Bryan); The Goodspeed Histories of Montgomery,
Robertson, Humphrey, Stewart, Dickson, Cheatham, Houston Counties of Tennessee (Columbia,

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Tenn., 1972 [1886]), 1003; Ben Perley Poore, The Political Register and Congressional
Directory (Boston, 1878), 267; Robert M. McBride and Dan M. Robison, Biographical
Directory of the Tennessee General Assembly (6 vols., Nashville, 1975-91), 1: 23.

“Bruce Champ
Millersburg Ky”
(Silliman Avenue near Valley Way Side Cut)

Robert Bruce Champ (1842-May 18, 1892), second son of Robert A. Champ (c1822-
1858) and Margaret Congleton (1818-1897), was a long-time resident of Bourbon County,
Kentucky. A farmer before the war, on July 18, 1861, at Camp Boone near Clarksville,
Tennessee, he enlisted in Company F, 2™ Kentucky Infantry, CSA. Captured at Fort Donelson
February 16, 1862, he was held prisoner at Camp Morton, Indiana, until August 24. He was then
“consistently present” until May 28, 1864, when he was again captured near Dallas, Georgia.
This time he was sent to Rock Island, Illinois, where on January 18, 1865, he took the U.S. oath
of allegiance and was released. He at that time was described as five feet ten inches tall, with a
dark complexion, black hair, and hazel eyes. He returned home and resumed farming. On
January 17, 1866, at Carlisle in Nicholas County, he married Jane “Jennie” Emily Miller (1844-
March 12, 1889) and took her to his home where by 1880 they had two boys. He became editor
of the Bourbon News in Millersburg, and during the 1880s “removed his office to Paris in order
to give him a large field for circulation and influence.” Less than six months after the death of
“Jennie,” on September 4, 1887, he wed Lillie Cozzens (c1853-1939) of Georgetown, Kentucky.
He died from “heart Failure” less than three years later. 1850 Census, Ky., Bourbon, 2 Dist.,
260; (1860), 1$' Dist., Millersburg P.O., 94; (1870), Millersburg Precinct, 16; (1880), 19 Enum.
Dist., 15; Findagrave #15748947 (R. Bruce Champ); Ancestry.com (Robert B. Champe, Robert
A. Champe, Jane E. Miller); CSR, RG109 (M319, Roll 81), NA, Robert Bruce Champ File;
Hopkinsville (Ky.) Kentuckian, March 19, 1887; Maysville (Ky.) Evening Bulletin, September 6,
1889, May 18, 1892; Lexington Kentucky Leader, May 18, 1892. By 1894 Lillie C. Champ was a
Washington, D.C., Federal employee as a sewer in the public bindery. U. S. Register (1894-

1933).

“J C Coleman
(Black Avenue)
JC Coleman Frankfort”
(Between Chief City and the Cataract)

Very Likely John J. Crittenden Coleman (March 20, 1837-August 25, 1861), eldest son
of Chapman Coleman (1793-1850) and Ann Mary Crittenden (1813-1891), grandson of U. S.
Senator John J. Crittenden and nephew of Generals George B. (CSA) and Thomas L. Crittenden
(USA). Described as a “difficult child,” in the early 1850s he attended Centre College in
Danville but was expelled. However, by 1860 he had become a lawyer with an office at 408
Center Street in Louisville, residing with his mother at 805 W. Madison Street. About the end of
the year he moved to Florida, and soon was falsely reported as a participant in a February 8,
1861, duel with Edwin A. Hart, the editor of the Tallahassee Florida Sentinel, in which both
were killed. As “a zealous advocate of . . . Southern rights,” he on March 9 was recommended
for a commission. That did not happen, but the following month, April 5, he became a private in
Company A, 1% Florida Infantry, CSA. Several months later, while his regiment was part of
General Braxton Bragg’s forces near Pensacola, he committed suicide “under a state of mental
derangement” by cutting his throat “from ear to ear.” He was initially buried at Tallahassee.
Findagrave #72099140 (John C. Coleman), 28824959 (Chapman Coleman); Ancestry. Com
(John J.C. Coleman); Albert D. Kirwan, John J. Crittenden: Struggle for the Union (Lexington,
Ky., 1962), 98, 282, 447-48; Damon R. Eubank, Jn the Shadow of the Patriarch: The John J.
Crittenden Family in War & Peace (Macon, Ga., 2009), 39-40; 1860 Census, Ky., Jefferson,
Louisville, 7 Ward, 152; Tanner’s Louisville Directory (1861), 58; Chicago Tribune, Feb. 28,
1861; Lancaster (Pa.) Examiner, March 6, 1861; Memphis Daily Argus, March 11, 1861; Lynda
L. Crist, ed., The Papers of Jefferson Davis (14 vols., Baton Rouge, 1971-2015), 7: 67; Memphis
Daily Appeal, September 1, 1861; Chicago Tribune, March 16, 1861, quoting the Pensacola
Gazette of February 28, 1861.

“J W Franklin
S F Franklin
Gallatin”
(Silliman Avenue)

John Washington Franklin (August 14, 1819-February 28, 1905), a son of John Franklin
(1776-1832) and Elizabeth Rawlings (c1780-1836), was a native of Sumner County, Tennessee.
About 1833-37 he attended a Quaker school at Alexandria, Virginia, then back home began
medical studies under a local doctor. Next, he furthered his studies at Transylvania University,
Lexington, Kentucky, graduating in 1841. Beginning the next year for three years he practiced
medicine in Memphis, then the same in New Orleans 1847-48, before settling permanently in
Gallatin. During 1852 he bought a farm, ultimately containing 162 acres about four miles west of
town and built a house he called “Oakley.” For a while early in the war he acted as assistant
surgeon of the 7” Tennessee Infantry, CSA, but “was compelled to return home . . . on account
of ill health.” Later he was surgeon of Brigadier General James J. Archer’s Tennessee Brigade.
He ceased doctoring in the mid-1880s and then “occupied his time with books and farm.” He
married twice, to Florida Mercer Noel (1826-1848) on February 10, 1842; and Sarah Frances
Baber (1831-1906), daughter of Thomas A. and Lucy Baber, May 3, 1849. He had two sons and
one daughter by Florida and six sons and three daughters by Sarah. Findagrave #80431801 (J.W.
Franklin); 1860 Census, Tenn., Sumner, 31-206; Walter T. Durham, Old Sumner (Nashville,
1972), 296; Edwin L. Ferguson, Sumner County, Tennessee in the Civil War (2 vols.,
Tompkinsville, Ky., 1972-78), 1: 49; 2: 412; History of Tennessee (Nashville: Goodspeed
Publishing Company, 1887), 878-80.

“J G Marston
Clinton
Louisiana”

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(Valley Way Side Cut}

James Gray Marston (December 5, 1843-June 19, 1870), youngest son of Henry Marston
(1785-1884), a planter with twenty slaves, and Abigail Fowler Johnson (b. c1812), was a resident
of East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. On March 10, 1862, he joined Company A, 4 Louisiana
Infantry, CSA, and served as corporal and first sergeant. He was wounded in the battle of Ezra
Church near Atlanta July 28, 1864, returned to duty, and was present at least until February 28,
1865. Findagrave #146669137 (J. G. Marston); 1860 Census, La., E. Feliciana, Clinton P.O., 68;
1860 Slave Census, E. Feliciana, 92; CSR, RG109 (M320, Roll 134), NA, James G. Marston

File.

“William Maxey Nashville Tenn”
(Cleaveland Avenue)

Probably William O. Maxey (March 14, 1837-July 5, 1862), son of Powhatan Woolridge
Maxey (1810-1876), a Nashville tin and sheet iron manufacturer, and Julia Anne Hobbs (1813-
1878). He worked for his father, took part in 1860-61 Unionist meetings, and was treasurer of the
Nashville Trotting Association before joining Company A of Lieutenant Colonel Frank N.
McNairy’s 1%' Tennessee Cavalry Battalion, CSA, May 23, 1861. The following October 4, at
Camp Buckner in eastern Kentucky, he transferred to Company A, 11" Tennessee Infantry,
CSA, and a month later was promoted sergeant major. But, starting either December 9 or 18, he
was on sick furlough. He was supposedly discharged for being “over age,” which surely is a
mistake. He never recovered from his illness. Findagrave #7349154 (W. O. Maxey), 44095522
(Julia A.H. Maxey); 1850 Census, Tenn., Davidson, Edgefield, 522; (1860), 18" Dist.
Goodlettsville P.O., 40; Jeanette T. Acklen, Tennessee Records: Tombstone Inscriptions and
Manuscripts (Baltimore, 1976 [1939]), 30; Nashville Daily Patriot, Feb. 6, 23, 1862, Mar. 21,
April 2, 1861; CSR, RG109, NA, William O. Maxey File.

“Miss H. H. Morgan”
(Franklin Avenue)

Henrietta Hunt “Tommy” Morgan (April 2, 1840-October 20, 1909), was the sixth of
eight children of Calvin Cogswell Morgan, Sr. (1801-1854) and Henrietta Hunt (1805-1891).
She grew up at the estate, “Hopemont” in Lexington, Kentucky, which was inherited by her
mother. Her uncle, Thomas Hart Hunt (1815-1884), and all six of her brothers, Brigadier General
John Hunt (1825-1864), Calvin Cogswell, Jr. (1827-1882), Richard Curd (1836-1918), Charlton
Hunt (1839-1912), Thomas Hunt (1844-1863), and Francis Key (1845-1878), were in the
Confederate army, with John being by far the most famous as a daring raider. Her sister,
Catherine (1834-1920), known as “Kitty,” married three times, with her second husband being
Lieutenant General Ambrose Powell Hill (1825-1865), commander of the Third Corps of Lee’s
Army of Northern Virginia. On June 19, 1861, Miss Henrietta married Basil W. Duke (1838-
1916), who in late 1864 became a Southern brigadier after her brother John was killed at
Greeneville, Tennessee. She spent the war years at “Hopemont” and in Tennessee and other

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states. By 1875 her family had grown to four boys and one girl. Findagrave #8875564 (H. H.
Morgan), 97482545 (C.C. Morgan, Jr.), 8875559 (R.C. Morgan), 8875557 (C. H. Morgan),
9568015 (T. H. Morgan), 15387632 (F. K. Morgan), 11731731 (Catherine Morgan Hill Forsyth);
Ancestry.com (Thomas Hart Hunt); Dictionary of American Biography (hereafter DAB), 3: 495-
96; James A. Ramage, Rebel Raider: The Life of General John Hunt Morgan (Lexington, Ky.,
1986), 14, 16, 50, 148, 205, 246.

“Jno R Neal
Ten
(Franklin Avenue)

John Randolph Neal (November 26, 1836-March 26, 1889), was born in Clinton,
Tennessee, to John O’Brien Neal (1793-1875) and Parmelia Young (1808-1895). He attended
local schools, Hiwassee College in McMinn County, and Emory and Henry College, Virginia,
graduating from the latter in 1858. He then studied law, was admitted to the bar the next year,
and began practice in Athens. On May 31, 1862, he became captain of Company A, 16
Tennessee Battalion Cavalry, CSA, and February 12, 1863, was promoted to lieutenant colonel.
His unit took part in a Kentucky raid near Danville, Somerset, and Stanford in March 1863, and
the battles of Chickamauga, Georgia, the next September and Piedmont, Virginia, June 1864. For
a while he served under General John C. Vaughn in the Department of Western Virginia and
East Tennessee. Twice in the spring of 1864 he had medical furloughs, spending some of that
time in Selma, Alabama. June-September 1864 he commanded the post of Saltville and was sick
in the hospital at Emory and Henry College the next month. At Kingsport on January 13, 1865,
he requested a medical examining board, and on February 3, members of such concluded that he
was “suffering in consequence of Phthisis Pulmonatis” and should “be retired and assigned to
light duty.” Some nineteen days later he became a member of a board to examine and adjudicate
claims for the capture or destruction of the enemy’s property and ordered to Richmond. After the
surrender he taught school and resumed lawyering, eventually making Rhea County his home.
Entering politics, he served in the state house, 1875-77, and senate, 1879-81, and two terms as
congressman, 1885-89. In addition, he was a Democratic Presidential Elector in 1880. On
November 13, 1862, he married Mary Elizabeth C. Brown (1842-1920) and they had four
children. Findagrave #8605100 (J. R. Neal); Biographical Directory . . . Tennessee Assembly, 2:
661; CSR, RG109 (M268, Roll 63), NA, John R. Neal File; Ancestry.com (J. R. Neal);
Tennessee Marriage Records, 1780-2002.

“J L T Sneed
Memphis”
(Franklin Avenue)

John Louis Taylor Sneed (May 12, 1820-July 29, 1901), born in Raleigh, North Carolina,
was a son of Junius Sneed (1791-1843), cashier of the state bank, and Julia Rowan Taylor (1795-
1827). Moving to Tennessee, he was admitted to the bar in 1841, and made Memphis his home
two years later. During the antebellum period he served in a number of positions: state

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representative, 1845-47, sergeant major and captain in a regiment of mounted volunteers during
the Mexican War, district attorney, 1851-54, and state attorney, 1854-59. He also twice ran
unsuccessfully as a Whig candidate for Congress. On May 9, 1861, he was appointed by
Governor Isham G. Harris as brigadier general in the state army. As such he commanded the
camp at Fort Randolph near Memphis and briefly led the “River Brigade” under Major General
Leonidas Polk. The Tennessee forces were transferred to the Confederacy in late Summer 1861,
but Sneed personally was not. He was then assigned by Harris to settle the accounts between the
Tennessee Provisional Army and the Confederate government. He attempted to raise an infantry
regiment in 1862, but the Union capture of Memphis squashed that effort. As a refugee he spent
some of his time in Greensboro, North Carolina. When the shooting ended he returned to
Memphis, resumed his legal career, and held several more jobs, including a judgeship on the
state supreme court, 1870-78. He married Mary Ashe Shepperd (1829-1919) but never had
children. Bruce S. Allardice, More Generals in Gray (Baton Rouge and London, 1995), 212-13;
Biographical Directory . .. Tennessee Assembly, 1: 687; Findagrave #8566324 (J. L. T. Sneed),
188222886 (Junius Sneed); Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, RG109
(M346, Roll 960), National Archives, J. L. T. Sneed File.

“RW Wyatt 1830 “R W Wyatt

(Fox’s Passage) Louisa County Virginia
July 7 1830
Veni vidi vici”
(Gratz Avenue)

Richard Ware Wyatt (December 22, 1806-May 25, 1881), a native of Louise County,
Virginia was a son of Richard Wyatt (1771-1838). In 1830 he kept a diary while on a horseback
trip west to inspect some of his father’s land. Enroute home he stayed at Fleming Gatewood’s at
Mammoth Cave. The evening of July 6, with one of Gatewood’s sons, he visited White Cave for
one and a half hours, which he described as being “divided into two rooms” or rather “pillars . . .
dividing it into 2 apartments.” The next day he toured Mammoth for 5:15 hours, where he
noticed the breeze, the various saltpeter works, the large passages, and the “Register room”
(Gothic Avenue) where already were “written thousands of names . . . done with the smoke of a
lamp.” Three years later he married a distant cousin, Harriet King Harris (1811-1887-88) and
they ultimately had ten children. In 1851, for $8,000, he bought “Clifton,” a 305 acre Albemarle
County property once part of “Monticello,” and farmed it the remainder of his life. In 186k0 his
worth was listed as $12,000 real and $20,000 personal. During the early stages of the Civil War
he reputedly commanded a militia company to defend Gordonsville. Two of his sons perished in
the conflict: Richard Overton Wyatt (b. 1837), an assistant surgeon in a Richmond hospital from
“a deep cold” December 16, 1861, and James Walter Wyatt (b. 1840), captain of the Albemarle
Artillery, killed at Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864. Toward the end of the war, Colonel John
Singleton Mosby, the renowned Confederate partisan, a cousin to Richard W. Wyatt through his
mother, sent his wife and children to “Clifton” for refuge. Tradition has it that when Federal
forces were near Mosby would leave supplies at “a secret hiding place outside the main house.”
Five years after the war Wyatt’s real property was still valued at $12,000, but his personal worth

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had fallen to $800. Findagrave #27578362 (Richard W. Wyatt), 27578400 (Richard O. Wyatt),
27580151 (James W. Wyatt); Diary of Richard Ware Wyatt, 1830, courtesy of Joseph B. Wyatt;
George H. S. King, ed., “Diary of Colonel Richard Ware Wyatt on Horseback trip to the Western
Country in 1830,” Register of Kentucky State Historical Society, 39 (April 1941), 106-15;
Ancestry.com (Nancy Anne Ware Wyatt); httpi//jb wyatt.com/Wyatt/history,.html; 1860 Census,
Va., Albemarle, Fredericksville Parish, Charlottesville P.O., 60; (1870), 315; (1880), 1% Enum.
Dist., 68; Family Search (Col. Richard Ware Wyatt 1806-1881). |

“Wm M Gwin 1837”
(Ultima Thule)

William McKendree Gwin (October 9, 1805-September 3, 1885) was born in Sumner
County, Tennessee, to Reverend James Gwin (1769-1841) and Mary Adair McAdams (1773-
1858). As a young man he learned law in Gallatin but did not pursue it. He then studied medicine
at Transylvania University, Kentucky, and graduated in 1828. Moving to Clinton, Mississippi, he
was a doctor until 1833, when he was appointed U.S. marshal, serving until 1841, during which
time he also speculated in land and “Amassed a large fortune.” From 1841 until 1843 he
represented Mississippi in Congress. Following that, he superintended the construction of the
custom house in New Orleans, and in the 1840s moved to San Francisco, California. There, he
again entered politics, attended the September 1849 constitutional convention in Monterey, and
served as U.S senator September 10, 1850-March 3, 1855, and February 17, 1857-March 3,
1861. He was pro-slavery in his views and in Washington, D.C. associated with such southerners
as John Slidell, Robert Toombs, Clement C. Clay, and Jefferson Davis. It was rumored that while
in the capital he spent $75,000 a year on the maintenance of his mansion at 19" and I Streets.
After leaving office, while on a vessel in the Bay of Panama, he was arrested for disloyalty, and
for a few weeks in late 1861 was held prisoner at Fort Lafayette in New York harbor. He then
made his way to the Confederacy and in May 1862, he, his son and a daughter refugeed with
Varina Davis, her four children, and a niece of Jefferson Davis to Raleigh, North Carolina,
before continuing with his progeny on to his Mississippi plantation. In mid-1863 he went to
Paris, France, and proposed to Emperor Napoleon III a scheme for establishing southern settlers
in the states of Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico, but he could not get Maximilian to allow it. In
October 1865 he re-entered the United States after a second trip to Mexico and was again
arrested and this time imprisoned at Fort Jackson, Louisiana for eight months. He returned to
California and for a time followed agricultural pursuits. Eventually, he moved to New York City
and died there. He married Mary Elizabeth Hampton Bell (1816-1901) and they had three
daughters and a son. Mary was a daughter of William Bell who established the well-known
Bell’s Tavern in Barren County, Kentucky, and sister to Robert Slaughter Bell, who during the
1820s and 1830s was sometimes a guide at Mammoth Cave. DAB, 4: 84-85; Findagrave #5994
(W.M. Gwin), Poore, Political Register, 422; Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington 1860-
1865 (New York and London, 1941), 17, 19, 442; The Papers of Jefferson Davis, 8: 183, 188;
Jay Guy Cisco, Historic Sumner County (Nashville, 1971 [1909]), 252-55; William S. Speer,
Prominent Tennesseans (Nashville, 1888), 535.

“Isaac F Harrison

Sept 7 1838”
(Labyrinth/Ramble Passage)

Isaac Foster Harrison (November 21, 1818-August 17, 1890) was a son of James Gibson
Harrison (d. 1834), a wealthy planter who owned 2,000 acres and many slaves, and Elizabeth
Lick (1787-1839). He was born in Jefferson County, Mississippi, graduated from St. Joseph
College, Kentucky, and also became a rich planter with vast holdings near Natchez and in Tensas
Parish, Louisiana. He made “Delta” Plantation his home in the latter locale from 1843 until 1867.
In 1860 he possessed real estate worth $115,000 and personal property, mostly consisting of
sixty-nine male and fifty-six females, totaling $126,000. Prior to the war he was captain of a
militia company. Then on August 29, 1861, he became captain of Company A, Wirt Adams’s t
Mississippi Cavalry regiment, a company reputedly composed of the richest men in Louisiana,
whose seventy-two members were thought to be collectively worth twenty million dollars. The
following winter Wirt Adams’s Cavalry was with the Southern forces near Bowling Green,
Kentucky. After taking part in the battle of Shiloh, Harrison in the fall of 1862 transferred to the
Trans-Mississippi Department. There, in the District of West Louisiana and most often in the
sub-district of North Louisiana he commanded as major and lieutenant colonel the 15" Louisiana
Battalion Cavalry, 1862-63, and as colonel the 3' Louisiana Cavalry regiment, 1863-64, and
then a cavalry brigade, 1864-65. Louisiana’s Confederate governor, Henry W. Allen
recommended him for promotion to brigadier general but it did not happen. He took his parole
June 1865 at Nacogdoches, Texas. Afterwards, 1867-70, he engaged in building railroads in
Honduras. Following that he was in New Orleans, about 1872-74, and back at the “old
homestead in Mississippi” before in 1876 moving to Texas and settling in Fort Worth. Becoming
heavily involved in real estate, he and Walter E. Kneeland became land agents, dealing in
property transactions from northern Texas to the Mexican border He spent much of his time in El
Paso, listed in that town’s 1886 directory in association with the Mexico and Texas Land and
Cattle Company. He died in El Paso and was buried in Pioneers Rest Cemetery, Fort Worth. In
1843 he married Sarah Frances Gibson (1825-1879) a cousin of future Confederate General
Randall L. Gibson, and they had two boys and two girls. Findagrave #79147887 (I. F. Harrison);
The Encyclopedia of the New West (Marshall, Tex., 1881), 428; CSR, RG109, NA (1. F. Harrison
Files, 15* Miss. Cav., 3 La. Cav.); 1860 Census, La., Tensas, St. Joseph P.O., 17; 1860 Slave
Census, La., Tensas, Parish, 31; Bruce S. Allardice, Confederate Colonels: A Biographical
Register (Columbia, Mo. and London, 2008), 185; Steward Sifakis, Compendium of the
Confederate Armies: Louisiana (New York, 1995), 49, 50, 55; Ibid., Mississippi, 54, 55; War of
the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (70
vols. In 128 books, Washington, D.C., 1880-1901), Ser. 1, Vol. 7: 13-14, 703; Vol. 24, Pt. 1:571-
72: Pt-2;ASs PL 32.175: 270, 713; Vor. 34, Pt. 1: 198, 315; Pt. 2;'999, TOOU: Vou. 41. Pi. 4: 2/1,
675, 963, 1142; Vol. 48, Pt. 1: 1436, 1443.

“J, N, McDowell M.D. 1839”
(Giants’ Coffin)

Joseph Nash McDowell (April 1, 1805-September 25, 1868), son of John McDowell
(1757-1835) and Lucy Nash LeGrand (1774-1822) was a native of Lexington, Kentucky. He
studied medicine at Transylvania University, acquired his M.D. in 1825, and there taught
anatomy for a year. Then he briefly did the same at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.
Returning to Lexington, he married Amanda Virginia Drake (1805-1855), and they had five or
more children, including two boys who also became doctors. About 1835-39 he again taught
anatomy, this time at the Cincinnati Medical College. Soon afterwards he moved to St. Louis and
founded a “faculty of medicine” at Kemper College which came to be known as “McDowell
Medical College.” Attached to it was a museum, including instruments and specimens related to
surgery, ancient weapons, birds, and statues. By 1847 his “college” and museum were housed in
an octagon-shaped stone building strong enough to be a virtual fort. His estate in 1860 totaled
$150,000, and when the war came he sided with the South. On January 23, 1862, at Memphis,
McDowell offered his services as “an independent surgeon.” June-September 1862 he was in
charge of the Blind Asylum Hospital at Jackson, Mississippi. He was appointed a Confederate
surgeon August 8 and soon went to Little Rock. Later, August-September 1864, he was inspector
of hospitals for the Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana. He was paroled at
Houston in mid-1865. Meanwhile, by December 1861, the Federals had confiscated his college
building, used it as the Gratiot Street Prison, and destroyed his collections. McDowell returned
an embittered man, but sought to rebuild his medical college. Known by students and friends
alike as “Sawbones,” he was described as a “pictureques character,” “eccentric,” and “crank,”
who was “very profane . . . using oaths freely.” He had a “brusque, offhanded manner” but
inwardly possessed “‘a warm and generous heart.” He held a strange idea about the burial of his
infant daughter and himself. He believed that communication between the living and dead could
occur. He bought a cave near Hannibal, Missouri (now shown publicly as Mark Twain Cave),
and had his daughter, Amanda, put in a coffin full of alcohol and “had it suspended from the roof
of the cave by hooks.” Years later, when he thought he was about to die, he tried to convince two
doctors, one of whom was his son, to have his body buried in the same manner in Mammoth
Cave, claiming he had “arrangements” from the proprietor to do so. He required his students to
practice anatomy by dissecting human bodies, and although never caught, he and they probably
exhumed the dead to obtain cadavers. After McDowell restored his college building he
designated one room “Hell,” dedicated to Abraham Lincoln, whom he despised. He had a second
wife, Sarah Mack (b. c1828), but they were not happy. All his flaws aside, he was regarded as a
skilled surgeon, “eloquent lecturer,” “natural orator,” and “remarkable teacher.” Findagrave
#18505 (J.N. McDowell); Mary T. Valentine, The Biography of Ephraim McDowell, M.D.
(Philadelphia, 1894), 158-80; Wikipedia (J. N. McDowell); Dictionary of American Medical
Biography (New York and London, 1928), 783-85; J. Thomas Scharf, History of Saint Louis City
and County (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1883), 2: 1526; 1860 Census, Mo., St. Louis, St. Louis, fg
Ward, 163; General and Staff Officers, RG109 (M331, Roll 171), National Archives, Joseph N.
McDowell File; Ancestry.com (Sarah Mack McDowell); Louis S. Gerteis, “A Friend of the
Enemy”: Federal Efforts to suppress Disloyalty in St. Louis During the Civil War,” Missouri
Historical Review, Vol. 96 (April 2002), 167; Campbells Gazetteer of Missouri(1874), 351-52;
Louisville Daily Courier, October 1, 1868.

Kk 209

“RH Crittenden
Frankfort
Ap 40”

(Between the cataract and Fairy Grotto)

Robert Henry Crittenden (1822-March 1898) was a son of John Jordan Crittenden (1786-
1863), U.S. senator, representative, and Kentucky governor, and Sarah Lee (c1787-1824),
brother of Major Generals George B., a Confederate, and Thomas L., a Federal, and half brother
of Eugene W. Crittenden, colonel of the 12" Kentucky Cavalry, USA. He attended Miami
University, Oxford, Ohio, where he behaved “idly and badly,” and after attending a preparatory
school in Frankfort, he graduated in 1842 from Centre College at Danville. By 1851 he was in
business with his brother, Thomas L. Just before the war they were Provision and Commission
merchants on Second Street in Louisville, specializing in “filling Planters’ orders for Pork,
Bacon, Lard, Bagging, Rope, Jeans, Linsey &c.” He was at the Mammoth Cave Hotel October 9,
1860, and for a while in 1861 was a partner with Edward K. Owsley in the lease of the hotel and
cave. In 1870 he was in Frankfort as an insurance agent and a decade later he was back in
Louisville as U.S. marshal. He married twice, on October 17, 1844, to Adeline Theobald (1822-
1849), and later to Harriet Burnley (1834-1911), and altogether fathered five or more children.
Robert was financially unstable and sometimes his siblings bailed him out. Kirwan, John J.
Crittenden, 16, 43, 45, 110, 122, 160, 282; Eubank, Jn the Shadow of the Patriarch, 28-29, 162,
164, 175; Roger D. Hunt, Colonels in Blue: Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee (Jefferson, N.C.,
2014), 152; Louisville Daily Journal, October 18, 1860; Mammoth Cave Hotel register, Western
Kentucky University, Bowling Green; Clarksville (Tenn.) Chronicle, January 4, 1861; 1870
Census, Ky., Franklin, Frankfort, 9; (1880), Jefferson, Louisville, 129" Enum. Dist. 11;
Ancestry.com (Sarah C. Lee).

“A. N Poston”

Adeline Nelson Poston (November 14, 1823-January 23, 1847) was a native of
Clarksville, Tennessee, the daughter of John Hamil Poston (1786-1848) and Nancy Lowthing
Nelson (1792-1867). During 1842 she and her brother, William King Poston (1819-1866), a
prominent Memphis lawyer, visited Mammoth Cave and both inscribed their names at the
Junction of Valley Way Side Cut and Cutliff Way. On November 17, 1843, she married John
Franklin Couts (1818-1897) of Clarksville, an undertaker and furniture dealer, and they became
the parents of a boy and girl, with her likely dying from childbirth complications. Couts
remarried and many years later, December 1861, had a contract to transport and bury
Confederate soldiers who died in hospitals at Hopkinsville, Kentucky. He received $500 for
burying forty-one soldiers at twelve or thirteen dollars each. Findagrave #126203964 (Adeline
N.P. Couts), 101532893 (William K. Poston); Ancestry.com (John F. Couts); Confederate Papers
Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, RG109 (M346, Roll 199), John F. Couts File; Minoa D.
Uffelman, et al, The Diary of Nannie Gaskins Williams (Knoxville, 2014), 250.

“David W. Yandell

j

és)
(ean

=

Louisville
Ky Oct 44”
(Franklin Avenue)

David Wendel Yandell (September 4, 1826-May 2, 1898), oldest son of Dr. Lunsford Pitts
Yandell, Sr. (1805-1878) and Susan Juliet Wendel (1807-1860) was born near Murfreesboro,
Tennessee. About 1831 his family moved to Lexington, Kentucky, and a half dozen years later to
Louisville, where his father founded the medical school at that city’s university. David attended a
session at Centre College at Danville and in 1846 graduated from his father’s medical academy.
The next two years he studied in the hospitals of London and Paris. Then back at the University
of Louisville he was a “demonstrator of anatomy.” Because of poor health he spent 1851-53 ona
farm near Nashville before resuming teaching medical classes in Louisville. During October
1861 he joined the Confederate army at Bowling Green and was appointed medical director of
the Western Department on the staff of General Albert Sidney Johnston, establishing hospitals at
Bowling Green, Russellville, Nashville, and elsewhere. After Johnston’s death at Shiloh, he
successively served on the staffs of Major General William J. Hardee and Full Generals Joseph
E. Johnston and Edmund Kirby Smith. Following the June-July 1863 Southern retreat from
Middle Tennessee, he for a month remained behind “as surgeon in charge of hospitals at
Shelbyville.” In Louisiana, April 1864, he took command of the hospitals at Pleasant Hill after
the victory at Mansfield, and served as medical director in the Trans-Mississippi until October 7
of that year. He performed additional duties until finally surrendering June 6, 1865, in New
Orleans. Once more he returned to Louisville and renewed medical activities there. During the
early 1870s he was president of the American Medical Association and in 1889 headed the
American Surgical Association. He also, 1870-86, edited the American Practitioner. On April
10, 1851, he married Francis Jane Crutcher (1830-1908) of Nashville and they had three
daughters and a son. His brother-in-law, George Maney, was a Confederate brigadier general,
and in December 1862 he attended the Murfreesboro wedding of the well-known cavalryman,
John Hunt Morgan, and Mattie Ready. During the late 1870s and early 1880s he was an escort to
three presidents or former presidents, Hayes, Grant, and Arthur. DAB, 10: 595-96; Nancy D.
Baird, David Wendel Yandell: Physician of Old Louisville (Lexington, Ky., 1978), passim;
Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 10, Pt. 1: 391; Vol. 17, Pt. 2: 639; Vol. 20, Pt. 1: 779; Vol 23, Pt. 2:
918: Vol. 24, Pt. 1: 223; Vol. 30, Pt. 4: 635; Vol. 34, Pt. 1, 569; Ser. 2, Vol. 7: 913; Joseph H.
Parks, General E. Kirby Smith (Baton Rouge, 1954), 419; List of Staff Officers of the
Confederate Army, 1861-1865 (Bryan, Tex., and Mattituck, N.Y., 1983), 184.

‘). L. Blair
1845 Navy”
(Pensacola Avenue)

James Lawrence Blair (October 17, 1819-December 15, 1853) was the second son of the
influential politician, long-time editor of the Washington globe, and adviser to Presidents
Andrew Johnson, Martin Van Buren, and Abraham Lincoln. Francis Preston Blair, Sr. (1791-
1876), and Eliza Violet Gist (1794-1877. On January 8, 1836, he became a midshipman in the

fod

E22

U.S. Navy, and a few years later took part in Lieutenant Charles Wilkes’s explorations along the
coast of Antarctica, where he was “badly frozen on one occasion.” He advanced to master
October 2, 1848, and lieutenant June 2, 1849. The latter year, while on an extended leave, he
went to San Francisco and started a small steamboat line on the Sacramento River. When his
leave expired the Navy assigned him to shore duty in California which allowed him to continue
his business. He resigned May 7, 1851, and was trying to untangle himself from his commercial
pursuits when he suddenly died from a “ruptured aortia.” On January 14, 1846, he married Mary
Serena Eliza Jesup (1825-1914), a daughter of U.S. quartermaster general Thomas S. Jesup
(1788-1860) and Ann Heron Croghan (1797-1845), a sister of John Croghan (1790-1849), owner
of Mammoth Cave, 1839-1849. Their wedding guests included President James K. Polk, John C.
Calhoun, Daniel Webster, and James Buchanan. They had three girls and a boy, of whom three
attained their maturity. James’s brothers were also politically significant. Montgomery Blair
(1813-1883), a St. Louis and later a Maryland lawyer, was postmaster general in Lincoln’s
cabinet. Francis Preston Blair, Jr. (1821-1875), also a St. Louis lawyer, spent much of 1857-64 in
Congress, and served as a major general under Sherman at Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and
in the Carolinas. His sister, Elizabeth Blair (1818-1906), married Samuel Phillips Lee (1812-
1897) of Virginia, a naval lieutenant, who as an acting rear admiral 1862-64 commanded the
Union North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. James’s widow, Mary Serena, was a trustee of
Mammoth Cave after John Croghan’s death. Her brother, William Croghan Jesup (1833-1860),
on September 5, 1856, also autographed Mammoth’s Pensacola Avenue. Findagrave
#162863462 (J. L. Blair), 10550707 (T. S. Jesup); DAB, 1: 330-32, 332-34, 339-40; 6: 129-30;
Poore, Political Register, 147, 152, 158, 164, 287; Elbert B. Smith, Francis Preston Blair (New
York and London, 1980), 10, 94-95, 144, 179, 181, 183, 185-87, 190, 235, 249, 271, 293, 306-9;
Edward W. Callahan, ed., List of Officers of the Navy of the United States and of the Marine
Corps 1775 to 1900 (New York, 1967 [1901]), 60.

“F B Brand Fred: G Brand
1848” USN”
(Cleaveland Avenue)

Frederick Browder Brand (1825-June 22,1898), a native of Louisiana was a son of
William M. Brand (1780-1869) and Ann Cranshaw (1800-1836). He graduated from the Naval
Academy and became a midshipman July 17, 1840, rising to passed midshipman July 11, 1846,
and an acting master November 6, 1847, before resigning May 1, 1849. He apparently went back
to Louisiana except for a short stint in Kentucky around 1856, with his occupation unknown. On
March 30, 1853, he married Adelia/Adeline “Archie” Allen (c1835-c1871) and at a minimum
they had five boys and a girl. About April 24, 1861, he became captain of a company of the 1*
Louisiana Heavy Artillery, CSA, and served at Fort Jackson on the Mississippi River, part of the
New Orleans defenses. He was court martialed for some now unknown offense and October
1861 was under arrest awaiting sentence. However, he spent the last two months of the year on
furlough, and resigned per order from Richmond December 30. On May 16, 1862, he was
elected lieutenant colonel of William R. Miles’s Louisiana Militia. During late February 1863 he
participated in a Southern naval expedition on the Mississippi consisting of the rams Queen of

E23

the West and Webb, the gunboat Dr. Beatty, and the tender Grand Era, which captured the Union
ironclad Indianola. The rams disabled their opponent and Brand on Dr. Beatty prepared to board
her, whereupon the Federal commander gave up, and Brand personally climbed onto the ship and
received its surrender. Later that year Miles’s Militia became involved in the defense of Port
Hudson, which withstood a several weeks siege until July 9. Brand was paroled six days later
and “permitted to depart.” Late in the war he was in Mississippi attempting to regulate the
movement of cotton to trade for supplies. He was finally sent east, and on April 9, 1865, was at
Danville, Virginia. That day, when the war was essentially over, he wrote President Jefferson
Davis about the cotton trade situation, and as “an old naval officer” asked permission “to raise a
battalion” of off-duty navy and army officers and “with 1000 bales of cotton” at his command
pledged “to capture and destroy most if not all of the vessels in the Mississippi River and get
your army across,” all an impossible pipedream. On the following May 10 Brand was paroled by
the Federals at Meridian, Mississippi. His post-war doings are a mystery. In 1870 he and his
family were at Opelousas, Louisiana. Somehow, his remains were buried in the Philadelphia
National Cemetery. Findagrave #2539294 (Frederick Brand); Callahan, Naval and Marine
Officers, 73, 615; Ancestry.com (F. B. Brand); 1870 Census, La., St. Lantry, Opelouses, =
Ward, 1; New Orleans Republican, July20, 1871; Andrew B. Booth, Records of Louisiana
Confederate Soldiers (3 vols., Spartanburg, S.C., 1984 [1920]), 1: 90; Official Records of the
Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (30 vols., Washington, 1894-1922),
Ser. 1, Vol. 1: 691-92; Vol. 20: 270; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 24, Pt,. 1, 362-69; Vol. 49, Pt.
1, 1155; Ser. 4, Vol. 3: 1180-81.

“M. Troutman Ga
1848”
(Franklin Ave.)

Probably Marcellus Lyttleton Troutman (February 1, 1828-1903), a son of Hiram
Bainbridge Troutman (1797-1880) and his first wife, Balsora Ellis (1803-1836). Sources
disagree regarding his birthplace, but it was likely Georgia. He lived the majority of his life in
Floyd County, where in 1860 he was listed as a “farmer” with real and personal property worth
$20,000 and $22,000. But his status as the owner of twenty female and twenty-five male slaves,
housed in nine cabins, made him more than a lone tiller of the soil. By the early 1850s he
married Mary Frances Branham (1831-1895), by whom between 1854 and 1862 he fathered two
girls and two boys. During the conflict he seemed to avoid military service as much as possible.
In May 1862 he hired D. P. Copeland as his substitute in Company F of Smith’s Legion Georgia
Infantry. However, on July 28, 1863, he became captain of a company in the Floyd Legion State
Guards, a six months local defence unit. As its commander, on August 22 that year he wrote the
Confederate Secretary of War, James A. Seddon, that his men numbered “sixty six rank and file”
and requested accouterments, equipments, and shorter arms suitable for cavalry, to replace the
“Springfield muskets” that had been issued, which he believed were “inconvenient & unsuited.”
So far as known his men never engaged in combat. Five years after the surrender he was still
considered a farmer, but with a combined wealth which had shrunk to $10,000. In 1880 he lived
near Vineville in Bibb County, Georgia, but later returned to Floyd County, continuing to farm.

io
E ZIA

On November 7, 1899, he married Agnes Aycock (b. c1842), a school teacher. Findagrave
#68783512 (M. L. Troutman); Ancestry.com (Hiram B. Troutman); 1860 Census, Ga., Floyd,
Floyd Springs Dist., 24; 1860 Slave Census, Ga., Floyd, Floyd Springs Dist., 5-6; (1870), 49"
Subdiv., Rome P.O., 148; (1880), Bibb, Vineville, 12° Enum. Dist., 125A; (1900), Floyd, 117"
Enum. Dist., 13A; Shirley Kinney, et al, Floyd County Georgia Cemeteries (2 vols., Cave Spring
and Rome, 1985-89), 1: 516; CSR, RG109 (M266, Rolls 591, 601), NA, M. L. Troutman Files;
Georgia Marriages Records from Select Counties 1828-1978.

“IND Pearce
1850 US Army”
(Cleveland Avenue)

Nicholas Bartlett Pearce (July 20, 1828-March 8, 1894), born in Caldwell County,
Kentucky, was a son of Allen Pearce (1801-1848) and Mary “Polly” Morse (1810-1859). After
attending Cumberland College in his home state, he graduated from the U. S. Military Academy
at West Point, New York, July 1, 1850. He then served as a second and first lieutenant with the
7" Infantry in Arkansas and Indian Territory, likely visiting Mammoth Cave enroute to his first
assignment. At Fort Smith he met Nancy Katherine Smith (1837-1885), married her in 1853, and
eventually fathered seven children. On April 20, 1858, he quit the army and entered a business
association with his father-in-law, Dr. John Smith, at Osage Mills, Benton County, Arkansas,
and continued in such enterprise until the war. He was elected colonel of militia, and in May
1861 the state secession convention appointed him brigadier general of Arkansas forces, even
though he had opposed withdrawal from the Union He led a brigade into Missouri and fought in
the August 10, 1861, victory at Wilson’s Creek. Later, Arkansas officials wanted to transfer his
troops to Confederate service. Pearce resisted and furloughed his men home, ending his combat
command. The following December 13 he was appointed chief commissary for western
Arkansas and Indian Territory, and by 1863 he held the same position for the District of Texas.
He also served on the Texas Military Board and was the primary quartermaster of San Antonio.
He was paroled at Houston June 21, 1865, and sometime afterward traveled to Washington,
D.C., and obtained a pardon from President Andrew Johnson. In 1867 he returned to Osage Mills
to restore his business. During 1872-74 he taught math at Arkansas Industrial University (now
University of Arkansas), was back in Benton County in 1880 as a manufacturer and farmer, and
for a while, until 1884, worked for a Kansas City wholesale house. Following that he moved to
Texas, first to Grayson County and by the early 1890s to Dallas where he was the land inspector
for the Lombard Investment Company. He is buried at Whitesboro, Grayson County. Allardice,
More Generals in Gray, 179-80; West Point Register (1970), 242; Findagrave #99886207 (N. B.
Pearce); Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army (2
vols., Washington, D.C., 1903), 1: 778; Mammoth Hotel register; Ancestry.com (Nancy K.
Smith, Nicholas B. Pearce); 1870 Census, Ark., Benton, Osage Twp., 137; (1880), Anderson
Twp., 10" Enum. Dist., 366.

“Basil Duke 1850

Miss Mary Duke Scott Co Ky
Miss Pattie Duke Scott Co Ky

MrsJK Duke August 21% 1850”
(Franklin Avenue)

Basil Wilson Duke (May 28, 1838-September 16, 1916) was the son of Naval Captain
Nathaniel Wilson Duke (1806-1850) and Mary A. Pickett Currie (1813-1847). Because his father
was frequently absent on duty, Basil was raised on his uncle James Keith Duke's thousand acre
property, “Richland,” along with his first cousins Mary, Pattie, and others. He was schooled at
Georgetown, Centre College, and Transylvania University, where at the latter institution he
studied law. Admitted to the bar in 1858, he began practice in St. Louis, Missouri. In June 1861
he married Henrietta Hunt Morgan, sister of John Hunt Morgan, and by 1875 they had four sons
and a daughter. He enlisted in Morgan’s “Lexington Rifles” as first lieutenant, and after it
merged with the 2.4 Kentucky Cavalry, CSA, served as its lieutenant colonel and colonel.
Wounded at Shiloh, on July 19, 1863, he was captured at Buffington Island while on Morgan’s
Ohio raid. Exchanged, he became a brigadier general in September 1864 and headed a brigade in
eastern Kentucky and western Virginia. Post-war he eventually settled in Louisville and resumed
law practice, served in the state house, 1869, and as commonwealth attorney of the fifth judicial
district, 1875-80. Also, for over twenty years he was on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad’s
legal staff. He wrote History of Morgan’s Cavalry (1867) and Reminiscences (1911), and at
various times edited two magazines. One of his great uncles was John Marshall, the 1801-35
U.S. Supreme Court chief justice. Two of his first cousins-in-law, John Buford, Jr., and Green
Clay Smith, were Union generals. A blood first cousin, Louis Marshall Buford (1839-1907), was
a lieutenant and major on the staff of Union General Thomas L. Crittenden, and Humphrey
Marshall (1812-1872), a Confederate brigadier general, was a third cousin. Bruce S. Allardice
and Lawrence L. Hewitt, Kentuckians in Gray: Confederate Generals and Field Officers of the
Bluegrass State (Lexington, Ky., 2008), 76-77; DAB, 3: 495-96; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol.
10, Pt. 1:'356; Vol. 20; Pt..1: 492; Volk 23,.Pt. 17 780; ‘Vor 30, Pt. 1. 614: Findagrave #8922 (B.
W. Duke), 11083089 (Charlotte A.M. Duke), 2301 (John Buford, Jr.), 5885506 (Green C.
Smith), 34937847 (Charles Buford, Sr.); 1850 Census, Ky., Scott, 1*' Dist. East Part, 404.

28 1850
H, M. Skillman
WT Scott Lex”
(Silliman Avenue/El Ghor)

William Thompson Scott (June 28, 1833-January 2, 1875), one of fifteen children of
Matthew T. Scott (1786-1858), a Lexington, Kentucky, banker, and Winifred “Winny” Webb
(1793-1833), was a “trader” before the war. He served as lieutenant colonel, October 8, 1861-
July 13, 1862, and colonel, July 14-December 7, 1862, of the 3™ Kentucky Infantry, USA. He
resigned because he was “satisfied I am not qualified to hold the . . . position.” His commander,
Brigadier General Milo S. Hascall commented that Scott was “an excellent officer in some
respects . . . thoroughly loyal, but entirely deficient as a tactican.” From 1863 to 1865 he was

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Kentucky’s paymaster general, then after hostilities became a farmer, moving to Frankfort. In
1865 he married Mary Yoder Brown (1841-1916) and they ultimately had three offspring. He
and Dr. Henry M. Skillman, with whom he apparently visited Mammoth Cave, became brothers-
in-law. Hunt, Colonels in Blue: Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, 183-84; Findagrave
#60045140 (W. T. Scott); Ancestry.com (Matthew T. Scott); Biographical Cyclopedia of the
Commonwealth of Kentucky (Chicago-Philadelphia, 1896), 257.

“H. M. Skillman
Lexington
Sept 5" 1850 Ky”
(Franklin Avenue)

Henry Martyn Skillman (September 4, 1824-March 21, 1902), the youngest son of
Thomas T. Skillman (1786-1833), a printer, and Elizabeth Farrar (1786-1872), was born in
Lexington, Kentucky, educated at Transylvania University, and in 1847 graduated from its
medical department. There, the next year, he became a “demonstrator of anatomy,” and 1851-57
he was “Professor of General and Pathological Anatomy and Physiology.” Two years during the
war he served as a contract surgeon for the Union. In 1869 he was president of the Kentucky
State Medical Society, and later spent time traveling in Europe, Mexico, and Cuba. On October
30, 1851, he married Margaret Lucy Scott (1824-1913), daughter of Matthew T. Scott, and they
had four boys. Biographical Cyclopedia of . , . Kentucky, 568-69; Findagrave #50782694 (H. M.
Skillman); Ancestry.com (Thomas T. Skillman); E. Polk Johnson, A History of Kentucky and
Kentuckians (3 vols., Chicago-New York, 1912), 3: 1438; Robert Peter, The History of the
Medical Department of Transylvania University (Louisville, 1905), 143-46.

“J S Fowler
1851”
(Franklin Avenue)
1820

Probably Joseph Smith Fowler (August 31, 1820-April 1, 1902), a native of Steubenville,
Ohio, and son of James Fowler (c1788-1834), a farmer, and Sarah Atkinson (1786-1849). He
taught school in Shelby County, Kentucky, and then attended Franklin College at New Athens,
Ohio, graduating in 1843. He returned to Kentucky, and in Bowling Green again taught while
also studying law. About 1845 he joined the faculty of the new Franklin College in Nashville and
taught math for four years. He in addition practiced law. For “several years” he lived in Gallatin,
where 1856-61 he was president of Howard Female Institute, and was there when the sectional
crisis occurred. A strong unionist, he was one of only sixty-nine in Sumner County who voted
against secession in June 1861. The following September, “rather than take the Confederate
oath,” he and his family became exiles in Springfield, Illinois. He was a friend of former
Governor and U.S. Senator Andrew Johnson, and on April 6, 1862, while still in Springfield,
recommended that Johnson, now military governor of Tennessee, put pressure on the War

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BAIT

Department to allow seven Confederate soldiers, “misguided sons of my old neighbors,” now
prisoners at Camp Butler, Illinois, be allowed “to take the [U.S.] oath and come home.” Later
that month Fowler was appointed comptroller of Tennessee, and was in Nashville by the next
June. During the war he was active in the Nashville Refugee Aid Society, and participated in
various reconstruction efforts, including being a delegate to the Nashville Convention of
September 1864. On May 4, 1865, the legislature elected him U.S. Senator, and he was seated
July 25, 1866, and served until March 3, 1871. At Johnson’s impeachment trial in Spring 1868
he voted for acquittal. He more often than not acted as a conservative, and November that year,
while earlier a supporter, he believed that disfranchisement of former Confederates should be
lifted. Upon leaving the Senate he returned to Nashville and resumed his law practice. In May
1875 he solicited a $1,500 personal loan from Johnson, but Johnson died before any action was
taken. He moved his law business to Washington, D.C., where he remained until his death. On
November 12, 1846, he married Maria Louisa Embry (1827-1866) and they had a girl and boy.
Both he and Maria are buried in Lexington, Kentucky. He apparently first visited Mammoth
Cave in 1844, which he mentioned in a letter to a brother. Ancestry.com (Joseph Smith Fowler,
James Fowler, Sarah Atkinson, Maria Louisa Embry); Findagrave #7271655 (Joseph Smith
Fowler); LeRoy P. Graf, Ralph W. Haskins, Paul H. Bergeron, eds., The Papers of Andrew
Johnson (16 vols., Knoxville, 1967-2000), 5: 196-97, 271-72, 616; 6: 496, 703; 7: 24, 195; 11:
222, 234, 267-68, 286-87; 14: 96, 108; 16: 267-68, 286-87, 752; James W. Patton, Union and
Reconstruction in Tennessee (Gloucester, Mass., 1966), 34, 204, 240; Poore, The Political
Register, 400; Appletons’ Cyclopedia of American Biography, American National Biography
(Joseph Smith Fowler); Pittsburgh (Pa. ) Daily Post, April 2, 1902; 1860 Census, Tenn., Sumner,
5‘ Dist., Gallatin P.O., 9; (1870), Davidson, Nashville, 8" Ward, 69; (1900), D.C., Washington,
118% Enum. Dist., 17A; Joseph S. Fowler to William A. Fowler, 1844, Joseph Smith Fowler
Papers, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.

“GV Boyer W G Boyer
Natchez Miss 1852”
(Gothic Avenue)

William George Boyer (February 22, 1826-March 12, 1885), born in Tennessee, was a
son of John Boyer (1798-1827) and Lucy Ann Mowry (1797-1859). In February 1847 he married
Geraldine V. Stith (1830-1870) of Mississippi, and by 1860 they had a girl and two boys. Their
home was Natchez, where at mid-century William was a police officer and a decade later was
steward of the U.S. Marine Hospital there, with the patients all from the U.S. steamer Powhatan.
On November 11, 1861, he joined Company E, 3 Mississippi Battalion Infantry (also
sometimes designated the 33 or 45" Mississippi regiment), CSA, as a private. From March
1862 onward he served as a hospital steward. In January 1863, after the battle of Stones River, he
stayed at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to care for the wounded, acting “for six months as asst
surgeon.” Then he was imprisoned by the Federals until November. On December 10, 1863, the
colonel and surgeon of his unit urged his official appointment as hospital steward, the latter
touting him as “temperate, honest and in every way reliable, . . . intelligent and skilled in
Pharmacy.” He apparently was paroled in North Carolina at the end of the war and made his way

4
KE 28

back to Natchez, where he continued work as a physician. 1850 Census, Miss., Adams, Natchez,
39: (1860), 105; (1880), 4 Precinct, 57" Enum. Dist., 174A; Ancestry.com (W. G. Boyer);
CSR, RG109 (M269, Roll 136), NA, William G. Boyer File.

“D N Kennedy “D N Kennedy
S A Kennedy S A Kennedy,”
1852 Clarksville (Holy Sepulchre)

Tenn”
(Franklin Avenue)

David Newton Kennedy (February 23, 1820-April 23, 1904), son of William Kennedy
(1783-1832) and Mary “Polly” Thompson (1782-1822), was born in Todd County, Kentucky.
After clerking in a dry goods store in Elkton, about 1838 he moved to Nashville and did the
same. In early 1842 he permanently moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, where for eight years he
was in the dry goods business with John S. Hart. But he became primarily a banker, and during
the late 1840s and 1850s was president of the Clarksville branch of the Bank of Tennessee, and
from 1854 was also head of the Northern Bank of Tennessee. He was a Whig and in 1860
supported John Bell for the presidency. But after secession, in August 1861, he was elected to
the state house of representatives. Upon the occupation of Middle Tennessee in early 1862 the
legislature moved to Memphis and adjourned. Because he “was physically unable to bear arms,”
in April 1863 he was recommended “to be commissioned under the impressment act.” He held
some sort of job in the Confederate treasury department at Richmond and was there until its fall.
He then resumed banking, helped create a cemetery association, and in 1872 was president of a
railroad company. On November 22, 1843, he married Sarah Ann Bailey (November 2, 1823-
June 25, 1899), daughter of James H. Bailey (c1770-c1834) of Wilkinson County, Mississippi,
and Lucinda Brown. Her uncle, Charles Bailey, lived in Clarksville, and his son, James Edmund
Bailey, Confederate colonel and post-war U.S. senator, was her first cousin. She and David had
nine children, three dying young. Her wartime letters survive, revealing conditions in Clarksville.
David and Sarah apparently visited Mammoth Cave at least twice, seemingly with E. H. Foster
(perhaps the same as Ephraim H., 1838-39 and 1843-45 Tennessee U.S. senator) in 1846 when
they left their names in the obscure Holy Sepulchre, and in 1852 when they did the same in
Franklin Avenue. Findagrave #15050161 (D.N. Kennedy); Ursula S. Beach, Along the Wariota:
A History of Montgomery County (Nashville, 1964), 128-30, 218, 226, 232, 246; Biographical
Directory . .. Tennessee Assembly, 2: 491; Speer, Prominent Tennesseans, 429-31; Picturesque
Clarksville (n.p., 1887), 236-39; Clarksville Daily Leaf Chronicle, June 26, 1899; Letters
Received by the Confederate Secretary of War, RG109 (M437, Roll 95), National Archives, File
284 H 1863; Confederate Veteran (1904), 12: 298; Ancestry.com (Sarah A. Bailey, Charles
Bailey, Sr., William Kennedy): M. O. Smith Diary, Dec. 23, 2016, July 5, 2019; Poore, Political
Register, 399.

“K GARRETT
Aug 21% 1852 Memphis
(Ganter Avenue)

E 219

Either Kenneth Garrett the elder (February 18, 1800-November 10, 1852) or his nephew,
Kenneth F. Garrett (February 14, 1831-March 5, 1919), probably the latter. Both were North
Caroline-born. The senior by 1850 owned real estate in west Tennessee worth $33,600. In 1837
he lived in Haywood County and advertised 935 acres for sale. He seems to have also resided
near Jackson before moving east of Memphis four miles, where he died from consumption. His
sister-in-law, Henrietta Young (1807-1838) and brother, John W. Garrett (1795-1839) both died
in North Carolina. Afterwards, about 1843, Kenneth the older brought his nephew of the same
name and perhaps three siblings by wagon from Washington County, North Carolina to
Tennessee and raised them. By 1848 young Kenneth was a merchant’s clerk in Memphis. Then,
around 1851-52, he attended college in Virginia, until the death or impending death of Kenneth
senior “occasioned his return.” He and his brother William, 1853-55, were partners with John
Hudson in a clothier and gent’s furnishing goods store in Memphis. He sold his interest and
farmed in rural Shelby County for three years before returning to town and entering the brick
business. In June 1861 he became third lieutenant in Company A, 6" (Logwood’s) Tennessee
Battalion Cavalry, CSA, which ten months later became Company A, 7" (Duckworth’s)
Tennessee Cavalry regiment, of which he was made quartermaster. When the war ended he
resumed brickmaking, and in 1866 contracted to produce railroad ties. Later he was involved in
the fuel business. On August 2, 1853, he married Louise Carolyn Patrick (1833-1911) and they
had a dozen children, but by 1887 nine had perished, including one son during the 1878 yellow
fever epidemic. Ancestry.com (Kenneth Garrett, John W. Garrett, Kenneth F. Garrett, Louise C.
Patrick); Goodspeed’s History of Hamilton, Knox and Shelby Counties of Tennessee (Nashville,
1974 [1887]), 967; 1850 Census, Tenn., Shelby, 6" Dist., 236; Memphis Enquirer, Jan. 14, 1837;
Memphis Appeal, Nov. 12, 1852; Tennesseans in the Civil War (2 vols., Nashville, 1964-65), 1:
27, 68: CSR, RG109 (M268, Roll 32), NA, Kenneth Garrett File.

“H. L. Douglass
Somerville
Tennessee

Sept 1 1852”
(Franklin Avenue)

Henry Lee Douglass (January 11, 1826-December 30, 1906), a son of Burchett Douglass
(1793-1849) and Martha Patsey McGee (1799-1874), was born in either Sumner or Wilson
County, Tennessee. At some point he moved to the western part of the state, settling in Fayette
County. His father died there but in 1850 his mother was in Smith County. He during the 1850s
moved to Haywood County, where in 1860 he claimed real and personal property worth $37,400.
In late May 1861 he was elected colonel of the 9" Tennessee Infantry, CSA, and April 6-7, 1862,
he led it in the battle of Shiloh as part of General Benjamin F. Cheatham’s Division. But soon
after, at the May 8 reorganization of the regiment he was not reelected. Probably not long after
the war he moved to Shelby County where he farmed and operated a gin and sawmill. In 1869 he
married Lucy Davis Little (1845-1911) and they had three girls. From 1877 to 1879 he
represented his county in the state legislature. Findagrave #77269854 (H. L. Douglass);

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Ancestry.com (H. L. Douglass); Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 10, Pt. 1:382, 442, 457;
Tennesseans in the Civil War, 1:192; 1850 Census, Tenn., Smith, South Div., HH299; (1860),
Haywood, 2™ Dist., Dancyville P.O., 19; (1870), Shelby, 3" Dist., Memphis P.O., 40; (1880),
117 Enum. Dist., 4; (1900), 318 Enum. Dist., 17B; Biographical Directory . . . Tennessee
Assembly, 1: 210-11; 2: 242.

“T J Glenn
Nov 25" 1853”
(Main Cave past T. B. Huts)

Thomas Jefferson Glenn (1829-1893), a son of Moses Glenn (1791-1866) and Elizabeth
Cowan (1829-1879), was educated at Western Military Institute in Nicholas County, Kentucky,
and became a civil engineer. He remained in that county and in 1856 married Lucy Ann Walker
(1837-1908), fathering three children. Late in 1861 he was involved in obstructing the
Cumberland River below Fort Donelson for the Confederates. Lineage Book National Society of
the Daughters of the American Revolution, Vol. 44 (Washington, D.C.), 296; 1850 Census, Ky.,
Nicholas, 2" Dist., 144; *1870), Carlisle, 6; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 7: 700, 710, 735.

“R H Gamble
G. T. Ward
Florida 1854

6

(Gothic Avenue)

Robert Howard Gamble (September 22, 1815-December 14, 1887) was born in Botetourt
County, Virginia, the first son of Robert Gamble (1781-1867) and Letitia Breakinridge (1791-
1866). He came with his parents to Florida in 1826 when they settled in Tallahassee. R. H. aided
his father in establishing a cotton plantation and promoted local railroads, accruing $6,000 real
and $53,000 personal property before the war. He opposed secession, but became captain of the
Leon Artillery, CSA, in April 1862, and saw action near Jacksonville March 25, 1863 and at the
Confederate victory at Olustee February 20, 1864. At the latter engagement his five-cannon
battery had two men killed, three wounded, and two men “injured by [a] gun carriage.” January
1863 through September 1864 he was the agent for his younger brother, Carey B. Gamble, a
surgeon in the Army of Tennessee, in hiring twelve to nineteen slaves per month to the
Tallahassee Niter Beds. During 1868 he was state comptroller under Governor Harrison Reed.
He was twice married, to Martha Chaires (1829-1866), by whom he had two children, and
Angelica Elizabeth Robinson (1837-1921). He and George T. Ward were brothers-in-law.
Findagrave #10179604 (R. H. Gamble), 10179635 (Martha C. Gamble); 1860 Census, Fila.,
Leon, Tallahassee, 13; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 10, Pt. 1: 503; Vol. 14: 234, 475, 875; Vol.
28, Pt. 2: 248, 328, 471, 604; Vol. 35, Pt. 1: 342, 346, Pt. 2: 464; Vol 53: 336; Confederate Slave
Payrolls, Entry 57, RG109, National Archives, Tallahassee Niter Beds.

“Cy. T>. Ward
Florida 1854

FP? de
SALLIE WARD
S. J.. WARD”
(Gothic Avenue)

George Taliaferro Ward (1810-May 5, 1862), a Fayette County, Kentucky, native, was a
son of George Washington Ward (1781-1835) and Ann E. Hooe (d. 1841), and a graduate of
Transylvania University. He moved to Florida and became a wealthy resident of Tallahassee,
acquired three plantations totaling over 4.000 acres with at least 130 slaves. Before the war he
claimed $70,000 real and $130,650 personal property. A Whig, during the 1840s he was a
director of the local Union Bank, and in 1852 lost a bid for governor. In 1860 he supported the
Constitutional Union presidential candidate, John Bell, and at Florida’s secession convention he
was a unionist, but signed the ordinance. On May 2, 1861, the governor appointed him to fill the
vacancy in the Provisional Confederate Congress caused by the resignation of J. Patton
Anderson. Two months later he was also elected colonel of the 2" Florida Infantry, CSA. The
following February 5 he resigned from congress and served on the Virginia Peninsula under
Generals John B. Magruder and Daniel H. Hill. He was killed at Williamsburg when a bullet
“struck him under the left shoulder and came out the right breast,” and was buried at the nearby
Bruton Parish Church Cemetery. His wife, whom he married February 8, 1844, was Sarah Jane
Chaires (December 12, 1825-October 31, 1859), who bore him four or five girls and two boys.
She and her sister, Martha Chaires Gamble (1829-1866), were two of the eleven children of
Benjamin C. Chaires (c1786-1838), a banker, large landowner, and supposedly Florida’s first
millionaire, and Sarah Jane Powell (1790-1846). Sarah Jane’s and Martha’s uncle, Thomas Peter
Chaires (1792-1842), autographed the wall of Manila Cave in South Alabama’s Clarke County,
July 4, 1816. Jon L. Wakelyn, Biographical Dictionary of the Confederacy (Westport, Conn.,
1977), 477-78. David W. Hartman and David Coles, comps., Biographical Roster of Florida's
Confederate and Union Soldiers 1861-1865 (6 vols., Wilmington, N.C., 1995), 1: 139; Official
Records, Ser. 4, Vol. 3: 1185; Findagrave #7136230 (G. T. Ward), 71835180 (Sarah J.C. Ward),
37198787 (Benjamin Chaires), 75340722 (Thomas P. Chaires); Ancestry.com (Thomas P.
Chaires, Joseph Chaires, Benjamin C. Chaires); 1850 Census, Fla., Leon, 8" Div., 72; (1860),
Tallahassee P.O., 23-24; (1860), Slave Census, Leon, 95, 96, 267; M. O. Smith diary, November

4, 2012.

“S B Churchill

Amelia Churchill
1854”

(Marion Ave.)

Samuel Bullitt Churchill (December 6, 1812-May14, 1890) was a son of Samuel
Churchill (1779-1863), a large Louisville area farmer, and Abigail Pope Oldham (1789-1854).
One of his brothers, Thomas James Churchill (1824-1905), who moved to Arkansas, became a
Confederate major general. Samuel B. was educated at St. Joseph’s College, Bardstown and at
Transylvania University. In 1835 he moved to St. Louis to practice law, but two years later
became editor of that city’s Bulletin newspaper, which supported the Whig Party. During the

>
es
E222

early 1840s he was a state representative and then the city’s postmaster. By the early 1850s he
switched his allegiance to the Democratic Party and near the end of that decade was elected to
the state senate. As a delegate to the 1860 Charleston, South Carolina, Democratic Convention,
he supported James Guthrie of Louisville for president before it broke up without nominating a
candidate. In early 1861 at a joint session of both houses of the Missouri legislature, he
introduced the commissioners from Mississippi, who visited to solicit sympathy, support, and
cooperation. Although Churchill had friends and acquaintances who favored secession, he “in
reality was never in favor of the disruption of the Union.” The war came, and he, although not
supportive of secession, “was as a Democrat, opposed to many measures of President Lincoln’s
administration.”” On October 19, 1861, he was arrested for “aiding and abetting the enemy.”
About this time he acted as one of the commissioners for the Confederates to arrange a prisoner
exchange, agreed to October 26, for Southerners captured May 10 at Camp Jackson near St.
Louis, and Federals captured at Lexington, Missouri, September 20. He was released November
4. In May 1863 Churchill was arrested again, in Louisville, and taken back to St. Louis. He was
among those ordered by Major General Samuel R. Curtis to be banished South. However, James
Guthrie, Joshua F. and James Speed, the last two old schoolmates and friends, May 16 and 17
telegraphed Lincoln and asked that Churchill be allowed to stay in Louisville. The War
Department complied, and upon taking the oath of allegiance, Churchill renewed his residence
there. Late in the war Major General John Pope published a list of “assessments” against the
property of Southern sympathizers in St. Louis County. Lincoln himself wired Pope on March 7,
1865, that earlier Churchill had been sent from there to Louisville “where I have quite
satisfactory evidence that he has not misbehaved; still I am told his property . . . is subjected to
the assessment, which I think it ought not to be.” After the war Churchill primarily remained in
Louisville, and 1867-71 and 1879-80 served as Kentucky’s Secretary of State. During those
periods he and his family lived in Frankfort. In 1870 he was listed as possessing real and
personal property worth $150,000 and $25,000. On June 25, 1836, in St. Louis, he married
Amelia Chouteau Walker (December 8, 1818-December 12, 1906), daughter of Dr. David V.
Walker (1785-1824) and Matilda Nicholas Christy (1782-1872), and between 1841 and 1861
they had nine children, two of whom died as infants. L. U. Reavis, Saint Louis: The Future Great
City of the World (St. Louis, 1876), 464-75; Findagrave #76514841 (S. B. Churchill);
Ancestry.com (S. B. Churchill, Amelia C. Walker); Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 48, Pt. 1: 1113;
Ser. 2, Vol. 1: 122, 554; Vol. 2: 250; Vol. 5: 627, 631, 656, 663-64; 1870 Census, Ky., Franklin,

Frankfort, 22.

oe De YuRy
(Silliman Ave.)

Enoch D. Yutzy (February 1, 1835-September 29, 1894), a native and resident of
Somerset County, Pennsylvania, was a child of Daniel Yutzy. About 1851 he entered Mount
Union College, Ohio, from which he graduated. Then, for a while, he taught school in Harrison
County, Kentucky, afterwards heading an academy for three years at Camden, Mississippi.
About 1858 he returned home and the next year was elected county surveyor. He also began law
study. On September 30, 1861, he became captain of Company C, 54 Pennsylvania Infantry,

eed

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E222

and was advanced to major February 1, 1863. He took part in many battles in Virginia, especially
the Shenandoah Valley. In February 1865 he was discharged and within a year became a railroad
contractor. During the mid-1870s he served two terms in the state senate. In 1859 he married
Nancy Scott of his county and they had a son and a daughter. Findagrave #83025473 (E. D.
Yutzy); Samuel P. Bates, History of Pennsylvania Volunteers (10 vols., Harrisburg, 1869-71), 3:
135-144.

“W.W.Gordon 6.7 in High
TENNESSEE
ie tee
(Near Bottomless Pit)

There were five W. W. Gordons listed in Tennessee by the 1850 and 1860 census takers,
of whom only one can be immediately eliminated as the Mammoth Cave visitor by being only
seven years old in 1855. The others were from Henderson, Giles, Lewis, and Robertson
Counties. Of these the Giles resident William Wallace Gordon (December 29, 1834-May 5,
1900), due to his and his family’s wealth, probably had more time to take leisure trips. This is
bolstered by the fact that after the war, October 14, 1865, “W W Gordon & Lady Pulaski Tenn”
and “Miss Gordon” arrived at the Mammoth Hotel and paid for the long cave excursion. He was
the grandson of Robert Gordon (1763-1847) who came to Giles County about 1808, began a
plantation, and accumulated a number of slaves, and the fourth son of Thomas Kennedy Gordon
(1792-1880) and Elizabeth Lane (1802-1863). William’s father greatly expanded the family’s
land holdings and at one time reputedly held 28,000 acres in Giles County plus other tracts in
Mississippi. He twice represented the county in the state legislature, 1829-31 and 1835-37. In
1860 Thomas K. Possessed $68,500 real and $41,000 personal property, while William claimed
to be a farmer with a combined property worth $36,580. His father, he, and his brothers
collectively owned before the war in Giles County ninety-six slaves, with Thomas K. having
fifty-one, his siblings Thomas M. (1827-1901) and Ephraim H.F. (1829-1909), thirteen and
fifteen, and him seventeen. Another brother, David M. (1821-1901), farmed in the next county
south, Limestone in Alabama, and possessed thirteen more slaves. The youngest brother,
Mirabeau B.L. (1841-1920), in 1860 still resided with his parents and apparently did not have
any slaves. During the war all the Gordon brothers served in the Confederate army. Thomas and
Ephraim were officers in the 3 (Brown’s) Tennessee Infantry, David was in Ward’s Alabama
Light Artillery Battery, Mirabeau was a private in Company E, 11“ (Holman’s) Tennessee
Cavalry, and William W. on December 10, 1861, became captain of Company B, 11 Tennessee
Battalion Cavalry. Later he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. In April 1862 his unit was at
Corinth, Mississippi, and the next month it was consolidated with the 2™¢ Battalion Cavalry to
become the 6" (or Wheeler’s 1°) Tennessee Cavalry Regiment. He continued as lieutenant
colonel for a while but by March 1863 had been replaced. He eventually returned to Giles
County and lived near Lynnville. In 1870 he was a grocery merchant, claiming $6,000 real and
$7,500 personal property, and a decade later was again a farmer. Before the war, November 10,
1857, he married Hannah Louise “Lou” Hill (c1838-1917), and about 1861 they had a daughter.
William W. Gordon’s first cousin, also from Giles County, George Washington Gordon (1836-

Fee

EZ24

1911), was colonel of the 11™ Tennessee Infantry, a Confederate brigadier general, and 1907-11
a member of the United States Congress. Findagrave #39238874 (William W. Gordon),
30491440 (Thomas Kennedy Gordon), 59966019 (David Marion Gordon); Ancestry.com
(Hannah L. Hill, William Wallace Gordon, Mirabeau Gordon, Alabama, Texas, and Virginia
Confederate Pensions, 1884-1958, Tennessee Marriage Records, 1780-2002); Mammoth Hotel
register; Tennesseans in the Civil War, 1: 32-33. 66-67, 181; 1860 Census, Tennj, Giles,
Southern Subdiv., Pulaski P.O., 52, Northern Subdiv., Lynnville P.O., 73; 1860 Slave Census,
Tenn., Giles, Northern Subdiv., 19, 20; 1860 Census, Ala., Limestone, 24 Dist., Athens P.O., 89;
1860 Slave Census, Ala., Limestone, 2" Dist,. 28; (1870), Tenn, Giles, 15" Dist., Lynnville
P.O., 4; (1880), 113 Enum. Dist., 32; CSR, RG109, NA, W. W. Gordon File; Margaret Butler,
Legacy (Pulaski, Tenn., 1991), 111-16, 120; Biographical Directory Tennessee Assembly, 1:
297-98.

“OQ C Vanlandingham
Baton Rouge

1835"

(Cleveland Avenue)

Probably Oliver Cromwell Vanlandingham, IT (August 23, 1826-May 19, 1905), a son of
the senior of that name (c1784-October 2, 1856) and Mary Ann Spray Drake (1806-1844), was a
native of Mulenberg County, Kentucky. About a year after his mother died, Oliver moved with
his father and four siblings to near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. There, the senior bought a large
plantation and remarried. In 1847 Oliver Jr. returned to the old family residence near Paradise,
Kentucky, and on December 10 married Margaret Jane Weir (1830-1915). He remained there the
better part of a decade “looking after his father’s property” and farmed the land. Then after his
father passed away he moved back to Louisiana to take charge of the Vanlandingham plantation
and its many laborers. In 1860 his personal estate of $75,500 consisted primarily of thirty-eight
female and thirty-nine male slaves housed in eighteen cabins. During the war the plantation
buildings were burned and the operation was ruined. Oliver, Jr., served as a private in Captain J.
B. Cage’s Cavalry Company (1863) which became Company C, 14" Confederate Cavalry (1863-
64), and finally as a private in Company F, Colonel Frederick N. Ogden’s Cavalry Regiment
(1865). He was captured at Comite River March 24, 1864, and the following August 14 was
among those who escaped from the military prison in New Orleans. He was paroled at
Gainesville, Alabama, May 12, 1865. Postwar he remained in Louisiana until about 1868, and
then permanently returned to the family land in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, where he again
farmed. By 1872 he and Margaret had seven boys and two girls, all save one surviving to
adulthood. He possessed a “large library” and was believed to have been “one of the best-read
men” in his neighborhood. On July 5, 1859, on a trip to Kentucky from Louisiana, he signed in at
the Mammoth Cave Hotel. It is possible that his “1855” inscription in Cleaveland Avenue was
misread and 1859 was when he took the Long Tour, or else he visited the cave twice. Findagrave
#36728363 (O. C. Vanlandingham II); 1850 Census, Ky., Mulenberg, 2" Subdiv., 257; (1860),
La., E. Baton Rouge, 157; (1870), Ky., Muhlenberg, Paradise Precinct, 3; (1880), 142°¢ Enum.
Dist., 4; (1900), 63 Enum. Dist., 223-24; 1860 Slave Census, La., E. Baton Rouge, 63-64; Otto

2G

Li GZ25

A. Rothert, A History of Muhlenberg County (Louisville, 1913), 223-24; CSR, RG109, NA, O.
C. Vanlandingham (14 Confederate Cav.); Booth, Records of Louisiana Confederate Soldiers, 3:
909; Mammoth Hotel Register; Ancestry.com (Oliver C. Vanlandingham, Sr.).

“R. J. Wingate 1855” “R J Wingate
(Jesup Avenue near Washington Dome) Lou Gross”

Robert Johnston Wingate (December 18, 1829-August 28, 1893) visited Mammoth Cave
at least twice during ante-bellum times, in 1855 when he left his name in Jesup Avenue near
Washington Dome, and around August 9, 1859. He was the youngest son to reach maturity of
Henry Wingate (1795-1862) and Penelope Hart Anderson (1799-1890) and was born at
Frankfort, Kentucky. He entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1847 but did not
graduate. He also attended the Kentucky Military Institute and the state’s Masonic College. At
mid-century he lived with his parents in Frankfort. Before the war he was a clerk in Louisville,
associated with the firm of Miller, Wingate and Company, which manufactured agricultural
implements. At or near New Orleans in late Spring 1861, he became first lieutenant of Company
A, 5" Louisiana Infantry, CSA, and was soon sent to Virginia. By August he was detailed as
adjutant on Brigadier General Richard B. Garnett’s staff, serving until May 8, 1862. Two days
later he moved to the staff of Major General Ambrose P. Hill as assistant inspector general and
May 26 was promoted to major. From mid-1863 Hill commanded the Third Corps, Army of
Northern Virginia, and Wingate remained with him until his death near Petersburg, April 2,
1865, except when on sick leave in August 1864. Late in 1863 he was charged with drunkenness,
but while the court disapproved of his conduct it did not dismiss him. Included in the surrender at
Appomattox, after the war Wingate participated “in the cotton and insurance business in New
Orleans, New York and Louisville.” He died in the latter city and is buried in his hometown.
Findagrave #9093552 (R. J. Wingate); 1850 Census, Ky., Franklin, 1 Dist., 43; (1860),
Jefferson, Louisville, 5“ Ward, 208; West Point Register (1970), 244; Robert E. L. Krick, Staff
Officers in Gray: A Biographical Register of the Staff Offices in the Army of Northern Virginia
(Chapell Hill and London, 2003), 306; Booth, Louisiana Confederate Soldiers, 3: 1136;
Mammoth Hotel register; General & Staff Officers (M331, Roll 271), NA, R. J. Wingate File;

Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 42, Pt. 2: 272, 274.

“A Hickenlooper
Cincinnati:
July 56”
(Pensacola Avenue
Upper level)

Andrew Hickenlooper (August 1837-May 12, 1904) was probably the 1856 Mammoth
Cave visitor rather than his father (July 22, 1795-March 25, 1869), a wood measurer with the
same name. Young Andrew’s mother was Abigail Cox (1797-1869), and he was born at Hudson,
Ohio. His family moved to Cincinnati and by the mid-1850s he was a civil engineer and an
employee at the city engineer’s office, before in 1859 becoming the city surveyor. Soon after the

EZ26

war began he recruited the 5" Ohio Independent Battery and served under Major General John
C. Fremont at Jefferson City, Missouri, late in 1861. During March 1862, he transferred to
Grant’s Army of the Tennessee and fought at Shiloh, Iuka, and Corinth. At Shiloh he was
surprised to see his father, who had joined Company G, 5" Ohio Cavalry, and at that moment
was serving with Grant’s escort. From October 1862 until July 1864 young Hickenlooper was on
the staff of Major General James B. McPherson, leader of the Seventeenth Army Corps. He
became that corps’ chief engineer and at the siege of Vicksburg was intensely occupied as such.
Later he was the corps’ primary artillery officer, and after McPherson was killed at Atlanta, he
held other staff positions, including assistant inspector for Major General Francis P. Blair, Jr. At
the end of the fighting, May 20, 1865, he was breveted brigadier general of volunteers. The
following July 28-29 he again visited Mammoth Cave and took the short tour. Returning to Ohio,
he was U.S. marshal for its Southern District, 1866-71, Cincinnati city engineer, vice president
and president of that town’s Gaslight and Coke Company, 1872-79, and lieutenant governor,
1880-82. On February 13, 1867, he married Maria Lloyd Smith (1845-1912) and they had two
boys and two girls. Findagrave #5951252 (A. Hickenlooper), 10923536 (A. Hickenlooper, III);
DAB, 5: 3-4; Henry A. Ford and Kate B. Ford, comps., History of Cincinnati, Ohio . . .
(Cleveland, 1881), 443-44; 1860 Census, Ohio, Hamilton, Cincinnati, 8" Ward, 125; Andrew
Hickenlooper, “The Battle Sketches of War History,” Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the
U.S. Ohio Commanders (1903), 5: 432; Mammoth Hotel register. Hickenlooper’s father joined
the army as a saddler September 4, 1861, and was discharged for disability July 23, 1862.
Official Roster of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion, 1561-1866 (12 vols., Akron,
Cincinnati, Norwalk, 1886-95), 11: 277.

“Josie Underwood
Bowling Green
1857 Ky”

Joanna “Josie” Louisa Underwood (November 5, 1840-November 14, 1923) scratched
her name in an obscure niche on the ceiling of Mammoth Cave’s Cleaveland Avenue. She was a
daughter of Warner L. Underwood (1808-1872), a lawyer, wealthy ($105,013 combined estate)
“beneovent” slaveowner, unionist, and congressman (1855-59) and Lucy Craig Henry (1816-
1893). Well-educated Josie grew up in affluence, and December 1860-September 1862 kept a
journal which in 2009 was published. Like her father, she was a unionist, although at times she
felt a sympathy for those with opposing views. Her father supported John Bell for president in
1860 and argued that the southern states would better protect their rights in the union not out of
it. When in September 1861 the Confederate army occupied Bowling Green many of its men,
from Missouri and Mississippi, camped on the Underwood property, “Mount Air,” and built a
fort on it, causing trampling of the fields and destruction of the fences, trees, out-buildings, and
finally their house which was burned. Ordered out of their home in early January 1862, Josie and
her family sheltered several weeks in a cabin in an adjacent county. Her greater family was
divided in sentiment. Her uncle, Joseph Rogers Underwood (1791-1876), a lawyer and former
congressman and U.S. senator, was a firm unionist as well as the man who advertised and leased
Mammoth Cave and its hotel for the cave’s heirs. Her brother-in-law, Benjamin C. Grider (1826-

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1874) raised the 9" Kentucky Infantry, USA, and was its colonel, while her young brother,
Warner Underwood (1845-1874), as a Union lieutenant was wounded in the arm at Shiloh before
attending the military academy at West Point. Another brother-in-law, William Western (d.
1870) of Memphis, served in the Confederate army as did her young uncle Winston Henry (b.
1838). A much older uncle, Gustavas A. Henry, Sr. (1804-1880), was a Confederate senator.
Josie’s father was appointed U.S. consul at Glasgow, Scotland, and served from late 1862 until
September 1864, and she and a young brother went there too. Her family returned to Bowling
Green after the war and there, October 26, 1870, she wed Charles A. Nazro (1837-1898), a
Rensselaer County, New York, native, who August 29, 1861-June 28, 1862, had been be
lieutenant and regimental quartermaster of the 26" Illinois Infantry and staff officer for Brigadier
General Schuyler Hamilton. He was wounded and lost the sight of his left eye and partial sight of
his right eye, causing his resignation. Between 1871 and 1880 they had two girls and two boys.
They moved to Ballston Spa, Saratoga County, New York, where he was a clerk. Later, they
briefly lived in Denver before moving to California, finally settling in San Diego. Josie’s life
with her husband was far more austere than the years of her upbringing. In 1912 she once more
returned to Bowling Green, was active with the Daughters of the American Revolution, wrote a
short history of the town, and lived in a small house owned by a son. “W L Underwood,”
presumably Josie’s father and not her brother, is inscribed at the far end of White Cave, and
“Miss J B Underwood April 1857,” probably her sister Juliette “Jupe” Blanch Underwood (1835-
1909), who married William Western, is scratched on the wall near the beginning of Harvey’s
Avenue in Mammoth Cave. Ancestry.com (Joanna L. Nazro, Warner L. Underwood, Charles A.
Nazro); Findagrave #96989078 (Charles A. Nazro), 119768841 (Joanna L. Underwood Nazro),
7781163 (Warner L. Underwood); Wikipedia (Warner Underwood); 1850 Census, N.Y.,
Rensselaer, Troy, 2" Ward, HH836; (1860), Ky., Warren, 1% Dist., 151; (1870), Bowling Green
Precinct, 18; (1880), N.Y. Saratoga, Milton, 1* Election Dist., 77" Enum. Dist., 61; (1920), Ky..
Warren, Bowling Green, 133" Enum. Dist., 2B; Congressional Record 55” Congress 2”
Session, Vol. XXXI (Washington, D.C., 1898), 1455; Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1898; Nancy
D. Baird, ed., Josie Underwood’s Civil War Diary (Lexington, Ky., 2009), 2-8, 12, 15, 19-22,
59-61, 75, 78, 86-90, 207-9; M. O. Smith Diary, February 13, 2016, May 25, 2018.

“D. M. WHALEY

Texas

1858”

(El Ghor)
David Moreland Whaley (1822-August 22, 1862), a son of James Whaley (1788-1869)
and Jane Vance Moreland (1793-1871) was born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, and became a
druggist. About 1851 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and soon after to Texas where he
settled in Leon County, continued his vocation, and ultimately owned 954 acres. In 1859 he was
elected to the state senate. He favored “moderation over secession,” but when war came he on
July 11,1861, became captain of Company C (“Leon Hunters”), 5 Texas Infantry, CSA, and in
mid-July 1862 he was promoted major. He took part in the Seven Days battles before Richmond,
Virginia, and later in an attack by Brigadier General John Bell Hood’s brigade at Freeman’s Ford
on the Rappahannock River, he was wounded by an artillery shell fragment, had his leg

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amputated, and died that night. Captain Everard Bierer (later colonel of another regiment) of the
11 Pennsylvania Reserves, a school-mate and boyhood companion, testified that “Though in the
rebel army, Major Whaley is a gentleman of high integrity.” Findagrave #161401921 (D. M.
Whaley); 1850 Census, Pa., Fayette, Connellsville Twp., 80; (1860), Tex., Leon, Leon Div., 37;
CSR, RG109 (M323, Roll 307), NA, D. M. Whaley File; John F. Schmutz, “The Bloody Fifth”
The 5 Texas Infantry Regiment, Hood’s Texas Brigade Army of Northern Virginia (California,
2016), 146-47, 284, 328; Official Records, Vol. 11, Pt. 2: 397; Vol. 12: 605; Ancestry.com
(James Whaley).

“M Bell
‘58
i a
(Ole Bulls Concert Hall)

Molyneux Bell (c1826-November 9, 1886), the oldest of at least eight children of Robert
Bell (c1794-1864) and Elizabeth Jane Molyneux (c1805-1869), was born in County Antrim,
Northern Ireland. He was partially educated at the local Crumlin Academy in 1842. During that
decade his father suffered hard times, serving two years in prison for forging a promissory note,
and in early 1848 moved his family to the United States, and he, Elizabeth, four daughters, and
two sons ended up in Nashville, Tennessee. Molyneux perhaps came over at the same time, but
he settled in New York City, marrying Mary Augusta (or Augusta Mary) Tucker on August 9,
1848. The next year he entered the “Cloak and Mantilla trade” at 58 Canal Street, and by 1856
had so expanded his business that he employed several hundred operatives and also used perhaps
as many as twenty-five sewing machines to make “Cloaks, Talmas, and Mantillas,” plus
maintaining wholesale and retail departments, and “was the first to introduce Young Ladies as
sales-women.” He kept an agent in Europe who forwarded new patterns to the U.S. market as
soon as they appeared in London or Paris. Mary Augusta apparently died and on July 8, 1857, he
married Anne Fairly Jarvis (1822-1892) and within a few years they had a boy and girl. He and
Anne arrived at the Mammoth Hotel August 7, 1858, and presumably both made the long cave
trek. From September 18, 1862, until August 4, 1865, he was captain and commissary of
subsistence U.S. Volunteers, serving late that year on the staff of Brigadier General Quincy A.
Gillman at Williamstown, Kentucky, in February 1863 at Lexington Kentucky, December 1863
at Camp Nelson, Kentucky, and late 1864 in Washington Territory. He returned to New York
City and continued his business, and in 1870 he and Anne claimed real and personal property
totaling $275,000 and $5,000. Later he traveled and moved to New Mexico. He there lived in
Gallup and Albuquerque, and at the latter place was superintendent of a street car company when
he died. He and Anne are buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York. Ancestry.com
(Robert Bell, Molyneux Bell, Anne Fairley Jarvis, Returns from Military Posts (1806-19160;
Findagrave #24156320 (Molyneux Bell), 88302187 (Anne Fairley Jarvis Bell); John H. Yardley
Collection of Architectural Letterheads, Columbia University, New York; Edwin T. Freedley, A
Treatise on the Principal Trades and Manufactures of the United States (Philadelphia, c1856-
57), 213-14: Oficial Records, Set. 1; VOL 32,012.53, Vou 52, Pt, 12 350; 1860 Census, Tenn.,
Davidson, Nashville, 6" Ward, 138; (1870), New York, New York, New York, 17" Dist. Of 22"°

20)

KAZ?

Ward, 24; (1880), 533" Enum. Dist.,12; New York City directory (1877); Mammoth Hotel
register.

“R S Courts Aug 17 1858”
(Gothic Avenue)

Richard S. Courts (c1839-1862) of Richland, Mississippi, on August 17, 1858, took a
room at the Mammoth Cave Hotel and also had time for the short tour of the cave, leaving his
name in Gothic Avenue. He was a son of William T. Courts (b. 1802) and Charity Ritter (1798-
1841) and a nephew of John Douglas Courts (1806-1870), the owner of Hundred Dome Cave not
far from Mammoth. His father was a wealthy “farmer” whose pre-war real and personal worth
was listed as $11,000 and $49,660, with the latter primarily consisting of seventeen male and
twenty-one female slaves, housed in ten cabins. On September 25, 1861, young Mr. Courts
enlisted as a private in Company K (later F), 10 Mississippi Infantry, CSA. He suffered a
mortal wound in the abdomen September 14, 1862, during an unauthorized and bloodily repulsed
attack on the Union Forces at Munfordville, Kentucky, and died the next day. There is an 1860
“R S Courts” inscription in Hundred Dome Cave. Mammoth Hotel register; 1850 Census, Miss.,
Holmes, 576; (1860), Richland Beat, 107; Ky., Edmonson, Brownsville P.O., 81; 1860 Slave
Census, Miss., Holmes, Richland Dist., 78; Ancestry.com (John Courts, John D. Courts, William
T, Courts); Sandi Gorin, “The Winn Family,” South-Central Kentucky rootsweb ancestry; CSR,
RG109, NA, R. S. Courts File; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 16, Pt,. 1: 971-73; Nashville
Tennessean, April 22, 1860; M. O. Smith diary, September 5, 2015.

“W E Colston 1859”
(Cleaveland Avenue)

William Edwin Colston (March 24, 1839-January 10, 1864), son of Josiah Colston (1794-
1870) and Elizabeth Pendiston Tutt (1809-1879), was born in Washington, D.C., raised in
Virginia, and about 1857 moved to Baltimore. On July 27, 1859, he registered at the Mammoth
Cave Hotel and probably soon took the long tour, autographing Cleaveland Avenue. In 1861, he
espoused the Southern cause and for a few weeks in June was in Company B, 21° Virginia
Infantry before transferring to Company H, 1% Maryland Infantry. Wounded at the battle of
Cross Keys, June 8, 1862, he upon recovering enough to ride a house became a volunteer aide to
General Isaac R. Trimble, who was wounded and captured at Gettysburg. After the retreat back
to Virginia Colston soon joined John S. Mosby’s 43" Battalion Virginia Partisan Rangers, and
was killed in a failed night attack at Harper’s Ferry. One of his brothers, Pendleton Colston
(1832-1867), married a daughter of Raphael Semmes, commander of the famous 1862-64
Confederate ocean cruiser, Alabama. David D. Hartzler, Marylanders in the Confederacy (Silver
Spring, Md., 1986), 115; W. W. Goldsborough, The Maryland Line in the Confederate Army,
1861-1865 (Port Washington, N.Y., and London, 1972), 80, 167, 358; Jeffrey D. Wert, Mosby’s
Rangers (New York, 1990), 135; Mammoth Hotel register; Findagrave #10690986 (W.E.
Colston); Ancestry,com (W. E. Colston, Colonial Families of the U.S., 102-3).

3

“A S Duval
1859”
(El Ghor)

“A S Duval Columbia Tenn” registered at the Mammoth Cave Hotel September 1, 1859,
and apparently opted to try the long tour. Alexander Summerfield/Simpson Duval (October 26,
1827-March 23, 1900) was son of Reverend Archibald Bolling Duval (1799-1877), a Virginian
and also a doctor, and his second cousin, Adeline Matilda Duval (1799-1860). A. S. was born in
Tennessee, perhaps Sumner County, and remained in the state. His parents and some of his
siblings moved to Texas, Guadalupe County and elsewhere, while he became a dentist and over
the years plied his profession successively in Columbia, Marshall County, Fayetteville,
Nashville, and Lawrenceburg. In 1853 he married Mary Ratliff Ringo (c1830-1888) and between
1854 and 1871 they had eight children. On June 22, 1861, he became a private in Company H,
17" Tennessee Infantry, CSA, a regiment which took part in the Fall 1862 invasion of Kentucky,
and the battles of Stones’ River, Hoover’s Gap, and Chickamauga, before it went with General
James Longstreet to East Tennessee and Spring 1864 to Virginia. Duval was consistently present
through June 1863. From June 5 to July 1, 1864, he was a patient in hospitals near Richmond.
But, by the following September 13, he had had enough and deserted taking “an oath of
amnesty” at City Point, Virginia, nine days later and was sent to Cleveland, Ohio. He was then
described as five feet eight inches tall with a dark complexion, light hair, and black eyes. In 1889
he married Mary Elizabeth McKnight (c1833-1908), widow of John E. Hatcher, a post-war
editor of the Louisville Journal. His sister Ann Everard Duval (1820-1901) in 1843 married
Methodist minister Franklin Collett Wilkes (1822-1881), who became colonel of the 24 Texas
Cavalry, CSA, which performed poorly at Arkansas post in early 1863. Another sister, Adeline
Matilda Duval (c1842-1903), probably after the war, married Captain Benjamin E. McCulloch
(1845-1916), son of former Texas Brigadier General Henry E. McCulloch (1816-1895).
Findagrave #79649121 (Alexander Summerfield Duval), 7964180 (Mary Ratliff Ringo Duval),
14961238 (Mary Elizabeth McKnight Hatcher), 40213693 (Archibald Bolling Duval),
175844648 (Adeline Matilda Duval Duval); Mammoth Hotel register; Official Records, Ser. 1,
Vol. 17, Pt. 1: 78-83; 1860 Census, Tenn., Maury, 9 Dist., Columbia P.O., 33; (1870), Lincoln,
8" Dist., Fayetteville P.O., 7; (1880), Davidson, Nashville, 44 Enum. Dist., 22; CSR, RG109
(M268, Roll 187), NA; A.S./Simpson Duval File; Tennesseans in the Civil War, 1: 210-12.

oH Heron
1860”
(Cleaveland Avenue)

Charles H. Heron (b. c1835), an Irish-born Cincinnati clerk, logged in at the Mammoth
Cave Hotel twice before the war, July 6, 1859, and July 22, 1860. He apparently took the Long
Route on the second visit, when he autographed Cleaveland Avenue. He was appointed second
lieutenant, Company F, 6" Ohio Infantry, April 20, 1861, in its three months’ organization.
When the regiment was reconstituted for longer service the following June 12, he was promoted

ies

E25!

first lieutenant. On October 30, 1861, he became the regiment’s adjutant and served with the
field and staff personnel until his resignation from the army August 1, 1862. He returned to
Cincinnati and by 1864 was a partner of the Heron, Rogers & Paddock Company, “Importers and
Wholesale Dealers in Hardware” at 123 Walnut Street, residing at 84 W. 7 Street. Mammoth
Hotel register; 1860 Census, Ohio, Hamilton, 4" Ward, 31; Official Ohio Roster, 1: 118, 2: 173,
186; Cincinnati directories (1864, 1868).

“J G Chadwick “J G Chadwick “John Chadwick
Aug 1860” Aug 1860” New Orleans
(Main Cave) (Black Snake Passage) (Silliman Avenue,
Near Valley Way Side Cut)
“J G Chadwick “J G Chadwick
Aug 1860” New Orleans “J G Chadwick

(Wooden Bowl Room) 1860 LA” 1860”
(River Hall) (Ole Bulls Concert Hall)

John G. Chadwick (1831-November 12,1904), a native of New York, was the eldest son
of Watson Chadwick (1805-1854), a boat pilot, and Sarah Ann Allen (1806-1865). On August 3,
1860 he was at the Mammoth Cave Hotel and about that time took the long tour of the cave,
leaving his name in no less than six places: Main Cave, Wooden Bowl Room, Black Snake
Passage, River Hall, Silliman Avenue near Valley Way Side Cut, and Ole Bull’s Concert Hall.
Possibly in his party was Dr. Erasmus D. Fenner, also from the Crescent City, who gave a pro-
Stephen A. Douglas-for-president speech while in the cave. When the war started Chadwick was
a clerk in New Orleans. So far as known he did not serve in either the Union or Confederate
army. However, in late 1862 he was arrested by the Confederates “on the suspicion of being a
spy for the enemy” although no “written charges were . . . preferred against him.” He was
“allowed to go to Terry on the N O & Jackson Railroad until some further information could be
obtained about him.” He was taken by a Louisiana conscript officer to the enrolling camp at
Tangipahoa. His re-arrest was ordered and he was taken to Jackson, Mississippi. Some people
charged that during the previous June he took the Federal oath of allegiance. The New Orleans
papers published his name as doing so, but Chadwick claimed to have been then in Montgomery,
Alabama. A few Southern sympathizers “generally believed” he was a spy and “that he and his
family” were “on terms of friendly intercourse with the enemy,” On the other hand, he was
“vouched for by a number of gentlemen of the highest position” that he left New Orleans as the
agent of banks “to arrange matters of business with their depositors” outside the city. Refugees
from there stated that he had “rendered them and their families important services at considerable
risk to himself.” The evidence the Confederates had was “not sufficient to convict him.”
Chadwick, upon release, wanted to return to New Orleans. Whatever the final disposition of his
case, he made it through the conflict unscarred, and did at some point make it back home, where
he worked variously as a clerk, wharfinger, and broker. For a time he was a salesman for Hyde
and Goodrich, jewelers at Royal and Canal Streets. Becoming a gem expert, about 1888 he
moved to New York City where he was employed at Tiffany’s and ultimately resided at First
Avenue and Eleventh Street. He was killed by a train at Queens on the Long Island Railroad and

m5

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was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, New Orleans. Findagrave #89706104 (J. G. Chadwick);
1850 Census, La., Plaquemines, 578; (1860), Orleans, New Orleans, 4‘ Ward, 193; (1870), 164;
Mammoth Hotel register; Citizens Papers, RG109 (M346, Roll 155), NA, J. G. Chadwick File;
New York Herald, August 10, 1860; New Orleans directories (1861, 1866, 1876, 1877); New
Orleans Times-Democrat, November 18, 1904.

“M L WATSON
Union Point GA”
(Cleaveland Avenue)

Marcus L. Watson (May 7, 1833-April 29, 1910) toured Mammoth Cave about August
18, 1860. A native of Walton County, Georgia, and a mechanic by the age of seventeen, he for
decades was a resident of Union Point in Greene County farther east. As a railroad agent before,
during, and after the war, probably for the Georgia Road, he consequently had an exemption
from serving in the military. He eventually became a merchant and during the 1880s moved to
Augusta where he engaged in the “antique furniture business.” He married twice, to Emily
Lurana Houghton (1836-1876), and Laura Carlton (1845-1927), widow of Thomas R. Drake, and
fathered nine or more offspring. Findagrave #73113527 (M.L. Watson), 73113520 (Emily
Watson), 73113525 (Laura Watson); 1850 Census, Ga., Walton, 88" Div., 116; (1860), Greene,
Union Point P.O. 28; (1870), Penfield P.O., 195; (1880), Union Point, 42" Enum. Dist., 14;
(1910), Richmond, Augusta, 3" Ward, 57" Enum. Dist., 8A; Mammoth Hotel register; Mary J.
Cornell, comp., 1864 Census for Re-organizing the Georgia Militia (Baltimore, 2000), 285;
Greensboro (Ga.) Herald, May 6, 1910.

“C Bellamy
Sep 8" 1860”
(Cleaveland Avenue)

Crowell Bellamy (c1838-April 10, 1863) was the only Georgia-born child of Edward
Crowel Bellamy (c1801-1861), a wealthy physician and Anna B. Croom (b. 1812). In 1850 the
family lived in Jackson County, Florida, and on the eve of the war it resided near Beulah in
Bolivar County, northwestern Mississippi, where the father held real and personal property worth
$70,000 and $100,000, including forty slaves. On September 7, 1860, Croom and his mother
registered at the Mammoth Cave Hotel, and the next day at least he took the long tour. On March
24, 1862, in Prentiss County of his state, Croom became a second lieutenant in Company E, 28"
Mississippi Cavalry. Some twelve and a half months later, then captain, he was killed in an
attack by General Earl Van Dorn’s cavalry on Union forces under General Gordon Granger at
Franklin, Williamson County, Tennessee. Ancestry.com (Edward C. Bellamy, Croom Bellamy,
Anna B. Croom); 1850 Census, Fla., Jackson, 4 Div., N. Dist., 615; (1860), Miss., Bolivar,
Beulah P.O., 11; 1860 Slave Census, Bolivar, 3; Mammoth Hotel register; CSR, RG109, NA,
Croom Bellamy File; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 23, Pt. 1: 224.

“E B Fort

4

QI

Columbus Miss”
(Pensacola Avenue)

Elias Battle Fort (August 17, 1825-July 10, 1899), son of Elias A. Fort (1790-1836) and
Martha Williams Battle (1799-1876), was a wealthy Columbus, Mississippi, lawyer with pre-war
real and personal property worth $44,000 and $90,000, who about September 16 or 17, 1860,
visited Mammoth Cave. On September 5, 1862, he was commissioned captain in the 15°
Alabama Battalion Partisan Rangers, serving as quartermaster in Mobile. Nine months and three
days later, his unit was merged into the 56" Alabama Partisan Ranger regiment, and he
continued in the same status until August 28, 1863, when he was detached as the acting
quartermaster for Brigadier General Samuel W. Ferguson’s cavalry brigade. He was promoted
major the following October 16, and briefly served as acting chief quartermaster for the cavalry
in Mississippi under Major General Stephen Dill Lee, before joining Ferguson’s staff as full-time
quartermaster the next December. He was on duty through the Atlanta and Savannah campaigns
until early 1865, when “on account of disability” he requested relief. Consequently, an
examining board on March 4 made him post quartermaster at Montgomery, Alabama. After the
South gave up Fort returned to Columbus and there signed his parole on May 18. Five years later
he was listed as a planter with a combined property totaling $17,500. So far as known he never
married. Findagrave #13093826 (E. B. Fort), 13093825 (Martha W.B. Fort); Ancestry.com (Elias
A. Fort); Mammoth Hotel register; 1860 Census, Miss., Lowndes, Columbus, 170; (1870), 107;
CSR, RG109 (M311, Rolls 251, 458), NA, E. B. Fort Files; General & Staff Officers, RG109
(M331, Roll 96), NA, Elias B. Fort File.

“M. H. Owsley “M H Owsley
July 1861” , C.? P. Bixby

(The Ramble Passage) July 1861”

(Valley Way Side Cut)

Michael Henry Owsley (December 10, 1834-May 4, 1891) was a brother of Edward K.
Owsley, the primary 1861-65 lessee of Mammoth Cave. He graduated in 1854 from Centre
College in Danville and two years later from the law school of the University of Louisville, soon
starting practice in his hometown of Burkesville. Days after visiting the cave, On July 25, 1861,
he became captain of Company I, 1 Kentucky Cavalry, USA. The succeeding December 10 he
was promoted major and transferred to the 5" Kentucky Cavalry. He resigned September 5,
1862, when he was elected as commonwealth attorney for the Eighth judicial district, and was
reelected in 1868. Then, beginning in 1874, he served two terms as a circuit judge. In 1864 he
moved to Lancaster, Garrard County. About that time he married Ellen Cook Letcher (1846-
1930) of Lexington and ultimately they had four boys and a girl. Findagrave #91718641 (M. H.
Owsley); History of Kentucky: The Bluegrass State (4 vols., Chicago, 1928), 3: 1020; 1860
Census, Ky., Cumberland, 1“ Dist. In Burkesville, 72; (1870), Garrard, Lancaster a et 72:
(1880), 43" Enum. Dist., 499C; CSR, RG94, NA, Michael H. Owsley Files.

35°

“L' J Cameron
Arks

Oct 27" 1861"

(Black Snake Passage)

Probably John Frayser Cameron (August 1840-March 10, 1882), a son of John Cameron
(b. c1800), a Scottish-born upholster and former resident of Chichester, England, and Isabella
Frayser (1807-1878), a native of Buffalo, New York. Moving to Memphis, he on June 29, 1861,
was enlisted by future General Thomas C. Hindman and soon elected as an officer in Company
M, 1%t Arkansas Battalion, CSA, which later was briefly attached to the 2" Arkansas Infantry.
On October 9, as a lieutenant, he obtained in Nashville a sabre, belt, and plate while enroute to
Kentucky. The next December, in the Bowling Green area, two more companies were added to
his battalion, and the whole was called the 18" (Marmaduke’s) Arkansas Infantry regiment, with
Cameron as captain commanding Company B. At the end of January 1862 the regiment’s
designation changed again, to the 3"? Confederate (Regular) Infantry. It fought at Shiloh and at
Farmington near Corinth, Mississippi, where on May 3, 1862 Cameron was captured. Paroled the
next day, he was required to report to the inspector general of the local Confederate army until he
was exchanged. Advancing to major and lieutenant colonel July 25 and December 1, 1862, he
was in action at the battle of Murfreesboro at the end of the year. August 1863 through April
1864 he was detached to command the post of Rome, Georgia. By the following August, as “a
supernumerary officer awaiting orders,” he was tasked to “organize the militia” in Georgia’s
coastal counties. When the war was over he returned to Memphis, and within a few years became
a liquor broker. On August 2, 1866, in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, he married Mary Ann Myers
(c1846-1883) and they became the parents of at least six children. Findagrave #132453169 (J. F.
Cameron), 132453417 (Mary A. Cameron); Ancestry.com (J. F. Cameron); Portsmouth
(England) Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, April 11, 1831; CSR, RG109 (M317, Roll 159,
M258, Roll 62), NA, John F. Cameron Files; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 10, Pt. 1: 383, 573,
575; Vol. 20, Pt. 1: 905; Vol. 35: 609; Stewart Sifakis, Compendium of the Confederate Armies:
Florida and Arkansas (New York and Oxford, 1992), 67, 103; 1855 New York State Census,
Erie, Buffalo, 2"? Ward, HH108; 1880 Census, Tenn., Shelby, Memphis, 145“ Enum. Dist., 25;
Memphis directories (1871-81); Memphis Daily Appeal, March 11, 1882.

“Mollie Ketchum
N Ketchum

1861”

(Gothic Avenue)

The Ketchum inscriptions, on the ceiling of the left side of Gothic Avenue, presumably
representing a husband and wife, appear to have been made by a single person. That raises the
question, were both individuals actually there, since Nicholas Ketchum (October 27, 1829-
January 19, 1918) was probably in the Confederate army at the time? He was a son of Levi
Ketchum (1795-1867) and Barsinia Black (1806-1842), and was probably born near Somerville

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in Fayette County, Tennessee, where in 1860 his father had a plantation with thirty-two slaves.
Nicholas attended the medical school at the University of Louisville and became a doctor. On
March 14, 1855, in Prairie County, Arkansas, east of Little Rock, he married Mary Hanna Martin
(1833-1909), a daughter of Reverend James Martin (1801-1863) and Nancy Robinson Gillespie
(b. 1809), and they had two boys and three girls. Their oldest child was born in Tennessee but
afterwards they resided in Arkansas. On April 29, 1861, Nicholas was elected second lieutenant
of the “Dallas Rifles,” which the following June 1 became Company C, 6" Arkansas Infantry,
CSA. Later, he became the regimental surgeon. The 6" was sent to Kentucky October 1861
where some of the time it was at Cave City as part of Brigadier General Thomas C. Hindman’s
brigade, which included the 8" (Terry’s) Texas Cavalry and Charles Swett’s Mississippi Battery.
The 6" later fought at Helena, Chickamauga, Kennesaw Mountain, Atlanta, and Franklin. Post-
war Ketchum and his family resided near Little Rock where he continued medical practice and
Mary taught school. By 1880 he permanently moved to San Saba County, Texas, where he lived
alone except in 1910 when he had a daughter with him. He was listed as a widower in 1900, but
he and Mary were apparently actually separated, with her dying in El Paso nine years later.
Mary’s brother, William H. Martin, was major and later lieutenant colonel of the 1“ (Colquitt’s)
Arkansas Infantry, CSA, which served in Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia. Nicholas’s brother,
Leonidas Ketchum (c1835-September 4, 1862), second lieutenant, Company L, 38" Tennessee
Infantry, CSA, died at Chattanooga of wounds received at Shiloh. Ancestry.com (Nicholas
Ketchum, Levi Ketchum, American Civil War Regiments); Findagrave #105765644 (Dr.
Nicholas Ketchum), 126565973 (Mary Ketchum), 111934300 (Henry Ketchum); CSR, RG109
(M376, Roll 17), NA, Nicholas Ketchum File; 1860 Slave Census, Tenn., Fayette, 18" Dist., 87;
(1870), Ark., Pulaski, Ashley Twp., Little Rock P.O., 20; (1880), Tex., San Saba, 112" Enum.
Dist., 6; (1900), 129" Enum Dist., 4A; (1910), 212" Enum. Dist., 19A; Unfiled Papers and Slips,
RG109 (M347), National Archives, Nicholas Ketchum File; Ottawa (Ontario) Journal, August
12, 1895; Tennesseans in the Civil War, 2: 231; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 10, Pt. 1: 526; The
Encyclopedia of the New West (Marshall, Tex., 1891), 208; List of Field Officers, Regiments &
Battalions in the Confederate States Army 1861-1865 (Mattituck, New York, 1983), 83.

“J A Gage
Texas Ranger”
(Gothic Avenue)

John Austin Gage (September 1, 1840-February, 1865) was a son of Moses Gage (1796-
1867) and Elizabeth Goodwin (1802-1859), early settlers in Bastrop County, Texas. On
September 7, 1861, at Houston he became a private in Company D, 8" (Terry’s) Texas Cavalry,
CSA. Near Aiken, South Carolina, February 11, 1865, as part of General Joseph Wheeler’s
command contesting Sherman’s forces, he was mortally wounded in a running fight, dying in an
Augusta, Georgia, hospital some twenty miles west. Findagrave #134142919 (J. A. Gage),
5657177 (Moses Gage); 1860 Census, Tex., Bastrop, 8" Precinct, 67; Thomas W. Cutrer, ed.,
The Civil War Letters of Robert Franklin Bunting, Chaplain, Terrys Texas Rangers, C.S.A.
(Knoxville, 2006), 349; CSR, RG109 (M323, Roll 50), NA, John A. Gage File.

“R A Allen
Houston
Dec. 4/61 TEXAS”
(Gothic Avenue)

Rowland A. Allen (1843-1885), a Texas native and clerk, was the son of Henry Rowland
Allen (1817-1881), a Houston merchant, and Margaret A. Carter (1821-1893). He served as a
private in Company B, 8" (Terry’s) Texas Cavalry, CSA, and received minor wounds at Shiloh,
April 1862, and Rome, Georgia, October 1864. The next month he was apparently at Ross
Hospital in Mobile, Alabama. At some point he was promoted second lieutenant. Returning to
Texas, by 1870 he was in the dry goods and grocery business at Hempstead. Near the end of his
life he was a fuel agent for the Houston and Texas City Railroad and resided in Houston with his
mother at 104 Travis Street. Findagrave #74276256; Ancestry.com (Texas Muster Roll Index
Cards, 1838-1900); 1860 Census, Texas, Harris, Houston, 4" Ward, 155; (1870), Austin 24
Beat, Hempstead P.O., 20; Cutrer, Letters of R. F. Bunting, 334; CSR, RG109 (M323, Roll 49),
NA, Rowland A. Allen File; Houston Directory (1884), 74.

“C J Gautier
Texas Ranger
Dec 6 1861”

(Gothic Avenue)

Charles J. Gautier (b. c1840), a Floridian by birth, was a son of Peter William Gautier
(1803-1850) and Lucy A. Holmes (1806-1853). For years his family lived in Mariana where
during the mid-1830s his father was postmaster but by 1845 they were denizens of Brazoria
County, Texas. In 1860 C. J. resided with his sister, Harriett Elizabeth Gautier Brooks (1825-
1908) and her husband, John W. Brooks (b. c1805), a Virginia-born well-off merchant in the
same county, and their two young daughters, plus another of his sisters, Lucy A. Five feet five
inches tall, he was clerk in March 1861 when he became a member of the Brazoria Volunteers in
the Rio Grande Regiment, Texas State Troops. The next September he enlisted as a private in
Company B, 8" (Terry’s) Texas Cavalry, CSA. Near the end of February 1864 he was detached
and sent back “to Texas with [Major General] John A. Wharton.” He survived the war and
signed his parole at Columbia, Texas, August 10, 1865, but does not appear on any subsequent
census. A third sister, Ariadne “Aria” Octavia Gautier, at Clinton, Mississippi, on September 6,
1855, married Clinton L. Terry (1830-1862), a brother of Benjamin F. Terry (1821-1861), first
colonel of the 8" Texas Cavalry, who as major of the same regiment was mortally wounded at
Shiloh. 1850 Census, Tex., Brazoria, 305; (1860), Columbia P.O., 36-37; Ancestry.com (Texas
Muster Roll Index Cards, 1838-1900, Peter W. Gartier, Clinton L. Terry); Findagrave #9442989
(Harriett E. G. Brooks), 6449975 (C. L. Terry); Cutrer, Letters of R. F. Bunting, 53-54; CSR,
RG109 (M323, Roll 50), NA, C. J. Gautier File.

“J P Burkhart
Texas Ranger

ae

Lh 237

Dec 6/61 Matagorda”
(Gothic Avenue)

John Preston Burkhart (December 13, 1840-January 12, 1909) was reputedly born at
Goliad, Texas. His parents were George William Burkhart (1798-1850) and Catherine Dorothy
Robideaux (1802-1865) and by mid-century they had moved to Matagorda County, where just
before secession young John P. was a clerk. In Houston on September 7, 1861, he became a
private in Company B, 8" (Terry’s) Texas Cavalry, CSA, and was present at least through April
1863. Sometime after the fighting ended he went west and for over thirty years resided in
Portland, Oregon, where in 1880 he was a census enumerator for part of that city. About 1890 he
married Cornelia C. (b. 1846), widow of Americus V.T. Cadwell. In 1894 their address was 425
7 Street and in 1900 he was a compositor. 1850 Census, Tex., Matagorda, 795; (1860), City of
Matagorda, 24; (1880), Ore., Multnomah, Portland, 140" Enum. Dist., 3; (1900), 62°? Enum.
Dist., 6A; Ancestry.com (J. P. Burkhart, Cornelia C. Cadwell); CSR, RG109 (M323, Roll 49), J.
P. Burkhart File; Confederate Veteran, 17 (1909), 132.

“P C Walker
1862
1862”

(Cyclops Gateway)

Parsons Carter Walker (1843/44-March 20, 1896), Louisiana-born son of John Caffery
Walker (1796-1861) and his second wife Eliza Penny Carter (1814-1853), at mid-century lived
in East Feliciana Parish. After his mother died the family moved to Harris County, Texas, and
just before the war young Parsons lived with a kinsman in Nacogdoches. At Houston September
7, 1861, he became a private in Company K, 8" (Terry’s) Texas Cavalry, CSA. June 30, 1863,
through February 29, 1864, he performed extra duty as “asst Flag Bearer.” Then, during the final
year of the conflict he reputedly belonged to Captain Alexander M. Shannon’s scouts from the
same regiment, who opposed Sherman’s march through Georgia. Returning to Texas, he
eventually, on April 18, 1874, married Susan E. Woolford (c1850-1935). In 1880 he was an
assessor and collector of Harris County. He was accused of “embezzling $4800 of the county
funds” and “removed from office by the [Houston] city council.” He was tried and acquitted in
October 1883. Eight years later he was keeper of the State Quarantine Station on Galveston
Island, but returned to Houston where he died. 1850 Census, La., E. Feliciana, HH40; (1860),
Tex., Nacogdoches, Nacogdoches, 1; (1880), Harris, Houston, 75" Enum. Dist., 72; Cutrer,
Letters of R. F. Bunting, 375; Findagrave #82231676 (P. C. Walker); Ancestry.com (Parsons C.
Walker, John C. Walker); CSR, RG109 (M323, Roll 53), NA, P. C. Walker File; Galveston
Directory (1891), 441; Shreveport (La.) Times, October 26, 1883.

“ES Colmer
TEXAS
8 sal
(Cyclops Gateway)
3

§
‘

E268

Edward S. Colmer/Coleman (b. c1832) was also mustered in as a member of Company
K, 8" (Terry’s) Texas Cavalry September 7, 1861. He was recruited by Lieutenant J. W. Sparks,
the same man who enlisted P. C. Walker. On July 17, 1862, he transferred to “Captain Benjamin
F. White, Jr.’s regular Confederate (also listed as Tennessee) battery of horse artillery, and June
16, 1863, was admitted to a Shelbyville, Tennessee, hospital. At the end of that year he was
“Absent on detached duty with Lt [Samuel S.] Ashe” of the same battery. Nothing further is
known about him. CSR, RG109, NA, Edward S. Coleman Files.

“John M Bell
Morgan Sqa’d
Feb 3/62”
(Near Wooden Bowl Room)

John Miller Bell (August 3, 1841-February 7, 1864) was a native of Barren County,
Kentucky. He was the second son of Robert Slaughter Bell (c1803-1843), an occasional 1820s-
30s Mammoth Cave guide, and Marie Louise Gorin (1820-1865), daughter of the 1838-39 owner
of Mammoth, Franklin Gorin. His grandfather, William Bell (1775-1853) operated Bell’s Tavern
at what is now Park City, and he, his brother, and mother afterwards held a third interest each in
the property. His mother remarried in 1852 George Morton Procter (1815-1894), who managed
Bell’s Tavern and after its July 1859 discovery, was generally proclaimed in the media as the
proprietor of Diamond Cave, where John M. was among the first party of explorers. John and his
brother William Franklin Bell (1840-1887) were frequent guests at the Mammoth Cave Hotel
before the war, with John staying nine times between July 21, 1858, and August 10, 1860, and
William stopping seven occasions from June 24, 1859, and November 10, 1860. Twice they were
present together, including June 24, 1860, when they, Foxworthy Hewitt (1842-1879) of
Elizabethtown, John G. Foster of Connecticut, and Henry Balfour of Mississippi, apparently had
their own trip into the cave. On October 11, 1861, soon after the Southern army arrived in the
area, both brothers joined Company C of Morgan’s Squadron, the nucleus of the 2"* Kentucky
Cavalry, CSA. When the Confederates evacuated middle Kentucky February 1862 the Bell
brothers and their stepfather G. M. Procter went South. John M. was discharged in Knoxville,
Tennessee, the following June 25, and was then described as five feet ten inches tall, with blue
eyes, light hair and complexion. He apparently returned to Kentucky, because on July 10 he
signed the Mammoth Cave Hotel register with the notation, “Prisoner to Capt. Eaton.” He did not
survive the conflict, reputedly killed by guerrillas. William F. Bell transferred to the 9”
Kentucky Cavalry, CSA, and served as a lieutenant and quartermaster: George M. Procter
became a Confederate major and assistant commissary, spending August-September 1864 at the
infamous Andersonville, Georgia, prison. Findagrave #47229236 (J. M. Bell), 12076374 (W. F.
Bell), 43005554 (R. S. Bell), 43005619 (Maria L.G. Proctor), 48080865 (Fox Hewitt);
Ancestry.com (William Bell); Mammoth Hotel register; Inventory of property in “tavern house”
at Three Forks, July 2, 1855, Vertical Files, Mammoth Cave Visitor Center; Guide Book for the
Diamond Cave, Barren County, Ky. (Glasgow, Ky., 1850), 4; Louisville Daily Journal, Oct. 5,
Dec. 1, 1859, Apr. 21, 1862; Louisville Daily Democrat, May 15, 1860; 1860 Census, Ky.,

40

Ki 239

Barren, 3™ Dist., 111; CSR, RG109 (M319, Roll 10), NA, John M, and William E (sic), Bell
Files; Kentucky Adjutant General Report, Confederate, 1: 554-55; 2: 2; Louisville Courier-
Journal, Aug. 18, 1894; General & Staff Officers, (M331, Roll 204), NA, George M. Procter
File; Official Records, Ser. 2, Vol. 7: 756; Outline for Bell’s Tavern talk by Joy Lyons, Sept. 27,
2007, in Bell’s Tavern folder, Barren County, Kentucky, Museum, Glasgow.

oh. CCK, ex
Morgans Ky
Sqadron
1862”

71. Quick Ry 1862"

(Gothic Avenue)

Thomas Quick (January 1, 1841-January 13, 1873), a native of Tralee, County Kerry,
Ireland, arrived in America during the mid 1850s and ended up in Lexington, Kentucky, where
he operated a candy store. On October 17, 1861, he enlisted as a private in Company A of John
Hunt Morgan’s original three company “squadron,” the beginning of what became the 2"
Kentucky Cavalry, CSA. He took part in the late 1861 Bacon Creek bridge destruction, the battle
of Shiloh, the Kentucky raids of July and December 1862, July 1863, and June 1864, and a
number of other affairs. He became sergeant June 1 and first lieutenant mid-August 1862. Then
the following November he was made captain of “Quirk’s Scouts,” reporting directly to Morgan.
He had many adventures, including swimming the Rolling Fork River with his wounded colonel,
Basil W. Duke, on his horse. He was wounded twice, at Bear Wallow and Marrowbone Creek,
Kentucky, Christmas 1862 and July 2, 1863. At the latter place his “rein arm” was broken, and
he was left at Burkesville, where he was captured and paroled, returning to duty five months later
after he was exchanged. He surrendered at Chattanooga May 5, 1865, and returned to Lexington,
dying there from tuberculosis less than eight years later. His pall bearers included Basil W.
Duke. Besides Mammoth, Quick also visited Diamond Cave in early 1862. Findagrave
#38439422 (T. Quick); CSR, RG109 (M319, Roll 14), NA, Thomas Quick File; Clement A.
Evans, ed., Confederate Military History, Extended Edition (12 vols., Atlanta, 1899), 11: 506-7;
India W.P. Logan, Kelion Franklin Peddicord of Quick’s Scouts Morgan’s Kentucky Cavalry
C.S_A. (New York and Washington, 1908), 48-49, 54, 64-66, 68, 73, 85, 115; Louisville Courier-
Journal, January 15, 1873.

“B W Thomas
Morgans Squadron
Feb 1862”
(Wooden Bowl Room)

Benjamin Webber Thomas (December 23, 1825-May 9, 1912), the oldest child of
Alexander Webber Thomas (1797-1883) and Elizabeth Boyd (1799-1869), lived in Spencer
County, Kentucky, before the war, earning his living by teaching school and farming. In late
1861 he joined Company B, Morgan’s Squadron (2° Kentucky Cavalry), and about November
11, 1862, at Chattanooga transferred to Company B, 1 Kentucky (Helm’s) Cavalry, CSA, and

Bit
see

E240

eventually was promoted first lieutenant. He was captured September 13, 1863, at Dirt Town,
Georgia. Sometime after hostilities ceased he moved to Jefferson County, remaining there at
least until the 1890s, continuing to farm. He outlived two wives, Mary Cassandra Miller (1835-
1868), with whom he had a boy and two girls, and twice previously married Nancy Anne
“Nannie” Hikes-Armstrong-Oldham, who gave him two more sons. He ultimately became a
resident of the Confederate Soldiers Home in Pecdee Valley, Oldham County, where he died.
Ancestry.com (Benjamin Webber Thomas); Findagrave #18138824 (Benjamin Thomas); 1850
Census, Ky., Spencer, 2" Dist., 21; (1860), Jefferson, Two Mile House Precinct, 27; (1880), 11"
Dist., 91 Enum. Dist., 28; (1910), Oldham, 75“ Enum. Dist., 5A; William E. Mickle, Well
Known Confederate Veterans and Their War Records (New Orleans, 1915), 194; Report of the
Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky, Confederate Volunteers (2 Vols., Hartford, Ky,., 1979
[1915-19]), 1: 492-93.

“Rebel Soldier “Feb A J Wilson
A. J. Wilson Feb
Morgan” 1862”
(Gothic Avenue)

Andrew Jackson Wilson (July 17, 1834-September 28, 1882), a son of Isaac Wilson
(1800-1850) and Lydia “Liddie” Ashford (1800-1842), was a native and resident of Woodford
County, Kentucky. A farmer before the war, on October 27, 1861, he became one of John Hunt
Morgan’s “original squadron” of what became the 2"? Kentucky Cavalry, CSA. He was
“Seriously wounded and left at Augusta Ky Sept 27 1862.” He was held by the Federals and
during April-May 1863 was forwarded via Louisville to Fort McHenry, Maryland, where he was
paroled. The following June 22 at Sparta, Tennessee, he received $401.20 for pay, clothing, and
bounty. After his Confederate service he was a sawmill operator and carpenter. On September 7,
1869, he married Narcissa “Nannie” Norton Thomas (1852-1918) of Estill County and during the
mid-1870s they had two boys. Ancestry.com (Andrew J. Wilson); Sam McDowell, ed., Kentucky
Genealogy and Biography (9 vols., Utica, Ky., 1970-81), 7: 125; 1850 Census, Ky., Woodford,
2™ Dist., 936; (1870), Mortonsville Precinct, 18; (1880), 15; CSR, RG109 (M319, Roll 15), NA,
A. J. Wilson File.

“Feb 7' 1862
Adam G Autrey
Texas Ranger”
(Gothic Avenue)

Adam George Autrey (1839-1862), a son of Annanias Anonymous Bullock Autrey (1808-
1893) and Elizabeth McCreary (1808-1866) was born in Conecuh County in south Alabama.
Between 1847 and 1849 his family moved to Richmond, Texas. At Houston on September 7,
1861, he enlisted as a private in Company B, 8" (Terry’s) Texas Cavalry, and on the last day of
the year, from Kentucky, he was briefly admitted to a Nashville hospital. On April 8, 1862, a

MO

——

KZA |

mixed command, consisting of men from his regiment, Captain Isaac F. Harrison’s company of
Wirt Adams’s Mississippi Cavalry, and Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Tennesseans, some 325-350,
were among those covering the retreat of the Confederate army after the battle of Shiloh. Forrest,
the senior officer present, at an action known as Fallen Timbers, ordered a charge into a larger
body of Federals and checked them. But in the attack young Autrey lost his life. Ancestry.com
(Adam G. Autrey); 1850 Census, Tex., Fort Bend, Richmond, 226; (1860), Richmond P.O., 10;
Cutrer, Letters of R. F. Bunting, 336; CSR, RG109 (M323, Roll 49), NA, Adam G. Autrey File;
Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 10, Pt. 1: 923-24.

THE UNION ARMY’S EARLY VISITS TO MAMMOTH CAVE
FEBRUARY AND MARCH 1862

After Southern defeats at Forts Henry and Donelson, Tennessee, and the subsequent
Confederate withdrawal from south-central Kentucky, General Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the
Ohio finally advanced towards Bowling Green and Nashville in February 1862. Brigadier
General Ormsby M. Mitchel’s Third Division moved rapidly from Munfordville on the 13" and
reached the Barren River by late the next day. General Alexander McD. McCook’s Second
Division marched forward on the 16" but stopped several days at Camps Hambright and Fry,
two miles west of and at Bell’s Tavern (in present Park City). Mitchel’s men did not initially
have time to inspect the marvels of the nearby famous Mammoth Cave, as well as several lesser
ones, but many of McCook’s men did.

It is not known what day Federal soldiers first arrived at Mammoth seeking an
underground tour. The hotel and cave lessee, Edward K. Owsley, left the property in mid-
December 1861 following an incident in which two Confederate soldiers had forced him (a
Unionist) to give them a tour of the cave. Owsley returned to Mammoth on February 19, 1862.
Two days later, several military groups, numbering perhaps seventy or more, made their way
through portions of the cave. This onslaught, according to Andrew J. Gleason (1836-1910),
Company H, 15" Ohio Infantry, included “General McCook and some of his staff.” Private
Francis A. Kiene (1839-1924) of Company I, 49" Ohio Infantry, noted that it “was a fare nice
morning” and that “Our Captain [George E. Lovejoy (1831-1906)] with nearly all the officers
went to see the Mammoth Cave.”!

The same day, February 21, Lyman S. Widney (1842-1927), Company H, 34" Illinois
Infantry, and five others toured Diamond Cave and then continued on foot to Mammoth Cave:

A rapid walk of seven miles brought us to the mouth of the Cave, just in
time to join a party of fifty officers about to enter under the charge of a guide... .
We stopped in the dim light, just inside, to light candles provided by the guide,
one for each man to carry in his hand... . [T]he cave was very wide and high [and
there] were several cabins, occupied, at various times, by consumptives. . . .

As we moved on our guide next called attention to myriads of bats, .. .
and warned us not disturb them. . , , We followed the main passage nearly two
miles ... , widening in places to the capacity of a theater, again contracting until
scarcely large enough for us to crawl through on hands and knees. It led us up,

now down, now right, now left. Openings appeared in the side at every few steps,
the entrances to numerous side passages, many too dangerous to be explored. At
one of these openings, a small one, the guide halted and allowed two of us at a
time to squeeze in and stand on a narrow ledge . . . overhanging the Bottomless
Fit...

Other side passages conducted us to Rodman’s Dome, Star Chamber,
Gothic Chapel, Giant’s Coffin and Napoleon’s Breastworks. . . . Two miles from
the mouth, a stream flows across the Cave, the River Styx,. In low water it can be
crossed in a boat, but when it is high, as we found it, there is not space. .. .

Leaving the River Styx, we returned to the mouth. . . , having traversed a
space of three miles underground. . . .”

Isaac McCann (1836-1862), a private in Company K, 34" Illinois, may have been with
Widney. On March 9 he wrote his sister that he had been in Mammoth Cave “Near three miles to
[the] Famous ‘river styx.”” McCann would die in April of wounds received at the battle of
Shiloh.

Also on February 21 “a party of about twenty,” mostly soldiers from Captain Andrew J.
Konkle’s Cleveland Battery (D, 1% Ohio Light Artillery), visited Mammoth Cave, including
Private Edward P.T. Pritchard. The proprietor, E. K. Owsley, “accompanies [them] through the
Cave” led by the guide Mat Bransford.*

Either that day or one before or after Colonel William Sirwell (1820-1885), Lieutenant
Colonel Archibald Blakeley (1827-1915), Chaplain Richard C Christy (1829-1878), Captain

Charles B. Gillespie (1820-1907) and a few others, all from the 78 Pennsylvania Infantry, “rode
nine miles to the mouth of the Mammoth Cave, secured a guide and explored it to the so-called
river, and it being too high to cross, returned.”

On February 22 Private Wallace McGrath (1844-1909) of Company K, 15" Ohio Infantry
visited Mammoth Cave from Camp Fry. He thought it was “indeed a grand place, although I did
not get time to see it all though I was on in a couple of miles.” How many companions he had is

not known.°®

At least a few of the men in Mitchel’s Third Division made the trek to Mammoth Cave
from Bowling Green in late February, including Private Columbus G. Wakefield of Company G,
45 Ohio Cavalry. His entourage got as far as “Chapel Hall” (probably Gothic Chapel) which he
guessed was “two or three hundred feet in length, thirty or forty broad, and as many high.”

On September 21, 1862, when he was “two miles east of Cave City,” Captain Carroll
Clement Webb (1831-1863) of Company E, 13 Michigan Infantry, wrote in his diary that not
too many miles away was “the wonder of the world. Mammoth Cave,” remembering that he
“was in [it] last spring,” But, because his regiment was then in the Sixth Division, he more likely
entered the cave during that division’s movement from Munfordville to Bowling Green,
February 24-27."

Only one probable February 1862 Union soldier visitor to Mammoth Cave is known to
have left his autograph inside its corridors. Some two hundred feet into Gothic Avenue, on the
ceiling near the left wall, is a prominent smoked graffito, “JOHN . PEARSON . 1862 JOHN

EZAS

[backward N] 39 . Reg” likely done during the Second Division halt at Camp Fry, which
included the 39" Indiana:

John Pearson (July 21, 1836-April 15, 1911), born near Dayton, Ohio, was a son of
Thomas Pearson (1808-1864) and Nancy Nock (1813-1895), who moved to Miami
County, Indiana. Remaining with his parents as a farmer until the war, on August 29,
1861, Pearson joined Company D, 39" Indiana Infantry as a private and in time was
promoted corporal and sergeant. His regiment became the 8" Indiana Cavalry on
October 15, 1863, and he was advanced to captain March 1, 1865, but was never
mustered as such before receiving his discharge the succeeding July 10. Assigned to
General Judson Kilpatrick’s division, he was captured in one of the summer 1864
railroad raids south of Atlanta and for a time was held as a prisoner at Libby Prison
and Castle Thunder. Returning to Indiana in November 1865 he married Lydia M.
Wilkinson (1843-f71911), and soon moved to Mankato, Blue Earth County in
southern Minnesota, where he was a building contractor on a “large scale” and city
councilman. About 1877 he moved his family to Grange Township, Pipestone
County, in the southwestern corner near South Dakota, where he was a brickmason,
and in 1885 to the town of Pipestone. From 1880 to 1891 he was successively county
auditor and commissioner. He and Lydia had a daughter and son. 1850 Census, Ind.,
Miami, Deer Creek, 210A; (1860), 29; (1870), Minn., Blue Earth, Mankato, 4“
Ward, 564; (1880), Pipestone, Grange Twp., 220" Enum. Dist., 251B; (1900),
Pipestone City, 230" Enum. Dist., 4A; (1910), 167 Enum. Dist., 5B; Findagrave
#47562554 (John Pearson); Ancestry.com (John Pearson); The Report of the
Adjutant General of the State of Indiana (8 vols., Indianapolis, 1865-69), 2: 385; 5:
231; Pipestone County Star, Apr. 18, 1911.

By the end of February, 1862, the preponderance of the Army of the Ohio had passed
Mammoth Cave on its way to Tennessee. But back elements of the army continued to make their
way through, and an unknown and presumed lesser number of soldiers visited portions of the
cave during March.

The 7 Pennsylvania Cavalry arrived in Munfordville on March 3, and stopped “a few
days to take on new supplies” before arriving at Bowling Green on the 13“. “Mammoth Cave lay
within a mile of [their] line of march. A few left the ranks without permission and satisfied their
curiosity’s while others wishing to see it . . . , possessed yet too vivid a recollection of former
guard-house experience to make the venture.”

On March 12 the 3 Ohio Cavalry “camped within half a mile” of Mammoth Cave and
many members of the regiment “went to see it” and “spent most of the night” inside. Private
George Kryder (1833-1923) of Company I recorded that the management wanted to charge the
soldiers a dollar each for providing candles and a guide, but

We thought it too much and furnished our own candles and went through on our
own troop.

gael

ke 244

It was the nicest thing I ever saw. We went into large chambers like great
halls all arched over with solid rock. We went in three miles which is not more
than one third of the way.'°

William F. Bradley (1842-1906), a Company C private, wrote his father about the visit:

After we had pitched our tents and eaten our supper, we marched down
into the Cave. ... After going in about 40 rods there is two roads. Here it is about
30 feet high. We went in a little over a mile. It seems to be solid rock. The bats
are thick as musketoes in the summer time. Formerly there was a saloon, or hall
alley and a ballroom in there, all furnished in the best style; there are pieces of
carpeting still remaining."!

An anonymous penned notation in a copy of the 1910 history of the regiment named
another 3' Ohio Cavalry tourist: “Edwin W. Niven visited the mammoth cave, sent a card home
he picked up 3 1/2 miles in the Cave.” Niven (c1844-1864), another enlisted man in Company I,
was later captured in Alabama and died at Andersonville Prison. '*

Five members of the 3™ Ohio Cavalry autographed Mammoth’s walls: “J M Burg” and
“R J Parks,” at the start and far into Gothic Avenue; and “J. Lindsey,” “C. S Kelsey,” and “H, H,
Coates,” all at the narrow entrance to Gratz Avenue.!?

The next day, March 13, 1862, 18t Lieutenant Frank P. Gross of the 9" Indiana Infantry
inscribed his name in Gothic Avenue, along with James C. McNair, a “Train master,” Ed Foley,
and James M. Cay, all unidentified. '*

Between then and the end of the month five officers and one enlisted man registered at
the Mammoth Cave Hotel, representing the 38" Indiana Infantry, 9° Pennsylvania Cavalry, and
11 Michigan Infantry. One of them, Orin J. Ford, left his name in Main Cave. In addition, three
more teamsters and a clerk from the army pay department also stayed there."

Undoubtedly, an additional number of soldiers bypassed the hotel and toured portions of
the cave during March. Major John C. Balfe of the 35" Indiana Infantry was in this category,
taking a “large number” of that regiment’s officers on an outing to the cave “without leave of
absence,.”!®

Following are expanded sketches of March 1862 soldiers who scratched their names in
Mammoth Cave:

“J M Burg Senica Ohio March 11 1862 3 OVC”
(Gothic Avenue)

Burg’s difficult to read inscription is about a hundred feet inside Gothic
Avenue on the right wall. He almost certainly was James M. Burg (c1838/41-May
30, 1877), a saddler from Company G, 3™ Ohio Cavalry, who served from
September 2, 1861, until October 3, 1864. He was the second child of Henry H.
(b. c1814), also a saddler, and Sarah A. Burg (b. c1816) of Seneca County, Ohio.
Before he enlisted, on August 29, 1859, he married Sarah L.K. Schock (c1841-

Lb

11916) and between 1862 and 1868 they had three offspring, all born in Seneca
County. Sometime later he moved his family to Laporte, Indiana, where he was
“run over by the cars” of a train. Crofts, Third Ohio Cavalry, 270; 1850 Census,
Ohio, Seneca, Eden Twp., 753; Ancestry.com (James M. Burg); Findagrave
#9276266 (James M. Burg).

“March 12" 1862 R.J. Parks 3 O.V.C.”
(Gothic Avenue)

Rose J. Parks (December 9, 1838-April 18, 1922), born in England, came
with his parents to America in 1849. He became a citizen in 1860 and served as a
private in Company M, 3™ Ohio Cavalry from September 8, 1861, until being
discharged due to disability March 23, 1863. Improving, he later served May 2-
August 31,1864 in Company G, 144" Ohio Infantry, a hundred days regiment.
About 1867 he married Cornelia Jane Main (182-1921), a daughter of Andrew
and Rachel Main, and they consistently lived in Delaware County, Ohio, where he
farmed and gardened. Findagrave #21096430 (R. J. Parks); Crofts, Third Ohio
Cavalry, 294; 1870 Census, Ohio, Delaware, Troy Twp., 10; (1880), 106" Enum.
Dist., 12; (1900), 40" Enum. Dist., 206A; (1910), 48 Enum. Dist., 6A; (1920),
77" Enum. Dist., 7A; Civil War Pension Index, 1861-1934 (Rose J. Parks);
Official Ohio Roster, 9: 56.

“CS Kelsey” “C S Kelsey 34 O.V.C.”
(Main Cave) (Gratz Avenue)

Charles S. Kelsey (c1838-October 28, 1898), a son of Ferdinand Kelsey
(1808-1852) and Ann Young (1812-1858), was a native of New York, residing as
a young man in Cattaraugus County. At some point he moved to Ohio, where he
joined that state’s 3' Cavalry, serving from September 10, 1861, until November
24, 1864, as corporal and first sergeant in Company D, and then until his
discharge August 4, 1865, as first lieutenant in Company L. By 1870 he lived in
Covington, Kentucky, married to a Prussian-born woman named Henrietta
(c1843-/11880), with a two year old daughter. His wife died and sometime in the
1880s he married Bridget E. Scanlin (1851-1919), widow of Michael Finan, and
in 1890 they also had a daughter. Ancestry.com (Henrietta Kelsey, Pardon T.
Kelsey, Bridget E. Scanlin); 1850 Census, New York, Cattaraugus, Hinsdale, 276;
(1870), Ky., Kenton, Covington, 9 Ward, 17; (1880), 5 Ward, 37; Civil War
Pensions Index, 1861-1934 (C. S. Kelsey); Kentucky Wills and Probate Records,
1774-1989.

“H. H. Coates Ohio”
(Gratz Avenue)

H/

Howard Hill Coates (1838-1880), a native of Stark County, Ohio, was the
eleventh of twelve children of Amos Coates (1794-1863) and Jane Nies Brinton
Norris (1800-1852). On March 17, 1859, in Portage County, he married Cordelia
M. Hall (771880). Then from November 23, 1861, until April 15, 1863, when he
was released due to disability, he was a private in Company K, 3" Ohio Cavalry.
Postwar he lived in Wyandot County, Ohio. Ancestry.com (Howard Hill Coates);
Findagrave #111466961 (Hayes C. Coates); 1850 Census, Ohio, Stark, 139%
Dist., Marlboro Twp., 820, 414; Crofts, Third Ohio Cavalry, 284; Civil War
Pensions Index, 1861-1934 (Howard H. Coates).

“J. Lindsey 37OVC 1862”
(Gratz Avenue)

John Lindsey (December 16, 1839-May 29, 1864) was the oldest of seven
children of James Heaton Lindsey (1814-1881) and Elon Stiverson (1814-1882),
residents of Wyandot County, Ohio. John joined Company M, Third Ohio
Cavalry, September 8, 1861, and was a soldier correspondent under the name
“Vidette” to his home paper, the Wyandot Pioneer. He was killed in a fight at
Moulton, Alabama, the circumstances of which were reported by his captain. The
regiment attacked by forces under General Philip D. Roddy, and “John with 4 or 5
others being some distance in the advance, they discovered some 8 or 10 rebels in
a thicket, and John with the rear charged them, and took 7 of them prisoners. John
saw another trying to escape, and ordered him to surrender, and in willingness to
do so, he threw up his arms, and John advanced to take his arms and take him to
the rear; and when he got within a few yards of him, the rebel raised his gun and
fired. John discovering his movement, threw himself from the shot, but failed in
doing so effectively, the ball entering his right shoulder, and passing diagonally
through the shoulder, neck, and head, coming out close under the left cheekbone.”
Findagrave #80123073 (John Lindsey); 1860 Census, Ohio, Wyandot, Mifflin
P.O., 151; Third Ohio Cavalry, 146-47, 293; Wyandot Pioneer, June 17, July 1,

1864.
“Frank P Gross 1“ Lt “Lutent Frank P Gross
CoA By his Friend
9 Regiment Indiana Volunteers” J C McNair
“James C McNair Train Master (Gothic Avenue)

USA March 13" 1862”

Frank Peter Gross (July 1, 1834-March 8, 1904), a son of Thomas
Jefferson Gross (1808-1868) and Catherine Heebner (1812-1889), was born in
Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. In 1860 he resided at Lahr’s Hotel in
LaFayette, Indiana, employed as a bookkeeper. On September 5, 1861, he became

46
sergeant major in the 9 Indiana Infantry, rising to first lieutenant of Company A
barely a month later, October 8. He resigned April 25, 1863, and soon transferred
to the Veteran Reserve Corps in the Eastern theater. With the same rank the
following October 24 he became commander of the 72"? Company, and was
stationed at Jarvis Hospital in Baltimore, serving until August 1867. Immediately
afterwards he was commissioned second lieutenant in the 9" U.S. Cavalry, and
retired June 28, 1878, “on account of disability” one grade higher. In the early
1870s he was on duty at Fort McKavett in western Texas. After leaving the
military he moved to Washington, D.C., where for a while he was a clerk in the
treasury department. For a number of years he lived on 14" Street before moving
to 922 23" Street. During the 1860s he married Mary “Mollie” J. Morrison (1839-
11904) of Ohio, and they had four children of whom only two survived. He was
buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Findagrave #100800555 (F. P. Gross);
Ancestry.com (T. J. Gross, Mary J. Morrow); 1860 Census, Ind., Tippecanoe,
Lafayette, 193; (1870), Tex., Menard, Ft. McKavett P.O., 7; (1880), D.C.,
Washington, 18 Enum. Dist., 3; (1900), 13 Enum. Dist., 8A; Official Records,
Ser. 1, Vol. 33: 1051; Vol. 43, Pt. 1: 981; Pt. 2: 100; Heitman, Register of the
United States Army, 1: 481; Washington (D.C.) Times, Mar. 9, 10, 1904;
Washington Evening Star, Mar., 9, 1904.

“Ou. serord :
(Main Cave past T. B. Huts)

Orin Job Ford (May 14, 1837-1928) of Allen, Michigan, was a son of
Edwin Orin Ford (1810-1882) and Elvira Comstock (1816-1890). He was a
private in Company B, 11" Michigan Infantry, October 24, 1861-September 30,
1864, and during that time, on March 30, 1862, he registered at the Mammoth
Cave Hotel and paid to see the cave. By 1870 he was married to Emily N. Marcy
(1839-1911) and they had a son. At that time they lived in Salina County, Kansas,
where he farmed. Sometime later they returned to Michigan and divorced. He had
some sort of breakdown, and in 1890 was an inmate in the insane asylum at
Kalamazoo. Findagrave #109585734 (O. J. Ford); Ancestry.com (Civil War
Records and Profiles, O. J. Ford, Edwin O. Ford, Elvira Comstock); Mammoth
Hotel register; 1870 Census, Kans., Salina, Agency Twp., Olivet Osage P.O., 34;
1890 Veterans Census, Md., Kalamazoo Insane Asylum, 2; (1900), Hillsdale,
Hillsdale, 88" Enum Dist., 4B.

1. Memphis Daily Appeal, Dec. 5, 1861; The Evansville Daily Journal, Dec. 16, 1861;
Cleveland Daily Leader, Mar. 6, 1862; Findagrave #34567651 (A. J. Gleason),
108008556 (Lovejoy); Alexis Cope, The Fifteenth Ohio Volunteer Infantry and Its
Campaigns War of 1861-5 (Columbus, Ohio, 1915), 78; Ralph E. Kiene, Jr., A Civil
War Diary: The Journal of Francis A. Kiene 1861-1864 (n.p., 1974), 10, 323; Official
Ohio Roster, 4: 584.
ib Ie

Le,
13.
14.
Ly:

10.

. Robert I. Girardi, ed., Campaigning with “Uncle Billy”: The Civil War Memoirs of

Sgt. Lyman S Widney, 34" Illinois Volunteer Infantry (Victoria, B.C., 2008), xiii, xiv,
50-55.

Ancestry.com (J. McCann); Isaac McCann to Maggie McCann, March 9, 1862,
https://familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/8 158074.

Cleveland Daily Leader, Mar. 6, 1862; Official Ohio Roster, 10: 384, 388.

J. Thompson Gibson, ed., History of the Seventy-Eighth Pennsylvania Volunteers
(Pittsburgh, 1905), 35.

Wallace McGrath to George D. Freeman, Feb. 26, 1862, SC3064, Manuscript and
Folklore Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green; Findagrave
#1375217 (W. McGrath).

Cowan’s Auctions, 334 MS re late February 1862 visit by C. G. Wakefield to
Mammoth Cave; Ancestry.com (C. G. Wakefield).

Bonnie Poindexter and Merry Cotton, “The Life of a Civil War Soldier From
Kalamazoo: Independent Research in History 470,” (1972 Honors Thesis, Paper
1278, Western Michigan University); Findagrave #110298535 (C. C. Webb).

Thomas F. Dornblaser, Sabre Strokes of the Pennsylvania Dragons in the War of
1861-1865 (Philadelphia, 1884), 51-52; William B Sipes, The Seventh Pennsylvania
Veteran Volunteer Cavalry (Huntington, W. Va., 2000 [1906]), 12.

Thomas Crofts, comp., History of the Service of the Third Ohio Veteran Volunteer
Cavalry (Toledo, Ohio, 1910), 22; George Kryder to wife, Mar. 14, 1862, MS163,
George Kryder Papers, Bowling Green State University, Ohio.

Norvalk Huron Reflector, Apr. 8, 1862, Dec. 17, 1906; Ancestry.com (Civil War
Records and Profiles, 1861-1865).

Crofts, Third Ohio Cavalry, 22, 280.

M. O. Smith Diary, May 26, 2017.

Ibid., Sept. 1, 2017.

Ibid., Feb. 23, 2019; Mammoth Hotel register.

16. Indianapolis Indiana State Sentinel, Mar. 25, 1862.

“D' B. Howard
LSA."
(Main Cave)

Benjamin Douglas Howard (March 2, 1836-June 21, 1900), orphaned at an early age,
was born in Buckinghamshire, England, and came to the United States in 1853. Two years later
he began his higher education at Williams College, Massachusetts, and in 1858 graduated as a
M.D. from the University of New York. Soon thereafter, interested in the abolition of slavery, he
briefly was a clerk in a slave market at St. Louis, and reputedly while aiding slaves going north
he fled the state fearing for his life. On May 22, 1861, he became assistant surgeon of the 19%
New York Infantry, serving until August 28, when he was appointed assistant surgeon in the
regular U.S. army, and as such was with the 18" U.S. Infantry until December. Soon after the
battle of Shiloh, as acting medical purveyer at Louisville, he was in charge of a storeboat “laden

E24B

E ZS

with supplies” and treated the wounded there. Some weeks later he inspected the hospitals of the
Seventh Division, especially the ailing 49 Indiana regiment in eastern Kentucky. On June 26,
1862, he was at the Mammoth Cave Hotel and about then took a short tour of the cave, leaving
his name on the left wall of “Main Cave” a few hundred feet inside. Next, and until Fall 1863, he
was assigned to the Army of the Potomac. At the September 17, 1862, battle of Antietam he
“was busily engaged . . . in riding to different parts of the field” to keep the medical director,
Surgeon Jonathan Letterman, “informed of the condition of medical affairs.” The next day he
personally treated the foot wound of Major General Joseph Hooker, and in 1863 attended the
wounded at Chancellorsville, Brandy Station, and Gettysburg. On October 3, suffering from
“Typhous malarial fever,” he secured a leave of absence. While recovering, he “fell over a
precipice” and injured his right hand. Returning to duty January 1864, for a while he helped
succor the wounded from the battles at Chattanooga, Tennessee. Then back in Virginia, he
attended the injured from the fighting at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg. He
offered his letter of resignation on December 14, 1864, and it was accepted two weeks later.
Rejoining civilian life, he was professor of surgery at Long Island College Hospital, a lecturer of
operative surgery at the University of New York, and professor of surgery at the University of
Vermont. He also often visited his native land and environs. In 1877 he became a member of the

Royal College of Surgeons of England, and within a few years also became a Fellow of the

Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He was “deeply interested” in studying “methods for

artificial respiration” and the establishment of “ambulances for large towns.” The latter concern

stemmed from Antietam where he “suddenly became responsible for the ambulance services

there.” He died at the home of a friend in Elberton, New Jersey, and was buried in that town’s

Glenwood Cemetery. Findagrave #12084527 (B. Howard); The Lancet, vol. 2 for 1900, pp. 226-

27; New York Tribune, June 23, 1900; http://antietam.aotw.org/officers. Php? Officers id = 1778

(B. D. Howard); Adjutant General’s Office, U.S. Army, Benjamin Howard File; Joseph K.

Barnes, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (12 vols., Washington,

D.C., 1878-83), 2: 31, 116, 139-40, 146, 200-1; 8: 499; 10: 819, 848; 11: 60; Official Records,

Ser. 1; Vol. 16, pti 2c 21s Vow 19, ot. Fo 10e; Vol. 31 et. 2: 356-52; Val 42, Pt. 3: 202.

OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1862 SOLDIER TOURISTS IN MAMMOTH CAVE

During the fall of 1862 Mammoth Cave was again near mass movements of the
contending armies. As both the invading Confederates and pursuing Federals moved north, there
was little time for soldiers to veer off for a peek into the cave. But after the strategically
successful October 8 battle of Perryville and the Confederate withdrawal, the cave received a
sizeable influx of military sightseers as the Union Army of the Ohio trudged back to Tennessee.
How many uniformed men and the units they represented entered the cave during that time are
not known. First Lieutenant Robert Burns, Company C, 4" Michigan Cavalry, reported that his
regiment on October 24 “passed over the mouth” of the cave and “several of the men went in to
see it” but not him.!

About October 30 Mammoth had excursionists from several regiments, making it likely
that multiple groups were roaming around the tourist trails at once. The Thirty-sixth Brigade,
including the 86" Illinois and 52°* Ohio, in late October “remained a few days near Mammoth

3

E Z50

Cave, in order to recruit its strength, being sorely fatigued,” and “Many of the Eighty-sixth took
the opportunity to see that great natural wonder.” Nixon B. Stewart, the 1900 historian of the
52¢ Ohio, recalled that while near the cave “we spent a day exploring its wonders, returning in
the evening.” Private Frank B. James of Company I autographed the wall “F.B. James Oct
30/62” in the vicinity of Bottomless Pit. From the evening of October 29 until the morning of
October 31, the 73" Illinois, assigned to the Thirty-fifth Brigade, camped “within five miles of
the Mammoth Cave” and “Many of the men took the opportunity and risk of visiting” it.”

On October 29 the 36" Illinois, a component of the Thirty-seventh Brigade “camped at
Pruett’s Knox, a little beyond Cave City.” There they waited for a day. Some explored the knob
and “a party was made up to visit Mammoth Cave, eight miles distant,” including Captains Silas
Miller (1839-1864) and Samuel B. Sherer (1838-1892), Adjutant George A. Willis (1835-1909),
Chaplain William M. Haigh (1829-1898), Lieutenant Daniel E. Barnard (1826-1919) of the 88"
Illinois, “with two or three others.” Chaplain Haigh reported that they rode, (presumable by
horseback) to the hotel. “After a very hearty supper we entered the cave under the guidance of
Mat Bransford. . . . Under his directions we visited all the principle avenues and halls; passed
through Fat Man’s Misery; looked into the Bottomless Pit; stood by the Dead Sea and Lake
Purity, and sailed in Echo River, on which a revolver was fired several times. . . . we walked
about eighteen miles and came out between twelve and one o’clock A.M... . After a good sleep
and excellent breakfast, we started for Bell’s Station where we found the regiment just coming
in.” An unnamed correspondent from the same regiment to the Aurora (Ill.) Beacon alluded to
the same trip, naming another participant. “Capt. [David E.] Shaw [1824-1909],” and noting “our
party increased to eighteen.” They “went in about 5 p.m. and kept up a pretty steady gait until
between 12 and | at night... . Mammoth Cave is worth a dozen Niagaras to look at.”

In 1893 former Adjutant Alfred German Hunter (1839-1911), in his history of the Eighty-
second Indiana, recalled that in late 1862 when “the command passed Cave City” some “twelve
or fourteen from my brigade accompanied me to the Mammoth Cave and spent a fine time
exploring its many wonders.” This excursion occurred on November 2, when thirty-two men,
primarily but not all officers or staff personnel, registered at the Cave Hotel. At least nineteen
were from Alf. Hunter’s First Brigade, First Division, Third Corps, representing four of its five
regiments, the 82" Indiana and 17", 31°‘, and 38" Ohio. Probably most if not all toured the cave,
including John MacNeill Connell (1829-1882), colonel of the 17“ Ohio, 1861-63, future state
senator and internal revenue assessor (1865-68); Morton Craig Hunter (1825-1896), brother of
Alf, colonel of the 82™ Indiana, and subsequently a brevet brigadier general, March 13, 1865,
and congressman, 1867-69, 1873-79; and Frederick W. Lister, lieutenant colonel of the 31™
Ohio. This assemblage also contained members of an artillery battery, D, 1‘ Michigan, and
regiments74th and 87" Indiana and 74" Illinois, from three other brigades. Six members of this
group left their names in the cave: F. W. Lister on the ceiling of the Steps of Time just before the
Wooden Bowl Room, and W. W. Hays, S. J. Moore, G. W. Brower, A. T. Lick, and L. T.
Swezey, all near the start of Gothis Avenue.*

The next day through the 8" of November another twenty-three Union soldiers, primarily
officers, stayed at the Cave Hotel, representing among others the 102" and probably the 108"
Illinois, 79™ and 88" Ohio, 23" Michigan, 9 and 15 Indiana Infantry, plus the 2"! Kentucky
and 4" Michigan Cavalry regiments. These customers included Major Richard P.L. Baber (1824-

™.
/
™~

E251

1885), paymaster from Columbus, Ohio, Lieutenant Howard Dunlevy (1836-1877),
quartermaster of the 79" Ohio; Surgeon Wesley P. Elston (1827-1871) of Cincinnati, then
serving the 88" Ohio; Silas R. Wilson of the “USA” who on the 10" left his name in Cleaveland
Ave.; and three from the 9" Indiana: Captain Douglas Gilbert Risley (1836-1882), who eight
years later would open a Freedmen’s School in Brunswick, Georgia; Captain Thomas Madden
(1836-1910) of Indianapolis; and Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842-c1914), then sergeant major.
The latter was subsequently promoted lieutenant and served as a topographical engineer on the
staff of Major General William B. Hazen. Wounded at Kennesaw Mountain, he was discharged
in early 1865, and post-war gained wide fame as a San Francisco journalist and writer, ultimately
disappearing in Revolutionary Mexico.°

Before November 7 at least one group toured Mammoth without lodging at the hotel. On
that date James M. Kimball (1825-1871), who had transferred from the 5th Wisconsin Infantry to
become a signalman, reported a recent “all night” sojourn to the cave with “a party of the signal
and cavalry escort.” They had gone “to the farthest extremity” and in Washington Hall erected a
monument to recently killed Union generals William Nelson, James S. Jackson, and William R.
Terrill.°

The bulk of the Army of the Ohio heading back south finished passing the Mammoth
region during the first third of November. Between the 11 and 30 only twenty-two soldiers
stayed at the hotel, including fifteen Michigan “scouts” on the 18". The 9" Indiana was again
represented, plus the 123™ and 129" Illinois. If other military personnel visited the cave “on the
march” no references to such excursions have been found.’

Soldiers who are known to have created graffiti in Mammoth during this fall 1862
massive troop movement are more fully identified below:

“F.B. James Oct 30°/62
(Near Bottomless Pit)

Frank Bakewell James (November 7, 1842-March 27, 1916) was born in
Kenton County, Kentucky, to David Allen James (1811-1899) and Elizabeth
Rankin Bakewell (1820-1904). By 1848 his family had moved across the Ohio to
Cincinnati, where David acquired a lard oil business. On August 20, 1862, Frank
became a private in Company I, 52™ Ohio Infantry. After the battle of Perryville,
about October 18, his regiment started toward Nashville. En route, it passed
within a few miles of Mammoth Cave and some of the men, including James,
“under the direction of Adjutant Chas. H. Blackburn [c1837-/11897] . . . spent a
day exploring its wonders, returning in the evening.” On January 20, 1863, Frank
was promoted second lieutenant, Company K, then to captain, December 9, 1864,
and lastly was breveted major March 13, 1865. Soon, June 3, he left the army at
Washington, D.C., and returned to Cincinnati. There, in 1880 he was a glue
manufacturer with his father. Thirty years later he was living in Brookline,
Massachusetts, on his “own income.” About 1866 he married Sarah C.T. Allen
(1845-1918) and they became the parents of a daughter. He died in Boston and
was buried in Cincinnati. Findagrave #78964391 (F. B. James); Ancestry.com (F.

i ,

B. James); 1860 Census, Ohio, Hamilton, Cincinnati, 14° Ward, 93; (1870),
North 1/3 16" Ward, 74; (1880), 95" Enum. Dist., 1; (1900), 140" Enum. Dist.,
22; (1910), Mass., Norfolk, Brookline, 1088" Enum. Dist., 26A; Official Ohio
Roster, 4: 647, 668, 670; General Index to Civil War Pension Files, 1861-1934
(C. H. Blackburn).

Frederick William Lister (1825-February 17, 1900), a native of London,
was a British army officer before migrating to New York City by the mid-1850s.
Moving again, he was a fencing master in Cincinnati before the war. He became
lieutenant colonel of the 31 Ohio Infantry, and as such in July 1862 commanded
the post of Athens, Alabama, and the succeeding fall was among those, including
Colonel John M. Connell of the 17“ Ohio, who signed a petition to have General
Don C. Buell removed from command of the Army of the Ohio. Late in the
conflict he became colonel of the 40“ U.S. Colored Troops, and on March 13,
1865, was breveted brigadier general. During the winter of 1865-66 he was
stationed at Huntsville and then Bridgeport, Alabama. Post service he resumed
teaching fencing in Cincinnati and superintended a gymnasium. By 1880 he had
shifted his residence to Boston. His wife was Elizabeth Norton (1829-1917), also
of English birth, and they had at least two boys and a girl. Findagrave #63586885
(F. W. Lister), 63586923 (Elizabeth N. Lister); 1860 Census, Ohio, Hamilton, 11"
Ward, 307; (1870), Cincinnati Addition, 3; (1880), Mass., Suffolk, Boston, 784"
Enum. Dist., 12; Roger D. Hunt and Jack R. Brown, Brevet Brigadier Generals in

Blue (Gaithersburg, Md., 1990), 359; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 16, Pt. 1: 221;
Pt. 2: 219, 594; Nashville Daily Press and Times, Oct. 7, 1865, Feb. 10, 1866.

William Walker Hays (February 20, 1820-January 27, 1900), a son of
Robert Hays and Rachel Huster, was born in Williamsport, Lycoming County,
Pennsylvania. Probably when young he moved to Nashville, Brown County,
Indiana. There he farmed and married Elizabeth C. Gould (1832-1907), fathering
four boys between 1849 and 1860. From August 22, 1862, until December 16,
1863, when he resigned, he was quartermaster of the 82"4 Indiana Infantry. By
1870 he was a “Trader” in Columbus, Indiana, and within five years he moved to
Kandiyohi County, Minnesota, and again farmed. One son died before 1870 but
two more were born about 1863 and 1875. Findagrave #170182987 (W.W.
Hayes); 1860 Census, Ind., Brown, Washington Twp., 49; (1870), Bartholomew,
Columbus, 47; (1880), Minn., Kandiyohi, Willner, 82A; Indiana Adjutant
General Report, 3: 45.

Samuel J. Moore (1832-September 14, 1898), a native Hoosier and son of
George W. (1806-1881) and Elizabeth Moore (1814-1901), was a Bloomington,
Indiana, merchant. About 1850 he wed Mary C. (1832-1890) and in 1851 and
1852 they had a son and daughter, neither of whom lived a year. From August 20,
1862, until May 9, 1865, he was a private in Company F, 82" Indiana Infantry,

sometimes functioning as quartermaster sergeant. In 1880 he farmed and resided
with his parents, but his wife was not listed in the household. Findagrave
#126202206 (Samuel Moore); 1850 Census, Ind., Monroe, Bloomington, 221;
(1880), Van Buren Twp., 134A; /ndiana Adjutant General Report, 6: 331.

George Washington Brower (December 2, 1833-October 15, 1905), a
native of Ohio, was a son of Adam Brower (1802-1892) and Jeanette McMurchy
(1809-1881), who moved to Jennings County, Indiana. Just before the war he still
lived with his parents, listed as an engineer. During the conflict he served in three
Indiana regiments: as first sergeant in Company K of the 12", July 24, 1861-May
19, 1862; as first lieutenant, Company B, 82™, August 14, 1862, until resigning
February 20, 1863; and captain of Company A, 137", a hundred days unit, May-
September 1864. On June 5, 1862, in Jennings County, he married Sabrina B.
Dolan (1840-1886) and they eventually had four daughters. Soon after the
restoration of peace he moved to Minnesota and in 1880 worked at a saw mill.
Probably before 1890 he changed his residence to Wisconsin, and continued work
as a millwright. He married a second time, June 21, 1893, to Ida Garland (1860-
11906), in Lincoln County, Wisconsin. He died in Antigo, Langlade County and
was buried in Jackson County, Wisconsin. Findagrave #151911476 (George W.
Brower); Ancestry.com (George, George W., George Washington Brower); 1860
Census, Ind., Jennings, Montgomery Twp., 161; (1880), Minn., Mecker, Swan
Lake, 57 Enum. Dist., 21; (1900), Wis., Price, Worcester Twp.; Index to Civil
War Pensions, 1861-1934; Indiana Adjutant General Report, 3: 46, 312; 4, 214.

Alexander T. Lick (February 5, 1836-May 3, 1864), son of John Martin
Lick (1799-1857) and Ann Maria East (1805-1865), before the war was an
attorney in Hope, Indiana. On March 17, 1859, he married Angeline Peak (1835-
1913) and they had a son who died at age three and a daughter. He served as a
private in Company C, 82" Indiana Infantry, and for a while was its commissary
sergeant. He died in Nashville of some unnamed malady. Findagrave #106185157
(A. T. Lick), 28972235 (Angeline Peak Chidister); 1860 Census, Ind.,
Bartholamew, Hope P.O., 3; Indiana Adjutant General’s Report, 6: 327.

Lewis Tajjau Swezey (July 25, 1840-February 5, 1912), a son of Lewis S.
(1812-1887) and Sarah Swezey (1812-1886), was a farm laborer in 1860 at
Guilford, Winnebago County, Illinois. He was a corporal in Company E, 74%
Illinois August 11, 1862, until his discharge due to disability January 19, 1863.
About 1868 he married Emma A. Oliver (1851-1912) and they had three girls and
two boys. His family lived in lowa for a while before making their way to
Vermillion, South Dakota, where he became a bank president. Findagrave
#55704507 (L. T. Swezey); 1850 Census, Ill., Winnebago, Guilford, Family 112;
(1860), Family 3934; (1900), S. Dak., Clay, Vermillion, 99 Enum. Dist., 11B;:

5S

(1910), 118 Enum. Dist., 13A; Ancestry.com (L. T. Swezey); Illinois Adjutant
General Report, 4: 588.

Silas R. Wilson from the “USA” registered at the Mammoth Cave Hotel
November 8, 1862, listing his destination as “Louisville.” Two days later, while
taking the long tour, he left his initials and surname on the walls of Cleaveland
Avenue. His identification has been difficult. He was probably the Silas Wilson
(1829-July 31, 1863) who joined Company A, 108" Illinois Infantry August 14,
1862, and died of disease at Benton Barracks, Missouri. His regiment spent only a
few days in Kentucky during the war, November 1862. The 108" Illinois
Wilson’s parents were Benjamin Wilson (c1785-c1850) and Elizabeth Conner
(1787-1860). On August 11, 1852, he married Martha Jane McQueen (b. c1826)
in Tazewell County, Illinois, where he farmed. They appear to have had a
daughter three years before their marriage, and between 1855 and 1862 four sons
were born to them. The Wilson in question definitely used the middle initial “R”
both on the hotel book and cave wall, but no Silas Wilson serving as a Union
soldier is listed with a “R.” All units having a “Silas Wilson” have been examined
and the 108 Illinois private seems to be the best candidate. Findagrave
#8 1347272 (Silas Wilson); Mammoth Hotel register; 1860 Census, IIl., Tazewell,
Mackinaw Twp., 208; (1870), Tremont Twp., 12; Ancestry.com (Benjamin
Wilson); Illinois Adjutant General Report, 6: 52.

1. Robert Burns to “Davidson,” October 27, 1862, Michigan Civil War Collection; John
Robertson, comp., Michigan in the War (Lansing, 1882), 155, 787.

2. Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 20, Pt. 1: 179; J. R. Kinnear, History of the Eighty-sixth
Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry (Chicago, 1866); Nixon B. Stewart, Dan McCook’s
Regiment: 52rd O.V.I. (n.p., 1900), 33; Official Ohio Roster, 4: 668, 670; M. O. Smith diary,
June 9, 2017; A History of the Seventy-third Regiment Illinois Infantry Volunteers, 106-7.

3. L. G. Bennett and William M. Haigh, History of the Thirty-sixth Regiment Illinois
Volunteers During the War of the Rebellion (Aurora, Ill., 1876), 301-2; “Letters from the 36”
submitted to and published by Fox Valley Newspapers 1861-65; Roger D. Hunt, Colonels in
Blue: Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin (Jefferson, N.C., 2017), 99; Findagrave
#71326430 (Willis), 40643963 (Peirce), 10503019 (Haigh), 83981420 (Sherer), 11062812
(Shaw), 175688842 (Barnard); Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Illinois (9 vols.,
Springfield, 1900-1), 3: 3, 8, 13, 37; 5: 257.

4. Alf. G. Hunter, History of the Eighty-second Indiana Volunteer Infantry (Indianapolis,
1893), 27; Mammoth Hotel register; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 20, Pt. 1: 175, 178, 179;
Roger D. Hunt, Colonels in Blue: Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia (Jefferson, N.C. and
London, 2011), 39-40; Findagrave #5595124 (M. C. Hunter); Ancestry.com (A. G. Hunter);
Verbal communication from Dr. Joseph C. Douglas; M. O. Smith diary, Sept. 1, 2017.

5. Mammoth Hotel register; Findagrave #11147297 (Baber), 13341460 (Dunlevy),
169974482 (Elstun), 102893185 (Risley), 134810139 (Madden), 28826163 (Bierce); Dictionary
of American Biography, 1, 252-53.

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6. Findagrave #11606580 (J. M. Kimball); Roster of Wisconsin Volunteers War of the
Rebellion, 1861-1865 (2 vols., Madison, 1886), 1: 451; Janesville Daily Gazette, Nov. 15, 1862.
7. Mammoth Hotel register.

“J Coon
Dec 1862”
(Silliman Avenue)

John B. Coon (May 19, 1834-August 4, 1906), one of six sons of Harrison Michael Coon
(1812-1905) and Catherine Lantz (1810-1882), was born near North Point just inside Indiana
County, Pennsylvania. But he spent most of his life a short distance north in Jefferson County.
During the 1850s he married Nancy E. Mitchell (1831-1884) and they ultimately had two or
three boys and four girls. A farmer before the war, October 25, 1861-January 7, 1865, he served
as a private and sergeant in Company G, 105" Pennsylvania Infantry, which fought in Virginia.
Apparently while on furlough, he and his wife accompanied Captain Samuel A. Craig of his
regiment to Mammoth Cave, where on December 19, 1862, they took rooms at the hotel. On his
cave excursion he noted his presence on the wall of Silliman Avenue. Upon his discharge he
returned home and resumed farming and expanded his activities to lumbering. By 1880 he was a
Jefferson County constable, and at the turn of the century he was a merchant in Harrison
Township, Alleghany County. About 1885 he married a second time, to Nancy A. Tolson (b.
c1847) of Wellsville, Ohio. Findagrave #34322446 (John B. Coon); Ancestry.com (John B.
Coon); Bates, Pennsylvania Volunteers, 3: 793, 814; 1860 Census, Pa., Jefferson, Perry Twp..,
Browns Mill P.O., 143; (1870), 109; (1880), 203" Enum. Dist., 17; (1900), Alleghany, Harrison
Twp., 395" Enum. Dist., 21B; Mammoth Hotel register.

“J. C. Smith
Co K 7" Reet. N. J.'V.”
(Croghan Hall)

John C. Smith (December 1843-December 9, 1929), a carpenter, Joined Company K. 7“
New Jersey Infantry September 15, 1861, as a private, and was discharged for disability at the U.
S. General Hospital in Newark September 2, 1862. In 1863, on May 27, he logged in at the
Mammoth Cave Hotel and soon did the long trek, commemorating his prior service on the right
wall of Croghan Hall before the Maelstrom Pit. The following August 13 he joined the 33™ New
Jersey Infantry as first sergeant of Company I. Promoted to first lieutenant in Company A June 6,
1864, the succeeding September 25 he was transferred to Company F. This regiment participated
in the Atlanta Campaign and March to the Sea. Mustered out July 31, 1865, Smith became a
flour and feed merchant in Newark. He married Elizabeth McCaneo (1845-1927) in 1869 and
they had two boys and a girl. Findagrave #185300796 (John C. Smith), 139470038 (Elizabeth M.
Smith); Record of Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Civil War 1861-1865 (2 vols., Trenton,
1876), 1: 361; 2: 960, 990; John Haywood, Give it to Them, Jersey Blues! A History of the 7”
Regiment New Jersey Veteran Volunteers in the Civil War (Hightstown, N.J., 1998), 10, 290;
Civil War Pension Index, 1861-1934 (John C. Smith 7" and 33% N.J.); John G. Zinn, The

5 |

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Mutinous Regiment The Thirty-third New Jersey in the Civil War (Jefferson, N.C. and London,
2005), 156; Mammoth Hotel register; 1880 Census, N.J., Essex, Newark, 2™4 Ward, 86A; (1900),
11 Enum. Dist., 16B.

“J S Steen May 31 13637
(Silliman Avenue)

James Smith Steen (November 13, 1832-February 27, 1864), a son of Dr. Matthew Steen
or Steenhgo (1801-1854) and Elizabeth Galbraith (1797-1883) was born in Lawrence County,
Pennsylvania. On January 4, 1855, in Butler County, he wed Josephine Pearson Ramsey (1838-
1909) and by the end of that year they had a daughter. Sometime later they moved to Shelby
County, Illinois, where reputedly he was a surveyor. On August 5, 1861, then described as six
feet two inches tall, with blue eyes, a fair complexion, and light hair, he became first lieutenant
of Company H, 41* Illinois Infantry, but resigned the following December 21. On September 6,
1862, he enlisted again, in Company K, 14" Illinois Cavalry, and the succeeding January 7 was
made second lieutenant. On May 30, 1863, he arrived at the Mammoth Cave Hotel with two
others from his regiment, Lieutenant Horace Capon, Jr., and Private Henry Amadon, and referred
to himself as a “wildhorse.” The next day he and presumably his companions attempted the Long
Route, when he scratched his name and date in Silliman Avenue. On January 27, 1864, at Fair
Garden, Sevier County, in East Tennessee, he was wounded and died a month later. He was
ultimately buried in the Knoxville National Cemetery. Findagrave #2972646 (John S. Steen),
7651600 (Elizabeth G. Steen); 1850 Census, Pa., Lawrence, Big Beaver Twp., 93; Ancestry.com
(John S. Steen, Database of Illinois Veteran Index, 1773-1995); Mammoth Hotel register;
Washington L. Sanford, History of Fourteenth Illinois Cavalry (Chicago, 1898), 140, 324;
Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Illinois (9 vols., Springfield, 1900-01), 3: 189, 8:
454, 470, 478.

“Lt A Pearson
1863”
(Wooden Bowl Room)

Aven Pearson (c1832-December 1, 1904) signed the Mammoth Cave Hotel register on
June 1, 1863, with members of his artillery battery, Captain Edward C. Henshaw (1827-1872),
Lieutenant Azro C. Putnam (1819-1877), Sergeant Hezekiah “Henry” D. Dudley (1838-1906),
and Farrier Lewis D. Palmer (c1819-1878), all from the garrison at Glasgow. Pearson’s place of
birth is variously given as England, New York, and Chicago, but by the decade before the war he
lived in Ottawa, Illinois, where he was a printer. There, on July 3, 1857, he married Margaret
Anna Setzer (b. c1833) and they had a son, Burton C. From about September 4, 1862, until July
18, 1865, he served in Henshaw’s Illinois Light Artillery, first as a private, and from December
3, 1862, as First Lieutenant. Late in the conflict, March 18, 1865, at Knoxville, Tennessee, he
became the ordnance officer on the staff of Brigadier General Davis Tillson, commander of the
Fourth Division, Department of the Cumberland. It is not known when Margaret died but in 1870
Pearson boarded alone at the Cheney House in Springfield, Illinois. About 1874 he moved to

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Washington, D.C., where for sixteen or more years he was assistant foreman and foreman of the
Congressional Record, and then was “foreman of the treasury branch of the government printing
office.” He was a non-active Mason and member of the Loyal Legion. By 1880 he married a
second time, Martha “Mattie” J. Sawyer (1838-1896), but had no additional progeny. Considered
“a man of lovable disposition,” he died from “heart troubles” at 1415 K Street, NW, “‘where he
lived with friends.” His remains were interred in Arlington National Cemetery. Findagrave
#49849889 (Aven Pearson), 38440429 (Martha Sawyer Pearson), 167972184 (Hezekiah D.
Dudley), 151055457 (Henry Dudley), 82467430 (Lewis D. Palmer); Ancestry.com (Avon
Pearson, Edward C. Henshaw, Azra C. Putnam, Illinois Compiled Marriages, 1851-1900);
httpsi//civilwar.illinoisgenweb.org/acm/art-henshaw.html; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 49, Pt.
2: 21; 1860 Census, IIl., LaSalle, Ottawa, 425; (1870), Sangamon, Springfield, 433; (1880),
D.C., Washington, 54° Enum. Dist., 14; (1890) Veterans Census; Chicago Inter-Ocean,
November 28, 1882; Baltimore Sun, November 1, 1889; Washington Evening Star, February 17,
1896, December 2, 1904; Washington Times, December 3, 1904; Mammoth Hotel register.

“WAD 16 Ky vol “WAD”
WALLACE (Main Cave)
1863”

(Cleaveland Avenue)

John William “Wad” Wallace (c1840-June 11, 1878), according to Findagrave, was born
January 27, 1846, but both the 1850 and 1860 censuses and his obituary report his birth as about
1840. He was born in Maysville, Mason County, Kentucky, but lived in Fleming County just
prior to the war. His parents were John Wallace (c1805-c1847) and Susan Stuart (1898-1873),
and until hostilities he was a laborer living with his mother and siblings. He enlisted September
5, 1861, in Company C, 16" Kentucky Infantry, USA, and the following December 18 was
commissioned first lieutenant. By mid-war he was a member of the staff of Brigadier General
Mahlon D. Manson. On June 1, 1863, he signed the Mammoth Cave Hotel register, claiming his
home was “Maysville, Ky. USA” and that he was “Drunk.” He soon took the Long Route tour,
marking his presence in both Main Cave and Cleaveland Avenue. His term of service ended
October 17, 1864, and he probably returned to Maysville. His activities, however, are unknown
except at some point he moved to Newport, Kentucky, where his last address was 199 Eglantine
Street. Consumption (T.B.) cut his life short. Findagrave #169809473 (J Wadd or John W.
Wallace); Ancestry.com (John Wallace, Thomas M. Wallace); 1850 Census, Ky., Mason, East
Maysville part of 2" Dist., 237; (1860), Fleming, 2°* Dist., Flemingsburg, 38; Report of the
Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky 1861-1866, Union (2 vols., Frankfort, 1866), 1: 929;
Mammoth Hotel register; Cincinnati Enquirer, June 12, 1878.

“J. F. Anderson
14 Ill cavalry”
(Silliman Avenue)

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John F(S) Anderson (March 28, 1833-December 21, 1891) signed in at the Mammoth
Cave Hotel June 25, 1863, clearly as “John F. Anderson” and probably within a day signed the
Silliman Avenue wall plainly as “J. F. Anderson” along with his regiment. He is often found in
the records with a “S” middle initial, which may mean he either had two middle names or a
single one with “F” and “S” components. A son of Peter Light Anderson (1785-1861) and
Rebecca Frances Flack (1797-1884), he was born in Illinois and in August 1860 lived in White
County part of the southwestern portion of the state working as a carpenter. On June 20, 1855, he
married Mary Jane Wrenwick (1834-1860) and they had a boy and two girls. On February 6,
1863, he became first lieutenant of Company H, 14" Illinois Cavalry, which he commanded
“much of the time” because his captain was on staff duty. He was wounded December 22, 1863,
during an operation north of Knoxville, and was mustered out in Middle Tennessee July 31,
1865. On March 25, 1870, he married his former sister-in-law, Rachel Elizabeth Wrenwick
(1846-1926) and they had a dozen children. He and his family lived in Kansas before finally
making their home in Wright County, Missouri. Findagrave #16587893 (John S. Anderson);
Ancestry.com (John S. Anderson, Mary Jane Wrenwick, Rachel E. Wrenwick); 1860 Census,
Ill., White, TSSR9E, Enfield P.O., 183; lilinois Adjutant General Report, 8: 472.

13! KENTUCKY INFANTRYMEN AT MAMMOTH CAVE

On July 21, 1863, over a dozen members of the 13" Kentucky Infantry, USA, attached to
the Union garrison at Munfordville, took rooms at the Mammoth Cave Hotel, and within a day or
two visited the cave. Included in this group were John Robert Hindman (1839-1912), second
lieutenant of Company B, who 1883-87 would be lieutenant governor of the state; Giles A.
Gallup (d. September 4, 1864), captain of Company I, who would die of wounds received at
Lovejoy Station, Georgia; Samuel J. Cabell (1842-March 6, 1864), first lieutenant of Company
G, who would succumb to wounds received November 4, 1863, at Hough’s Ferry near Lenoir
Station, East Tennessee; Martin L. Vigus (1843-1875), a private in Company B, who post-war
would move to Kansas; Benjamin V. Banks, captain of Company C, and Nathan G. Butler, first
lieutenant of Company B. The latter two scratched “B V Banks” and “N B 1863” under an
overhang on the left side (going in) of Gothic Avenue.

Benjamin Vandiver Banks (c1833-March 1, 1868) was a son of Clement P.

Banks (1799-1853) and Catherine Lea Vanhook (1804-1853), Adair County

Farmers. By the war’s start B.V. was a merchant at Columbia in the same county.

His military term spanned from April 19, 1862, to January 12, 1865.

Nathan Gaither Butler (March 28, 1828-February 19, 1900), also from

Adair County, was the oldest of a dozen offspring of Champness Butler and

Amanda S. Cheatham. Except for his September 2, 1861-July 11, 1864, army

service, which he resigned due to disability, he was a farmer and stock raiser. He

married twice: to Myra S. Smith (1832-1871) on October 5, 1864, who bore him

two sons, and Susan Conover (1835-1888) on November 9, 1875, who produced a

daughter.

Mammoth Hotel register; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 23, Pt. 2: 333, 492, 583; Kentucky
Adjutant General Report Union, 1: 859, 865, 866; Earl J. Hess, The Knoxville Campaign
(Knoxville, 2012), 41-42; Findagrave #86915105 (Hindman), 3949536 (Gallup), 98197080

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(Cabell), 152575128 (Vigus), 86691898 (Banks), 60227254 (Butler); 1850 Census, Ky., Adair,
24 Dist., 96; (1860), 86, 120; (1870), Columbia, 3; (1880), 18t Enum. Dist., 28; CSR, RG94, NA,
Nathan G. Butler File.

as ko. 1 Vaer
1863”
(Silliman Avenue)

Probably John B. Tyler (December 18, 1834-July 5, 1905), the eldest son of James M.
Tyler and Paulina Figg (1813-1870), who pre-war resided with his grandmother, mother, three
brothers, and a sister in Butler County, Kentucky. He was a farmer with $800 real and $200
personal property. In Rochester on September 10, 1861, he joined the Union army, and later,
December 9, at Camp Calhoun he was mustered as captain of Company C, 11" Kentucky
Infantry. At Stones River, Tennessee, on January 2, 1863, he was wounded in the right thigh and
treated at General Hospital No. 1 in Nashville. A week later he was granted twenty days leave,
and on January 29, while returning to duty, on board the steamer Hetty Gilmore, he was captured
and paroled by elements of John Hunt Morgan’s command near Woodbury, Kentucky. June 11,
1863, he tendered his letter of resignation because his regiment had been mounted and he did not
think he could “undergo the services and Exposure” necessary, and eight days later was
discharged. On July 27 he and a John Mallory shared a room at the Mammoth Cave Hotel, and
about then he seems to have attempted the Long Route, autographing Silliman Avenue. He
apparently changed his mind about riding a horse because on December 11 he accepted a
commission by the governor, and on January 17, 1864, was mustered in as captain, Company C,
52™¢ Kentucky Mounted Infantry. Soon, March 3, he was promoted major and served until
January 18, 1865. Not long afterwards, he married Hermia Grubbs (b. 1848) of Simpson County,
who died a few years later after the birth of a daughter. On November 15, 1875, he took a second
wife, Kitty Cash (b. 1859), in Lyons County, and they ultimately moved to Princeton in Caldwell
County, where he died. Findagrave #18481147 (John B. Tyler); Ancestry,com (John B. Tyler,
Hernia Grubbs); 1860 Census, Ky., Butler, Morgantown, 178; (1900), Caldwell, Princeton, 8"
Enum, Dist., 13A; CSR, RG94, NA, John B. Tyler Files; General Index to Civil War Pension
Files, 1861-1934 (John B. Tyler, Kitty Tyler); Mammoth Hotel register; Kentucky County
Marriage Records, 1783-1965.

“F W Crosby
10“ Iowa Nov 13 1863”
(Croghan Hall)

Francis William Crosby (July 23, 1823-December 22, 1909) was born at Schenectady,
New York, the eldest of twelve children of Henry Sibley Crosby (1788-1877) and Sarah Ann
Capron (1801-1893). About 1840 he went to Illinois to teach, later doing the same in Missouri,
Michigan, and Ohio. In the latter state, at Decatur in Washington County, on April 3, 1849, he
married one of his students, Hannah Everett Ballard (1824-1909) and there he next became a
merchant. By the late 1850s he and his family resided in Tama County, Iowa, where he was a

E2b0

master builder. On July 31, 1861, he enrolled in Company C, 10“ Iowa Infantry as first corporal.
At the end of the year he was promoted quartermaster sergeant. In 1862, on October 4, he was
slightly wounded in the head and leg at Corinth, Mississippi. Then on February 22, 1863, he was
advanced to regimental quartermaster with the rank of lieutenant, a position he held until his
muster out June 23, 1865. His regiment was one of those under Major General William T.
Sherman which marched from Memphis to Chattanooga October 17 to November 19, 1863. It is
probable that when Crosby got near Stevenson, Alabama, he on some pretext pertaining to his
official position, secured permission to go north on the railroad. Then he found time to take the
long tour in Mammoth Cave, registering at the hotel after his trek to Croghan Hall, where he
scratched his name on the left wall. Not long into the post-war period he briefly was involved in
gold mining at Concord, North Carolina. By 1870 he was a “Mining Supt.” in Washington, D.C.
Within a year or two, he and a son, William Otis Crosby, opened a small silver mine at
Georgetown, Colorado. Later, for a time, he resided in Venezuela, although his business there is
unclear, perhaps mining of some sort. He returned to D.C. as a professor of metallurgy, and in
1881 was part of the honor guard watching the body of President James A. Garfield as it lay in
state at the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. During the 1880s he quit mining and “devoted his time to
geology,” Then for about a dozen years he traveled through Europe and Asia, often employed as
a collector for the National Museum, and amassed a large array of geological specimens known
as the “Crosby Collection.” During his final decades he ran a boarding house and wrote
“extensively” for scientific magazines. Besides William Otis, he and Hannah had another son
and four daughters. His last address was 248 3" Street NW, Washington, D.C. Findagrave
#42141564 (F. W. Crosby); 1850 Census, Ohio, Washington, Decatur Twp., 389; (1860), Iowa,
Tama, Toledo Twp., 2; (1870), D.C., Washington, 5" Ward; (1880), 65 Enum. Dist., 6; (1900),
92™4 Enum. Dist., 7A; Ancestry.com (F. W. Crosby); Roster and Record of Iowa Soldiers in the
War of the Rebellion 1861-1866 (3 vols., Des Moines, 1908-10), 2: 150, 172; Mammoth Hotel
register; Washington Post, Dec. 23, 31, 1909.

“Tt Louis Baer June 6 1864”
(El Ghor)

Carl David Louis Baer (April 24, 1838-May 19, 1913) was a son of Abram Baer and
Emily Hettking, natives of Switzerland and Germany. He was born in Verona, Italy, and grew up
in the District of Aaran, Switzerland. During the late 1850s he emigrated to America and settled
in Gallipolis, Ohio. On July 1, 1863, he joined the 2"! Ohio Heavy Artillery and the following
September 7 was commissioned second lieutenant. The next June, when he scratched his name in
Mammoth Cave’s El Ghor section, his unit was part of the garrison at Munfordville. He was
promoted one grade May 31, 1865, and resigned twenty-four days later. Returning to Gallipolis,
he operated a wholesale grocery until 1885, then lived variously at Washington Court House and
Cincinnati, Ohio, and Little Rock, Arkansas. On May 20, 1868, he married Charlotte Romaine
Naret (1848-1920) of Buffalo, West Virginia, and they had five children, of whom two died
young. Findagrave #95167100 (Louis Baer); Ancestry.com (Carl D. L. Baer, Charlotte R. Naret);
Official Ohio Register, 10: 332; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 32, Pt. 2: 295; Pt. 3: 173; History
of Fayette County, Ohio (Indianapolis, 1914), 199, 646-47.

eg pat Os “DD. 1, Procter 1$79”
1864” 1863” “D. L. Procter MD” (Long Cave)
(Procter Cave) 4. Procter 13803"

Larkin J. Procter (March 12, 1822-November 19, 1895) and members of his family for
decades were associated with Mammoth and other caves in the area. Born in Mason County,
Kentucky, to Abram Buford Procter (1773-1854) and Mary Ann Lurty (1775-1834), about 1836
his first employment was in his brother George M, Procter’s store at Maysville. Three years later
he began law study, obtained a license, and in 1840 began practice in his hometown. Within a
few years he moved to nearby Lewis County, where in 1845 he was elected to the state house. In
1848 he attended the state constitutional convention, and in the early 1850s leased Mammoth
Cave. But in 1853 he moved to Philadelphia to engage in business, and the cave was put in
charge of an agent, William Scott Miller, Sr. When he returned to Kentucky, he again leased the
cave, January 1, 1856-December 31, 1860. Lauded as “a faithful and accomplished landlord” and
“a high-toned gentleman and a scholar,” he reportedly possessed a “courteous and polite
demeanor.” During this term as the lessee, he “thoroughly repaired and refurnished” the hotel. In
mid-1860 Procter claimed to have real and personal property worth $15,000 and $6,000. When
the secession crisis came he did not support such action, although he sympathized with the
South. During the war he served a term as state senator for Edmonson and Butler Counties. In
1864 and perhaps earlier he made visits with his son, David Larkin Procter (July 3, 1849-
January 21, 1924), later a doctor at Mt. Sterling in Jonathan Doyle’s discovery, which became
known as Proctor Cave. Then, starting November 28, 1865, through the end of 1870, he again
leased Mammoth Cave, until about October 1866 with John N. T. Rogers as a partner, and a few
years later in conjunction with another son, Walker R. Procter (1847-1870). On July 4, 1866, the
cave was again “brilliantly illuminated from the entrance to the Star Chamber,” and the
following September 4-6 a “grand” deer hunt was held on the property. Traffic at the cave
increased, and in October 1867 it was reported that “More visitors have been entertained there
during the past six months than ever before. Travel “deals” were advertised by the railroads to
attract customers from and via Louisville, Cincinnati, Nashville, Memphis, and other cities. The
public gave the hotel and by implication Proctor’s management mixed reviews. In November
1866 an Englishman “found the hotel, which is much bepuffed in the guide books, a most
comfortless den, and the fare equally bad. In my own room, which was one of the best, there
were three panes of the window broken, and the bed felt as if it were stuffed as pumpkins.”
During August 1867 a man noted the hotel could accommodate “about two hundred and fifty
guests” and thought the “fare is good to middling. The attendance strict, and the beds the hardest
that can be gotten. ... and... the meats furnished might be much improved.” Only a few days
later another guest found dinner “prepared in the very best style, and of great variety,” with “Col.
Procter” sparing “no pains or expense in providing his table with the best that the market
affords.” His “attentiveness to the wants of his boarders” made Procter “very popular.” About
July 1866 L.J. Procter began showing Proctor Cave to the public, which was then claimed to
have “been explored for a distance of two miles and a half.” That month he and Louisville
Professor Charles W. Wright led one of the first groups there. By mid-January 1868 he bought

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the Cave City Hotel from former Union army officer William T. Hoblitzell and proposed to
“manage it in conjunction with the Mammoth Cave hotel and grounds.” It is not known how long
Procter and his son Walker R. held the Cave City hotel. But by 1869, his brother George M.
Procter apparently also operated a hotel at Glasgow Junction (formerly Bells or Three Forks,
now Park City). Also by then L. J. and W. R. Procter had created a road from Glasgow Junction
to Mammoth Cave, which was three miles shorter than from Cave City. Additional publicity was
generated by the first successful dark-zone photography in any cave at Mammoth during the
summer and fall of 1866, and a September 29, 1868, wedding in Gothic Chapel. Tragically,
Walker R. Procter, while part of a posse in April 1870, was wounded “in the left groin” by Eli
Shy, and soon died.

After his third Mammoth lease expired L. J. Procter “devoted his time to the practice of
law, farming and dealing in real estate.” He continued his interest in commercial caves. About
1875, along with a large group, he and his brother, George M., toured Long Cave not far from
Mammoth. By April 1876 they plus L.J.’s wife owned the grotto which was renamed Grand
Avenue Cave. George was not financially stable and lost his share September 1877. Larkin
worked to open the cave to the public and continued to develop Proctor Cave. During the 1880s
he and his family lived at Grand Avenue Cave and then at the Proctor Cave hotel. After the
Mammoth Cave Railroad opened in the late 1880s a short spur line went to Proctor Cave, but
neither it or Grand Avenue Cave were successful. He lost Proctor Cave in 1888 and three years
later sold Grand Avenue Cave. However, he continued his residence at the Proctor Cave hotel.
He married twice, first on January 8, 1844, to Mary E. Roberts (1829-1885) of Lewis County,
Kentucky, who bore him six children, and second in 1890 to Jennie Ferney Brunden (b. 1836) of
New Cumberland, West Virginia. Findagrave #42902849 (L. J. Procter); Ancestry.com (L.J. and
D. L. Procter); Louisville Daily Journal, June 11, 1857, July 2, Aug. 1, Sept. 1, Oct. 10, 26,
1866, Aug. 23, Sept. 2, 1867, Jan. 2, 1868; Louisville Daily Courier, Aug. 9, 1866; Louisville
Weekly Courier, Sept. 3, 1859; Memphis Daily Appeal, Aug. 23, 1867, July 23, 1869, Sept. 15,
1870; Nashville Union and American, July 25, Aug. 22, 24, 1869; Louisville Courier-Journal,
Apr. 29, 1870; Maysville (Ky.) Evening Bulletin, Nov. 22, 1895; 1860 Census, Ky., Edmonson,
Brownsville P.O., 85; (1900), Rocky Hill Station, 315" Enum. Dist., 8A; Stanley D. Sides and
Norman Warnell, “Long Cave, Mammoth Cave National Park, Edmonson County Kentucky,”
Mammoth Cave National Park’s 10" Research Symposium February 14-15, 2013, pp. 140-46; J.
Walker, First Impressions of America (London, 1867), 106-7; Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, July 1,
1869; Clipping quoting Glasgow Weekly Times, July 29, 1875 (Barren County Kentucky
Museum, Folder 4-36); West Virginia Marriages Index, 1785-1971 (Jennie Brunden). During
1860 L. J. Procter collected a total of $7607 for cave fees at Mammoth. J. R. Underwood’s
Statement as Trustee of the Mammoth Cave Property for the Year 1860, Vertical Files,
Mammoth Cave Visitor Center. David L. Procter toured the recently opened “Colossal Cave” in
1896 when he scratched his name on the wall. M. O. Smith Diary, August 14, 2020.

“Johnah Doyal” “Doyt
“Johnathon Doyle “John Doyel 1870”
(Proctor Cave)

oT

E 268

Jonathan Doyle/Doyel (c1820-f11908) was a slave belonging to Gregory C. Doyel (d.
1846), who was willed to his son, Reverend G. Doyel (1794-1865). Sometime before the war
Jonathan was manumitted. Later, reportedly in 1863, he was credited with finding Proctor Cave,
which some 116 years later was proven to be part of Mammoth. The story circulated by Larkin J.
Procter, for whom the cave was named, is that Jonathan joined the Union army, took “French
leave,” and came home. He hid “in a low valley in a thick weed” and while there “discovered a
mouth in the rock breathing forth a current of air.” Intrigued, he “hewed down timber, built a
limn kiln (for the want of powder, sledge and drill) and thereby burned a mouth or entrance into
the region below.” It seems more certain he found the cave before joining the 6“ U.S. Colored
Cavalry at Owensboro September 24, 1864. He was then listed as a laborer, forty-four years old,
and five feet ten inches tall. His regiment participated in Major General George Stoneman’s
December 1864 raid in southwestern Virginia, when the large salt manufactory at Saltville and
the Wytheville lead mines were captured. It was next at Camp Nelson near Nicholsville,
Kentucky, until March 1865, and on garrison and railroad guard duty in various places the
remainder of the year, and lastly in eastern Arkansas until its muster out. He was discharged
about April 1866. The following August | it was announced that Doyle was available “to guide
visitors through the wondrous labyrinths” of Proctor Cave which “he discovered.” He
permanently remained in Edmonson County, farming and working as a day laborer. About 1850
he married a woman named Mary A. (c1830-//1900), and they had one child who apparently died
young. For two decades or more he lived one or two doors from William Garvin (c1847-1906), a
Mammoth Cave guide. Norman Warnell, Mammoth Cave: Forgotten Stories of the People (Ft.
Washington, Pa., 2012[1997]), 145-48; Ancestry.com (U.S. Colored Troops Military Service
Records): Frederick H. Dyer, Compendium of the Rebellion (Des Moines, 1908), 1721;
Louisville Daily Journal, August 1, 1866; Memphis Daily Appeal, July 23, 1869; 1880 Census,
Ky., Edmonson, 41 Enum. Dist., 26; (1900), Rocky Hill Station, 35" Enum. Dist., 10A; John
Thompson, Mammoth Cave Kentucky (Smiths Grove, Ky., 1909). 6, 21, 23.

THE NINTH PENNSYLVANIA CAVALRY AT MAMMOTH CAVE, AUGUST 18, 1864

Four soldiers from the Ninth Pennsylvania Cavalry inscribed the wall of Mammoth
Cave’s Pensacola (Pensico) Avenue near the junction with Bunyan’s Way: T. J. Jordan, S. C.
Walker, T. J. Foose, and I. D. Landis.!

After service in Kentucky chasing remnants of John Hunt Morgan’s raiders, the Ninth
Cavalry moved south to Tennessee where it was dismounted. Federal authorities feared an
uprising by Southern sympathizers in northern Kentucky, and consequently the Ninth was soon
ordered back north. It moved by train July 17, 1864, from Nashville to Louisville, and while
there drew a new complement of horses. After several weeks on guard duty the unit set out in the
saddle for Tennessee on August 13, moving via Elizabethtown, Bacon Creek, and Munfordville.?

On August 18 the regiment stopped several hours at Mammoth Cave and its colonel and
many of the men made a quick romp through some of its passages. Cornelius Baker, Jr. (1840-
1923), a carpenter from Perry County, Pennsylvania, and a private in Company C, reported that
he “‘was in the cave over a mile and came out it was very cool in the cave their was some went

O5

——

Page

in 5 miles they said it was a nice cave.” William Thomas (1838-1896), a miner and tinsmith
from Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, and a corporal in Company B, was one of those who
penetrated the cave farther. He recorded, “I was inside the Cave When the Officers came in with
guide and lamps We visited the cave and traveled 3-3/4 Miles and saw 25 Different Sights of
note Some splendid views of the works of Nature”

Short biographies of those who autographed Pensacola Avenue follows:

Thomas Jefferson Jordan (December 3, 1821-April 2, 1895), a son of
Benjamin Jordan and Mary Crouch, was born in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.
He attended Dickinson College in Carlisle and in early 1843 began law practice in
Harrisburg. He remained there until the war and also operated a lumber business.
During late August 1861 he became major in his state’s Ninth Cavalry. On July 9,
1862, at Tompkinsville, Kentucky, he and a number of his men were captured.
Held prisoner in Georgia and Virginia until December 9, he on January 13, 1863,
was advanced to colonel. Breveted brigadier general of volunteers on February
25, 1865, he was mustered out the following July 18. Resuming lawyering at
Harrisburg, Jordan a few years later engaged in the lumber business at
Williamsport. When that endeavor failed, he obtained a post office position and
eventually was transferred to the U.S. mint at Philadelphia. His wife was Jane
Wilson (1818-1889) and they had at least three children. Hunt and Brown, Brevet
Brigadier Generals in Blue, 332; Findagrave #8036 (T. J. Jordan); Bates,
Pennsylvania Volunteers, 3: 242; Bvt. Brig. Gen. Thomas Jefferson Jordan,
http://civil war cavalry.com/?p=863.

Sydenham C. Walker (December 1826-September 26, 1902), son of
Thomas and Harriet Walker, was a native of Waynesboro, Franklin County,
Pennsylvania. Probably in the late 1840s he attended Jefferson Medical College
and then returned to his home county to practice. Soon, he moved to Liberty in
Adams County, where he did not pursue medicine full-time. In 1860 he was a
farmer with real and personal estate worth $7,000 and $665. From August 4,
1862, until July 18, 1865, he served in the Ninth Cavalry, first as assistant surgeon
and after August 22, 1864, as surgeon. Post-war he returned to Adams County and
continued to be a doctor. Long before the war he married Keziah Gordon (1830-
1898), and about 1855 they had their only child, Horace C. Findagrave
#16870837 (S. C. Walker); Bates, Pennsylvania Volunteers, 3: 242; 1860 Census,
Pa., Adams, Liberty Twp., 57; (1870), 21; (1880), 55 Enum. Dist., 4.

Thomas Jefferson Foose (1840-April 27, 1867), a native of Duncannon,
Perry County, Pennsylvania, was the oldest of five sons of John S. Foose (1817-
1889) and Phebe Blain (1821-1901). A school teacher before the war, he was
mustered as a private, Company A, Ninth Pennsylvania Cavalry October 3, 1861,
and on May 22, 1863, was promoted to sergeant and regimental commissary,
serving as such until his regiment’s discharge summer 1865,. Less than two years

Ob

later, as a contractor, he was killed on Section 72, Allegheny Valley Railroad,
near Oil City, Venango County, Pennsylvania, when an “overhanging bank of
cement gravel suddenly .. . fell . . . , completely burying him.” Findagrave
#18778435; 1860 Census, Pa., Perry, Duncannon P.O., 34; Bates, Pennsylvania
Volunteers, 3: 242, 244; New Bloomfield Perry County Democrat, May 6, 1867.

Isaac Daniel Landis (July 31, 1841-January 28, 1929), born in Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania, was the offspring of Isaac Landis (1816-1881) and
Catherine Weidman (1817-1897). By 1860 he was a silversmith and jeweler in
Shippensburg, Cumberland County. There he enlisted August 26, 1861, and the
following October 29 was mustered in as sergeant of Company H, Ninth
Pennsylvania Cavalry. He won promotion to sergeant major May 23, 1863, and
second lieutenant July 1, 1864. At Griswold Station, Georgia, the following
November he was wounded in a skirmish. The next summer he was discharged
with his regiment. Returning home, he soon married Anna May Davis (1849-
1925) and by 1876 they had three boys and two girls. Sometime before 1900 he
moved his family to Chester County and he remained in the jewelry business until
1923. His last address was 54 S. 11™ Avenue, Coatesville. Findagrave #58508570
(I. D. Landis); Bates, Pennsylvania Volunteers, 3: 242, 266.

MAIN TEXT SOURCES
1. M. O. Smith diary, September 9, 2016, June 9, 2017; Larry Purcell, “On the Path to
Glory,” CRF Newsletter (August 1991), 4-5.
2. John W. Rowell, Yankee Cavalrymen; Through the Civil War with the Ninth
Pennsylvania Cavalry (Knoxville, 1971), 182-87.
3. Ibid., 3, 4, 7, 8, 187, 260, 264; Findagrave #85588601 (Cornelius Bakr), 117466454
(William Thomas).

E O Hurd CinO 1864
(Upper level, Pensacola Avenue)

On September 9, 1864, E. O. Hurd of Cincinnati signed the Mammoth Cave Hotel
register and paid for the short tour. He was probably the same as Ethan Osborn Hurd (July 31,
1840-March 24, 1913), a native of Cincinnati and a child of Rukard Hurd (1793-1871) and Mary
Osborn (1805-1898). A clerk prior to the war, he became first lieutenant of Company F, 39"
Ohio Infantry, was promoted captain and transferred to Company B. For a brief period he was on
recruitment duty in Cincinnati. By 1870 he was a merchant in Decatur, Alabama, with assets
totaling $48,000. Eventually, he returned to Hamilton County, Ohio, and became a farmer. On
January 22, 1885, he married Anna Cora Carson (c1854-1915). Also during that decade he was a
member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He died in Jacksonville,
Florida, but was buried at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati. In 2007 his 1851 Navy Colt
revolver engraved with his name sold at auction for $21,850. Findagrave #22954995 (E. O.
Hurd), 78961898 (Anna C. Hurd); 1860 Census, Ohio, Hamilton, Columbia Twp., 48; (1870),

Zhe

Ala., Morgan, Subdiv. 39, Decatur P.O., 14; (1900), Ohio, Hamilton, Columbia Twp., 287"
Enum. Dist., 10B; (1910), 299" Enum. Dist., 12A; Hamilton County, Ohio, Wills, Vol. 122-24,
pp. 326-31; Ancestry.com (Ethan O. Hurd); Mammoth Hotel register; Cincinnati Enquirer,
March 27, 1913.

ey LOWS 64:77"
(Gothic Avenue)

One day later, September 10, 1864, “Capt E. C Lewis [of] Northfield Vt” registered at the
Mammoth Cave Hotel, paid $2 for the short excursion, and within a day or so smoked his name
on the ceiling of Gothic Avenue. He was likely Edwin Colby Lewis (January 5, 1842-February
27, 1883), son of Silas Lewis and Lois C. Colby (1812-1896), who in fact lived at Northfield.
During the war he served in the military four times. The first three were in Vermont units: as
private in Company F of the 1* (three months) Infantry, May 9-August 15, 1861; second
lieutenant October 9, 1861-June 4, 1862, and then private, December 7, 1865-August 3, 1864, in
Company G of the 6" Infantry. Wounded June 1 at Cold Harbor, Virginia, he was discharged for
“promotion in [the] U.S.C.T.,” and became captain of Company K, 13 U.S. Colored Heavy
Artillery, an organization raised in Kentucky. He probably had his commission in hand when he
visited the cave, but was not officially mustered in until January 24, 1865. He in his short life
had three wives: Mary Jane King (b. 1841), whom he married on August 15, 1862; Annie Kane
(1854-1877), who gave him two boys; and Katherine “Kate” Devine (b. 1861) on October 21,
1878, who produced a girl and another boy. He moved about, spending time in Essex County,
New York, and Texas, where in 1880 he was in Brazos County working as a “photographic
artist.” But before he died he returned to his native Vermont home. Ancestry.com (Edwin C.
Lewis, Sr., and Civil War Records and Profiles); Findagrave #116658581 (Edwin C. Lewis, Sr.);
Civil War Pension Index, 1861-1934; Revised Roster of Vermont Volunteers (Montpelier, 1892),
201, 203; Kentucky Adjutant General Report, 1: 175; Dyer, Compendium, 1651-52); Mammoth
Hotel register.

“W A Hoskins
July 4" 1865”
(Silliman Avenue)

William Anderson Hoskins (November 1826-October 23, 1897) was born in Garrard
County, Kentucky, to William Hoskins (1784-1862) and Elizabeth Bright (1791-1864). He
attended Centre College then made his living by farming and mining. He entered the army
October 1, 1861, and served as colonel of the 12" Kentucky Infantry, USA, January 12, 1862,
until his resignation April 16, 1864. During that time he was provost marshal at Tuscumbia,
Alabama, July 1862, commanded the post of Lebanon in the District of Western Kentucky,
December 1862-February 1863, and a brigade in East Tennessee, September-December 1863.
After peace was reestablished, on July 3, 1865, he got a room at the Mammoth Cave Hotel and
wrote that his residence was Danville. The next day he apparently attempted the Long Route,
leaving his name on the wall far past Echo River. Post-war he was a land speculator and mine

fo2OT

operator. He built a coal railroad to the Cumberland River and during 1871-73 was Boyle
County’s state representative. At other times he lived in Chattanooga, Chilhowee, and
Sweetwater, Tennessee, dying at the latter town. His wife was Frances James (1828-1886) and
they had at least eight children. Findagrave #61539854 (W. A. Hoskins), 61540044 (Frances J.
Hoskins); LeRoy P. Graf, Ralph W. Hoskins, and Paul H. Bergeron, eds., The Papers of Andrew
Johnson (16 vols., Knoxville, 1967-2000), 5: 61; Kentucky Adjutant General Report, Union, 1:
840; Mammoth Hotel register; Louisville Courier-Journal, October 24, 1897.

1864 ELECTION DAY AT MAMMOTH CAVE

John Quincy Adams Campbell (1838-1922) was a lieutenant in Company B, Fifth Iowa
(Mounted) Infantry, who kept a detailed diary. On October 25, 1864, the unmounted portion of
his regiment received orders “for Louisville to get horses.” Two days later, about 3 P.M., the
men left Nashville by rail and arrived in Louisville at 2 P.M., October 28. On November 2 the
regiment “drew 500 horses,” and the next day it left Louisville to trek back south to Nashville.
Five nights later the soldiers “camped at Munfordville on the Green River.” On the morning of
Tuesday, November 8 Campbell recorded

[W]e started for Bowling Green via Mammoth Cave. The road to the cave
lies through very rough country. We reached the cave about 3 P.M. Soon after our
arrival, the polls were opened at the Hotel and our Regiment proceeded to the
ballot. I was appointed one of the Judges of Election. After the election, the
officer paid $2 apiece and procured a guide and lanterns to go into the cave. The
men got in “scott free.” We went 3 miles into the cave in one direction and
traveled 10 miles in all while in the cave. We came out about midnight. We
visited Lake Lethe, Bacon Chamber, Star Chamber, and other notable places. . . .
The Hotel is the only building near the cave. . . ,. The mouth . . . is near the top of
a high ridge.

So far as known no inscriptions by men from the Fifth Iowa have been recognized in
Mammoth Cave, but that does not mean that none exist.

SOURCES

Mark Grimsley and Todd D. Miller, eds. The Union Must Stand: The Civil War Diary of
John Quincy Adams Campbell, Fifth Iowa Volunteer Infantry (Knoxville, 2000), xiii-xxii, 182-
92; Findagrave #21075674 (J.Q.A. Campbell).

“R T Kerfoot Dec 1864
Dayton Ohio”
(Main Cave)

E20

*

Richard Thomas Kerfoot (June 1838-February 12, 1907), the second son of Richard A.
Kerfoot (1814-1872) and Eleanor S. Wentz (1815-1894), was born in Dayton, Ohio. He was
educated at St. Thomas College, Hagerstown, Maryland, where nearby he had relatives, and in
July 1860 was a tutor of history. Soon after in Baltimore he was ordained as an Episcopal pastor.
During the war he served three times as a Union chaplain, first at the post of Fort McHenry
November 1,1861-February 1862, then for the 3 New York Infantry until May 14, 1863, and
finally for the 3™ Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery May 1-November 9, 1865. Subsequently, he did
pastoral service in parishes at Cincinnati, Evansville, Indiana, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, western
New York, and lastly, about 1896-1905, Prince George County, Maryland. He married Apphia
Longworth Locke (1840-1926) and they had two daughters. Because of poor health his last two
years were at 223 Oak Avenue, Takoma Park, D.C., with a daughter and son-in-law. He was
buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Findagrave #15158590 (R. T. Kerfoot); The Living
Church, Vol. 36, No. 18 (March 2, 1907), 636; Washington Evening Star, February 14, 1907, p.
16; Heitman, Historical Register of the United States Army, 1: 595; Annual Report of the
Adjutant General of the State of New York for the Year 1898, Serial No. 17 (New York and
Albany, 1899), 465; Bates, Pennsylvania Volunteers, 8: 700; 1860 Census, Md., Washington,
Williamsport Dist., 117. Kerfoot’s parents continued to live in Dayton. 1870 Census, Ohio,
Montgomery, Dayton, 3™ Ward, 28.

“Mrs E. M. Bruce
Clarence J. Prentice

1865”
(Silliman Avenue)

Sarah Elizabeth Withers (March 25, 1835-December 19, 1915), a daughter of Charles
Albert Withers (1800-1863), a Kenton County, Kentucky, railroad superintendent, and Matilda
Lynch (1811-1890) was born in Lynchburg, Virginia. Her first husband was Eli Metcalfe Bruce
(1828-1866), a pre-war pig iron manufacturer and pork packer and during the conflict a
Confederate congressman. She reportedly “had charge of a hospital,” visited battlefields,
disbursed Bibles, and knitted socks for the soldiers. After Bruce’s death she married William
Granville Morris (1836-1892), a Covington tobacconist, “founder of the Morris Tobacco
Warehouse in Cincinnati,” and the “first president of the Cincinnati Leaf Tobacco Association.”
Between 1854 and 1864 she had a girl and two boys by Bruce, and in 1887, a girl by Morris,
who died in infancy. Her tour of Mammoth Cave with Prentice and others occurred about July
25, 1865. Her future husband Morris was also in the party. Findagrave #88461039 (Sarah E.W.
Morris), 10043 (E. M. Bruce), 94713272 (W. G. Morris); The Papers of Jefferson Davis, 10:
538; 1860 Census, Ky., Kenton, Covington, 2™¢ Ward, 106; Mammoth Hotel register.

Clarence Joseph Prentice (November 24, 1840-November 15, 1873) was the second of
two sons of George D. Prentice (1802-1870), the well-known editor of the Louisville Journal,
and Harriette Benham (1820-1868). His brother, William C. Prentice (1837-1862) visited Dixon
Cave in 1855 and descended Mammoth Cave’s Maelstrom Pit in 1858. Clarence was schooled at

0

the Kentucky Military Institute and in Germany. Just prior to the war he was captain of a
company of state guards. Late in 1861 he was a volunteer aide to General M. Jeff Thompson in
southeastern Missouri. He later became lieutenant colonel of the 7 Confederate Cavalry
Battalion, a unit with a tainted military reputation in eastern Kentucky and western Virginia. In
February 1865 one Southern officer observed that Prentice was “Very agreeable & smart, well
qualified to do much better than he does.” For a time, once peace was restored, he reportedly
operated a house of ill repute. His wife was Julia McWilliams by whom he had a son. He met his
demise in a buggy accident. Findagrave #74876307 (C. J. Prentice); Mammoth Hotel register;
Allardice and Hewitt, Kentuckians in Gray, 305-6; William C. Davis and Meredith L. Swentor,
eds., Bluegrass Confederate (Baton Rouge, 1999), 357, 378, 410, 641; Official Records, Ser. 1,
Vol. 20, Pts 960: Vol. 23, Pid: 250: Vor 30. Pi: 3: 296, 605-6; Vol, 32, Pt, 2: O70, 722, 841;
Vol, 43, Pt. 2: 918, 921-22: Von 49) FU 2; 206, OG.

“D D TALLEY
Virginia
1865”
(Silliman Avenue)

Daniel Doak Talley (October 17, 1841-December 15, 1930), a son of Nathaniel Tally
(1804-1883), a bank officer, and Elizabeth M. Haskins (c1816-7//1880), was born in Mecklenburg
County, Virginia, near the North Carolina line. Before the war he was a clerk at the Clarksville
Exchange Bank in his home county. On April 21, 1861, he enlisted in Company F, 21 Virginia
Infantry, CSA, and for a time was an aide to Governor John Letcher. He transferred to the navy
as an assistant paymaster and served in Europe. On March 31, 1865, as hostilities were nearing
the end, he was trying to re-enter the Confederacy via Havana, Cuba, and Galveston, Texas. He
was paroled in Vicksburg May 12. On or about July 25 that year, possibly still on his way home
to Virginia, he did Mammoth Cave’s Long Route with a party of former Confederates or
Southern sympathizers, including Clarence J. Prentice and Mrs. Eli M. Bruce, marking Silliman
Avenue as they passed through. His activities during the early post-bellum years are not known,
but in 1880 he was a boot and shoe merchant in Danville, Virginia. By 1900 he lived in
Richmond, where for many years he was secretary of the Virginia Medical College. He also was
involved in real estate and in 1920 was assessor of taxes. In 1873 he married Julia Harris (1849-
1922) and they had a son and daughter. His last address was the Monroe Terrace Apartments in
Richmond. Findagrave #6569170 (D. D. Talley); CSR, RG109 (M324, Roll 643), NA, Daniel D.
Tally File; 1850 Census, Va., Mecklenburg, 22" Regt., 42; (1860), Clarksville, 1; (1880),
Pittsylvania, Danville, 18t Ward, 179 Enum. Dist., 34; (1900), Henrico, 5" Precinct, Richmond,
63 Enum. Dist., 1B; (1910), 80" Enum. Dist., 4A; (1920), Richmond, 97" Enum. Dist., 6B;
Mammoth Hotel register; Robert J. Driver, Jr., Confederate Sailors, Marines and Signalmen

from Virginia and Maryland (Westminister, Md., 2007), 327; Ancestry.com (U.S. Presbyterian
Church Records, 1701-1970); Richmond Times-Dispatch, December 16, 1930.

TV

EZ
“Tom. Estep
Covington
Ky”

(Silliman Avenue)

William T. Estep (1837-August 16, 1866) registered at the Mammoth Cave Hotel July 25,
1865, and was one of a number of former Confederates or Southern sympathizers who
represented Covington that week. He was son of William H. Estep (1801-1898) and Elizabeth
Winslow (1807-1881) and before the war was a bookkeeper. On August 1, 1861, he became a
second lieutenant, and the following November 28 was promoted to captain and quartermaster of
the 2" Kentucky Infantry, CSA. He aided in the distribution of ammunition for the Southern
attack at Fort Donelson February 15, 1862, and was among those surrendered the next day. Six
months later, August 27, he was exchanged for Captain John B. Whorf of the 22"? Massachusetts
and returned to duty, serving until August 1864 if not longer. Findagrave #87372993 (William T.
Estep); 1860 Census, Ky., Kenton, Covington, 24 Ward, 85; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 7:
343, Ser. 2, Vol. 4: 439; Mammoth Hotel register.

“Lewis Wolfley
1865”
(Cleaveland Avenue)

Lewis Wolfley (October 8, 1839-February 12, 1910), born in Philadelphia, was the second
son of Lewis A. Wolfley (1807-1844), a naval physician and Eleanor Irvin (d. 1841), the
daughter of William W. Irvin, a Lancaster, Ohio, lawyer, congressman, and state supreme court
judge. Through the Irvins Wolfley was related to the Ewing and Sherman families. Upon his
parents’ passing, he and his brother lived with an uncle, Thomas Irvin at Pomeroy, Ohio, and in
their youth often visited their cousins, William T. Sherman and Thomas Ewing, Jr. At his uncle’s
Lewis “learned surveying and mining skills,” and about 1859 went to Keokuk, Iowa, seeking
work as a civil engineer. Failing, he returned to his uncle’s household, which had moved to
Newport, Kentucky. In December 1861 he joined the 3' Kentucky Cavalry, USA, as captain. He
saw action in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia, including the March to the Sea, but in Spring
1865 he was back in Kentucky rounding up guerrillas, finally mustering out as major the
following July 15. Eleven days later he signed in at Mammoth Cave’s hotel and took the long
tour. Post-war he had a variety of jobs. In New Orleans he helped to rebuild railroad bridges, and
served successively as U. S. deputy collector and assessor of internal revenue. By 1872 he was
involved in Colorado mining, and in the early 1880s was a civil engineer in Arizona Territory.
While there, April 18, 1889-August 20, 1890, he served as governor amid much controversy and
was forced to resign. He moved to Prescott and later to Maricopa County, renewing his work as
an engineer and surveyor. Finally, in 1908, he migrated to Los Angeles, California, where he
tried to use ocean waves to generate electricity. He died from being struck by a streetcar, and
was buried in Prescott. Scot Wrighton and Earl Zarbin, “Lewis Wolfley, Territorial Politics, and
the Sounding of the Arizona Republican,” The Journal of Arizona History, 31 (Autumn, 1990),

EZtI

307-8; Wikipedia (Lewis Wolfley); Findagrave #9747 (Lewis Wolfley); Poore, Political
Register, 464; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 23, Pt.1: 628, 641, 644; Vol. 30, Pt. 3: 554; Vol. 32,
pt. 3: 558; Vol. 44: 379; 1860 Census, Ky., Campbell, Jamestown Dist., Newport P.O., 52;
(1900), Ariz., Maricopa, 30 Enum. Dist., 4B; Mammoth Hotel register.

“A A. Armold
30" Wis Vols”
(The Labyrinth)

Alexander Ahab Arnold (October 20, 1833-March 1, 1915) was born at Rhinebeck,
Dutchess County, New York, to Archibald H.R. Armold (1807-1876) and Catherine M.E. Schultz
(1812-1872). He graduated from the Ohio Law School at Poland in 1855, and after a short
practice at Hudson, New York, two years later moved to Galesville, Wisconsin. In August 1862
he became captain of Company C, 30" Wisconsin Infantry, and served in Wisconsin and Dakota
Territory until November 1864. Then his regiment was momentarily moved to the Bowling
Green vicinity before in January 1865 it was sent to Louisville where it was on provost duty until
its muster out the next September. Arnold with three fellow officers from his regiment registered
at the Mammoth Cave Hotel August 11, 1865, and paid for the long tour. Upon his return to
Galesville he took up agriculture, eventually owning 400 acres, and became a “breeder of
purebred stock,” primarily short horn cattle and Berkshire swine. For years he was the county
surveyor and three times was a member of the state legislature, both as a representative, 1871
and 1880, and senator, 1878-80. His other activities included interest in local agricultural and
historical societies, membership in the Masons, and being vice president of the Galesville Bank.
He married twice, in 1859 to Hattie E. Tripp (1837-1861) of New York, with whom he fathered a
daughter who died in 1862, and February 1, 1869, to Mary D. Douglas (1848-1933) of Melrose,
Wisconsin, who gave him seven children between 1872 and 1880. Findagrave #13636882 (A. A.
Arnold), 63112167 (A.H.R. Arnold), 13636904 (Mary D.D. Amold); Eben D. Pierce, ed.,
History of Trempealean County (Chicago and Winoma, 1917), 290-92; Dyer, Compendium,
1686; Mammoth Hotel register; 1910 Census, Wis., Trempealean, Gale Twp., 165“ Enum. Dist.,
10B.

“Kuno Kuhn 1865
Pittsburg”
“Kuno Kuhn Oct 11 1865”
(Cleaveland Avenue)

Kuno Kuhn (June 16, 1840-May 30, 1931), a child of Christian Friedrich Kuhn (1811-
1883) and Regina Fichner (1817-1886), was a Pittsburgh native and pre-war teamster. From July
19 through November 9, 1864, he was a corporal in Company F, 193 Pennsylvania Infantry,
called out because of a Confederate railroad raid. Most of the time Kuhn’s company was
stationed at/near Wilmington, Delaware, and never heard a hostile shot. After his service he
entered the petroleum business and was “one of the original oil pioneers at Pit Hole,
Pleasantville.” He “became an independent producer at Bradford” in McKean County, where he

m7

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died. He is buried at Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh. Ancestry.com (Kuno Kuhn); Bates,
Pennsylvania Volunteers, 9: 384; New Castle (Pa.) News, June 1, 1931.

“Milroy
Nov 1, 1865”
(Pensacola Avenue)

Robert Huston Milroy (July 11, 1816-March 29, 1890), a son of Samuel Milroy (1780-
1845) and Martha M. Huston (1786-1858), was an Indiana-born, Vermont educated, Mexican
War veteran, practicing law in Rensselaer in his home state when the secession crisis erupted.
Becoming colonel of the 9" Indiana Infantry, he was promoted to major general, and suffered a
significant defeat at Winchester, Virginia in June 1863. Much of 1864-65 he commanded the
defenses of the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad in Tennessee. During that time, August
1864, with other officers, he visited Nickajack Cave in Marion County of that state. On July 11,
1865, he was ordered home “for muster out of service.” The following October he reappeared in
Nashville and on the 31%, in company with George H. Hull (1840-1921), a former
quartermaster’s office employee, and John Quincy Thompson (1839-1903), correspondent for
the Cincinnati Commercial and New York Times and later editor of the Washington (D.C.)
Sunday Chronicle, he traveled by rail toward Mammoth Cave. The next day the three of them did
the “short route 7 miles,” getting “out at dark, and stayed at the hotel.” On November 2 they did
the long tour guided by Mat Bransford. Milroy resumed lawyering in his home state and for a
while resided in Delphi. From 1872 until his death he was an Indian agent in Washington
Territory, headquartered at Olympia. On May 17, 1849, he married Mary Jane Armitage (1824-
1904) and between 1850 and 1866 they had one girl and six boys. Papers of Andrew Johnson, 7:
77, 78, 257, 259; Findagrave #5895158 (R. H. Milroy), 31387261 (Samuel Milroy), 94348286
(G. H. Hull); Ancestry.com (Robert H. Milroy, George H. Hull, John Q. Thompson);
Washington Evening Star, August 22, 1903; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 49, Pt. 2: 1075-76;
Margaret B. Paulus, comp., Papers of Robert Huston Milroy (4 vols., n.p., 1965), 2: 44; DAB, 7:
20-21; Mammoth Hotel register; 1870 Census, Ind., Carroll, Delphi P.O., 71.

“Geo. H. Hull “Geo. H. Hull
Nov | 1865” Cincinnati
Nov 1% 1865”
(Pensacola Avenue)

George Huntington Hull (November 22, 1840-March 12, 1921) was born in Dansville,
New York, a child of Reverend Leverett Hull (1796-1852) and Sarah Lord (1808-1893). About
1844 his family moved to Ohio, but he was schooled in Oakfield and Alexandria in his native
state. On the eve of the war he was a clerk in Cincinnati, living in a boarding house with an older
brother. As a member of the Cincinnati Zouaves, he served in the first organization of Company
D, 2™ Ohio Infantry, April 16-August 16, 1861, likely participating in the disastrous first battle
of Bull Run. He returned to Cincinnati and found employment in the U. S. Quartermaster’s
Office. During the fall of 1865 he accompanied ex-General Robert H. Milroy on a tour of

i~
E295

Mammoth Cave. Becoming a businessman, from 1868 until 1871 he was associated with Addy,
Hull and Company, residing in Cincinnati with his mother, brother, and family. During the latter
year he began an iron enterprise, George H. Hill and Company in Louisville, which lasted until
1890. He also headed other commercial concerns, Hull Coal and Coke in Roanoke, Virginia,
1885-94; George H. Hull Freight Line, 1865-94; and the American Pig Iron Storage Warrant
Company. In 1890 he moved to New York City, at first residing at 163 W. 86" Street then in
Tuxedo Park. On October 30, 1877, he married Lucia Eugene Houston (1854-1943) and they had
a daughter and a son. In 1911 he published Industrial Depression. He is buried in Cave Hill
Cemetery Louisville. Lyman H. Weeks, ed., Prominent Families of New York (New York, 1897),
300; Findagrave #39270369 (Leverett Hull), 94348276 (G. H. Hull); 1860 Census, Ohio,
Hamilton, Cincinnati, 14‘ Ward, 81; ( 1870), 11" Ward, 17; Ancestry.com (George Huntington
Hull); Civil War badges.com Catalog.

“Fred Hope “Etna Saunders”
Aug 5" 1866”
(Ganter Avenue)

Frederick “Fred” Walcott Hope (December, 1838-May 16, 1906), a New Yorker, was a
son of Frederick (b. c1818), a machinist, and Emeline Hope (b. c1826?), who at mid-century
lived in Cortlandt, Westchester County. Fred migrated west to Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, and there
enlisted in the 16™ Iowa Infantry, serving as first lieutenant and regimental quartermaster from
September 3, 1862, until May 31, 1865. His regiment participated in the Vicksburg, Meridian,
Atlanta and Carolinas campaigns. On July 22, 1864, after severe fighting, much of the 16",
possibly including Hope, was forced to surrender. The following December he was put “in
charge of wagon transportation and repair shops” for part of Sherman’s army. When he returned
to lowa is not known, but on December 23, 1873, he married Etna Saunders (July 11, 1846-June
13, 1917), also of Mt. Pleasant, and daughter of Presley Saunders (1809-1889), a wealthy
banker-merchant, and Huldah Bowen (1819-1902). They had a daughter in 1875 and remained in
Mt. Pleasant as long as Fred lived. In 1880 he was a collector for a freight goods company, but
five years later he was a lawyer residing on W. Monroe Street. After his death Etna lived in
Lincoln, Nebraska, but upon her demise she was interred beside her husband in Mt. Pleasant Old
City Cemetery. Fred Hope was a guest at the Mammoth Cave Hotel twice, May 14, 1864, and
August 4, 1866, giving his address on the latter occasion as “Georgia.” Etna Saunders did not
stay at the hotel on either of these dates. Did she visit the cave at some time and scratch her name
in Ganter Avenue, or while thinking of her did Fred mark her name near his on August 5, 1866?
Ancestry.com (Frederick Walcott Hope, Jr., Etna Saunders, Headstone Applications for Military
Veterans, 1925-1970, Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865); Findagrave
#6504167 (Frederick Wolcott Hope, Jr.), 6504174 (Etna Saunders Hope); 1870 Census, Iowa,
Henry, Center Twp., Mt. Pleasant P.O., 106; (1880), 96 Enum. Dist., 34; 1885 Iowa State
Census, Henry, HH69; Dyer, Compendium, 117; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 38, Pt. 3: 547,
Vol. 53: 45; Mammoth Hotel register.

ya

E24

“HO Seixas”
(El Ghor)

Henry Octavius Seixas (July 4, 1841-May 19, 1911) “was of San Domingon parentage”
and born on a ship enroute from San Domingo to New York City. His father and mother,
Herman (b. c1792) and Abigail Seixas, “died when he was infant.” A “Mrs. Peters” reputedly
took care of him a while in New York, but by 1850 he and an older brother lived in the
household of Josephine Armour in New Orleans. In that city young Seixas worked for Letchford
and Company, dry goods merchants, until the war. About April 26, 1861, he enlisted in
Company B, 1“ (Nelligan’s) Louisiana Infantry, CSA, which the succeeding July 25 at
Richmond, Virginia, was detached and assigned to the artillery, eventually becoming Captain
George A. Green’s Louisiana Infantry, CSA, which the succeeding July 25 at Richmond,
Virginia, was detached and assigned to the artillery, eventually becoming Captain George A.
Green’s Louisiana Guard Battery. Promoted corporal, he was wounded in the left groin at the
Second Battle of Bull Run, August 30, 1862, and afterwards was absent for a prolonged period.
By August 1864 he was in the Trans-Mississippi Department where he served as a captain in
charge of a military court. He was paroled at Shreveport, Louisiana, June 29, 1865, and soon
returned to the Crescent City. On or about August 8, 1866, he toured portions of Mammoth
Cave, probably taking the long excursion since he left his name in El Ghor. In the early 1870s he
partnered with Alfred H. Isaacson in the grocery business. Later he teamed up with Paul O.
Fazende and became a financier, and as such helped with the funding of the Poughkeepsie
Bridge over the Hudson River. During the mid-1890s he split from Fazende and moved to New
York City to “look after” the bridge project and other interests in that locale. Reportedly “at one
time a millionaire,” he was involved one way or another in a number of enterprises. These
included interests in the street railway of New Orleans, the Louisiana Lottery, and the Louisiana
Sulphur Mining Company of Calcasieu Parish. He held directorships in several industrial
organizations, such as the Columbus and Hocking Valley Iron Company of Ohio and the Sloss-
Sheffield Steel and Iron Company of Alabama. He never married and because of financial
troubles committed suicide in Central Park by shooting himself. Findagrave #197057681 (Henry
O. Seixas); Ancestry.com (Herman Seixas, U.S. City Directories); 1850 Census, La., Orleans,
New Orleans, 2" Ward, HH895; (1880), 3 Ward, 20% Enum. Dist., 1; Booth, Louisiana
Confederate Soldiers, 3: 509; CSR, RG109, NA, Henry O. Seixas File; Mammoth Hotel register;
Sioux City Journal, May 20, 1911; New Orleans Times-Democrat, July 22, 1911.

“A. G. C. Mode
Coatesville Pa 1867”
(Black Avenue)

Alexander G. C. Mode (March 11, 1828-October 17, 1906), son of William Mode (1774-
1839) and Elizabeth Baker (1799-1872), was a Chester County, Pennsylvania, master paper
maker. During Lee’s invasion he served June 16-July 31, 1863, in Captain Alban G. Myers’s
Independent Company of Pennsylvania Militia Cavalry. But about the same time, when drafted,
he hired a substitute. He married Anne Gillam Comly (1848-1929) and they had two boys.

‘LO

E276

Findagrave #22439720 (Alexander Mode), 22423050 (Anna G. Comly); Bates, Pennsylvania
Volunteers, 10: 1331; 1860 Census, Pa., Chester, E. Fallowfield Twp., Ereildown P.O., 81;
(1880), 70" Enum. Dist., 26C; Ancestry.com (Draft Records, 1863-65); Pennsylvania Death

Certificates, 1906-67.

“J R Procter “J R Procter
Lost here Ag 27 1874”
Aug 16 1867” (Jim Cave)

(Ganter Avenue)

John Robert Procter (March 16, 1844-December 12, 1903), a native of Mason County,
Kentucky, was the oldest son of George Morton Procter (1815-1894), a merchant, and Ann
Marie Young (1822-1846). His father soon moved North, spending about a decade in business at
Philadelphia and New York. Consequently, John was largely raised by a maternal great aunt,
Emily Shackelford (c1797-1864), and an older second cousin, Elizabeth Johnson Gray (1817-
1896). On July 11, 1859, he and two companions from Maysville registered at the Mammoth
Cave Hotel and presumably soon toured the cave. In 1861 he wanted to fight for the South, but to
prevent that his aunt reportedly sent him to study science at the University of Pennsylvania. He
supposedly completed his freshman year before returning to Kentucky. One source claims that he
did enter the Confederate army and became an artillery lieutenant. However, his name does not
appear on any list of rebel soldiers. After the war he became a clerk in Cincinnati and obtained
the photographic rights to Mammoth Cave for five years with bookkeeper John H.
O’Shaughnessy (1840-1891), who variously lived in the same city and Newport, Kentucky. They
engaged Charles Waldack to make the pictures and during the summer and fall of 1866 they
conducted two expeditions to the cave for that purpose. They succeeded in making the first in-
cave photographs anywhere, and by late that year had forty stereoviews for salle, which soon
was increased by two. In 1867 John was touted as the owner of Diamond Cave, which he sold to
his father. During the 1870s he was an assistant to Nathaniel C. Shaler, the state geologist, and
perhaps in that capacity visited Jim Cave near Mammoth, where he left his name August 27,
1874. From 1880 to 1893 he himself was director of the state geological survey. Late in 1893 he
was appointed to the U.S. Civil Service Commission, moved to Washington, D.C., and held that
position until his death. His wife was Julia Leslie Dobyns (1851-1924) who with two sons
survived him. DAB, 8: 241-42; Stanley D. Sides, Diamond Caverns (2007), 7; Chris Howes, To
Photograph Darkness (Carbondale, Ill., 1989), 50-52, 55, 58-60, 67, 70-71; Ancestry.com (J. R.
Procter, Elizabeth Johnson, Hamilton Gray, George Shackelford, Ann Marie Young, Julia L.
Dobyns); 1850 Census, Ky., Mason, 21% Dist., HH 285; (1860), Maysville, 3" Ward, 63;
Campbell, Newport, 220; (1870), 12; (1880), Ohio, Hamilton, Cincinnati, 125" Enum. Dist., 50:
Cincinnati Daily Gazette, July 10, 1866; Cincinnati Commercial, August 3, November 17, 1866;
Mammoth Hotel register.

“) B Putie
Louisville
1868”

ir Pas J

en

FN

E2T6

(Cleveland Avenue)

John Barbee Pirtle (May 17, 1842-January 17, 1934), born in Louisville, was a son of Dr.
Claiborne Pirtle (1806-1853) and Eliza Barbee (1817-1889). At Camp Green River, Kentucky,
October 2, 1861, he became a private in Company B, 9" Kentucky Infantry, CSA, and in April
1862 fought at Shiloh. Briefly detailed as a clerk in the adjutant general’s office of the Kentucky
(“Orphan”) Brigade, in July at Vicksburg he became adjutant of the 31° Mississippi regiment
and was with it during the attack on Baton Rouge August 5. Then for a short time he was acting
assistant adjutant general on the staff of Major General John C. Breckinridge. In March 1863 he
was commissioned second lieutenant in Company D, 4" Kentucky Infantry, but almost
immediately became acting aide-de-camp on the staff of Brigadier General Ben Hardin Helm,
Abraham Lincoln’s brother-in-law. Helm reputedly was giving Pirtle an order when he was
mortally wounded at Chickamauga, and Pirtle helped move Helm to a field hospital. Two months
later the young lieutenant was adjutant of the post at Chickamauga Station, and when the Army
of Tennessee retreated to Dalton, he held the same position there. From Spring 1864 until the
war’s end he was assistant adjutant general on Major General William B. Bate’s staff. suffering
wounds at Resaca May 14 and Jonesboro September 1, and surrendered at High Point, North
Carolina, May 3, 1865. The next year he returned to Louisville, and soon became general agent
for an insurance company, and many years later engaged in banking. About 1874 he married
Mary Belle Thomas (1849-1920) and fathered a boy and three girls. His maternal uncle, John
Barbee, visited Mammoth Cave’s Franklin Avenue in 1841 and autographed the wall.
Findagrave #10176910 (J. B. Pirtle); Ancestry.com (Claiborne Pirtle, John Barbee Pirtle);
McDowell, Kentucky Genealogy and Biography, 9: 129-30; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 17, Pt.
2; 898; Vol. 30, Pt. 2: 206; Vol. 45, Pt. 1: 751; 1910 Census, Ky., Jefferson, 5“ Enum. Dist., 7A
(1920), 5B; M. O. Smith Diary, Nov. 24, 2018.

. & COs
Memphis 1869
Tenn”
(Gratz Avenue)

Charles Standish Collins (October 17, 1846-December 14, 1912) was born in Abingdon,
Virginia, to Charles Collins (1813-1875), a college professor, and Harriet Newell Hart (1820-
1889), natives of Maine and Pennsylvania. His family moved to Memphis, and March 8 until
sometime in May 1862, young Charles S. was a private in Company L, 154" Senior Tennessee
Infantry, CSA, until his discharge at Corinth, Mississippi, where he was “sworn out by his
Father” for being below the legal conscript age requirement. By 1870, still in Memphis, he was a
lawyer, then within a couple of years moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. About 1872 he married
Catherine Comfort (1852-1940) and by 1887 they had eight offspring. Ancestry.com (Charles
Collins, Charles S. Collins); CSR RG109 (M268, Roll 352), NA, C. S. Collins File; 1850
Census, Va., Washington, 67" Dist., 106; (1870), Tenn., Shelby, 14" Dist., 10; (1880), Ark.,

E297

Pulaski, Little Rock, 143" Enum. Dist., 21; (1900), 70 Enum. Dist., 4B; (1910), 107 Enum.
Dist., 24B.

“May 22nd
1869 (Cleveland Avenue)
T G Foster

Montgomery
May 22 Ala 1869”

Thomas Gardner Foster (June 15, 1845-April 26, 1915) was a son of Thomas Flourney
Foster (1796-1848), U.S. congressman from Columbus, Georgia, 1829-35, 1841-43, and
Elizabeth McKinne (1810-1893). He was named for his maternal grandfather who lived in
Augusta, and previous to secession he lived there with his widowed grandmother, mother, and
two siblings. His youth was plagued with poor health, and as a consequence he lost an eye.
During the war his brother, James Henry Foster (1841-1863), a private in Company A, 5"
Georgia Infantry, CSA, was mortally wounded at Chickamauga. Usually thought ineligible for
military duty, while still in Augusta, July 31, 1863, Thomas was mustered in as a private for six
months in Company C, 18" Georgia Battalion (State Guards) Infantry for local defense. He
probably did little service because soon, October 14-December 31, he was paid $2.50 per day
and then $100 a month as a clerk and messenger at the Confederate Nitre and Mining Bureau’s
Atlanta Iron office military store. During that time, on November 21 he was ordered to go to
Cleveland, Tennessee, and take charge of two railroad cars loaded with copper. But just as he got
there the Southern defeats at Chattanooga caused him to be “cut of[f] from Dalton by the
Enemy.” He “took” the cars to “Loudon, where they were thrown into the [Tennessee] River by
orders of General [John C.] Vaughn.” He was then obliged to return to Atlanta by a long, mostly
rail route northeast, via Bristol, Lynchburg, and Petersburg, and back south by way of
Wilmington, Kingsville, and Augusta, finally arriving December 18. The next morning he was
sent on a two-day excursion to Cartersville, Georgia, and the rolling mill at the Etowah
Manufacturing and Mining Company. Late in the conflict, he supposedly for a “short time”
served “on Gen. Joseph Wheeler’s staff.” Fairly soon after peace was restored, Foster moved to
Montgomery, Alabama, where he became an officer in gas light and electric light companies and
a promoter of water works. On April 11, 1871, he married Elizabeth Tyler (1852-1928), a
granddaughter of President John Tyler, and became the father of two boys and a girl. Findagrave
#61385284 (T. G. Foster), 7984714 (T. F. Foster); Thomas McA. Owen, History of Alabama and
Dictionary of Alabama Biography (4 vols., Chicago, 1921), 3: 605-6; 1860 Census, Ga.,
Richmond, Augusta, 1‘ Ward, 32; CSR, RG109 (M266, Roll 319), NA, T. Gardner Foster File;
Lillian Henderson, Roster of the Confederate Soldiers of Georgia (6 Vols., Hapeville, Ga., 1958-
64), 1: 647.

“July 28
1869 O Mull (Cleaveland Avenue/
Richmond VA Snowball Dining Room)

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E278

ps toi DE Peas etches, ae LS Pe
\G UsA Mm? V
August 2st L872 ”

Joshua Stroud : Letcher, AY Cae @, L840 - January a 1894),
A native Pewnsyluanian, was a son of Toshus S Fletcher, Sx (814-1887),

of the Phil. oe slphi La Dun, avd Savak ae Nichy Lson (1s15 (901).

le a Cools ) t ct La abide ck ot Saunders! $

Academy at Chester. iesny te tLe war lhe wes om cleyk residing us th

Wc parents. On May. LZ, \S$Gl, he wes Commissioned Ist Lieutenant tin +,

newly created Lit. United Diates Tutantyy, whiel Struta ree the Vivsints

icimity through out the cont |ict Promoted Captain Wrarch 7, (G2, he held

that rane WA AW years. Oln Ausust | 1R6, he was meds major by bveu et

foy ga land semuice ty i, Battl, of Ye Wildecwess, Sear thereafter, iathe
Fighting cat Wel ‘ + in " ‘ ised hiv ek 7

ne skkc {| And ie i ante \ne WaheUve Ved nas US o Lt hous,

Soe Ww Love, wees ths owl, of Picer prmaining he 3} rth es ro ae lc Vecetucl 4

S¢ comd a a SY ee ER we ith, the L{i+t re, F |

Aoril V4 1869, when he was tearshernel to Com pans, EG US. 5 Seton hs

ee We Seveed jy ov Commanded various pests thresh ut the South ou lest

Sich, HS Sackson, L369, awit Corinth, (¥ 20, Mississippi — Rarvectere at Loursuthle.

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Mable Abn IIT dst dah at Now Orleans, On Februse 8 1820
\ne. lw . Lal Mw “Av tins ++ SUMMecr

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lees iw cobehn Tevvitye, eal Ervbvurry [896 \eSt Soy 5 URN ua ape

Ww 1889 he wa S involus " CanAA " \ [ Ax y Lave Carscy,

Lt involucd Susan A. Tren ExN L829), whow We had Marered fs April L835.

awd other of Sicers At Fort Omaha, Nebrastes whieh Ine then ee
We. was abucius tno Ais wife Care Wwironsfulls accuscd \h cv ~% infidelit, wo ML

two other offvcers of the yest, aud then denicd do ins it. Roth of fircavs seus sts

CA beating and Fal) 1889 Fletehey was rates, oe mavtialed Poy conduct Unb? ce ming

hy An Se eke. and \t was foun guilty and recommend ed fue Fa aaa’

Ths case went all the way ty President Rewiamin Haviison , aid ea A ok

Pichehers p sus rout geod Vs curd tn santnes was altered a thaws Y Qa § s4S—

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Yiwstowy vel Se tees oo bee Gael pay are yocymisSiou th a ee
tows Fletcher Aid just Pie OL uae TB ON eee de cat Sau:
tims were divorced cud he Ceturneo! ty Piles leWie umd Wout di
Kaiti. Wis Wastes oh Vere C1 te Steet te git oS oh. Rvirsht e
Dee cone and was buried i he Philadelphia’ laurel Lill Cemetery. Find -
grave TF 3R08R 175 (Toshug Stroud Fletcher, Te)} Philedslyhls ems paper
Clipping, Sanuney t 1899; Ancestry com (Returns from Militar Poste 180619/6,
Pliledelphie Death Cortfeates Cad sx,1803-19/5)' 1860 Census Be, Philadelphia,
Platladelphis, 2st Ward Hit 597 § emma Sow. l Vol. 12, Pb2: 500, Vol. 2,
a os 1 Dyer, Comptid tun ¥ nt a “os / Yin
anal iy Ry eye j ti ne El ctel ow. as 5, Marriage, Decth,
Court Marital tneludiac ex ree P Vail 4c CTE Octoby Il, IR Deccules
21.870; Philadlphn Sil ae rw mr ee VSerg Taw 23, (84),

July 28”

Oscar O. Mull (1837-April 7, 1874), born to Jacob Mull (1804-1853) and Eliza
Moorehouse (1810-1852), was a native and resident of Richmond, Virginia. A painter, before the
war he married Eliza M.J. (c1839-1863), whose surname has not yet been found, and fathered at
least two children. On April 19, 1861, he joined Company A, 1 (soon redesignated, G, 12")
Virginia Infantry, CSA. Promoted corporal May 1, 1862, he was reduced to the ranks the
following November 15. He was frequently absent sick, such as in July, November 1862-
February 1863, much of the latter months in Chimborazo Hospital with bronchitis. He was
furloughed with the same malady the next June, and afterwards was mostly present through
October 1864. He fought at Chancellorsville, the 1864 Overland Campaign between Lee and
Grant, and was wounded at Petersburg. Post-war he returned to Richmond, resumed painting,
and later became a clerk, living at 1725 Venable Street. He also sold “an indigestive remedy,”
and during his final years suffered from epilepsy. On February 5, 1866, he wed Margaret
Nicholson (1846-1915). The Virginia Historical Society has his wartime diary. Findagrave
#33144157 (O. O. Mull), 33144126 (Eliza M. J. Mull), 93378015 (Margaret N. Mull); CSR,
RG109 (M324, Roll 526), NA, Oscar O. Mull File; Richmond directories (1870-71, 1873-74);
1860 Census, Va., Henrico, Richmond, 1*t Ward, 171; (1900), 815' Enum. Dist., 20A.

“Oct 28/76
W M Davidson
Jacksonville Fla”
(El Ghor)

William Matthews Davidson (August 16, 1841-May 11, 1915), oldest son of John M.W.
(b. c1802) and Mary Davidson (b. c1810), was born in Gadsden County, Florida, and was a clerk
before the war. About April 4, 1861, he became first lieutenant of Company G, 1* Florida
Infantry, CSA, and by early the next year became an aide-de-camp on the staff of Brigadier
General J. Patton Anderson, keeping that position the remainder of the conflict except briefly
with Major General Edward Johnson in December 1864. He saw action at Shiloh, Perryville,
Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Nashville, and other fields. At Shiloh Anderson reported that
Davidson “was constantly by my side, except when absent by my orders, all of which delivered
with promptitude and intelligence” and had “many narrow escapes, having frequently to pass
under most galling fires to reach his point of destination.” At Chickamauga he was “ever ready,
active, and intelligent in the communication of orders or the rallying of a broken line.” On
February 27, 1864, he was ordered with his general to Florida, where Anderson commanded the
camp at Lake City until the summer, when they returned to the Army of Tennessee near Atlanta.
After hostilities ended he moved to Jacksonville and became an agent and then superintendent of
the Florida Central Railroad. In 1873 he married Clara Agnes Boulter (1843-1906) and they had
two daughters. He died in Jackson County, Florida, and was buried in Old Jacksonville
Cemetery, Duval County. Findagrave #55254459 (W. M. Davidson); 1850 Census, Fla.,
Gadsden, 7" Dist., 179; (1860), Quincy Dist., 82; (1870), Duval, Baldwin, 435; (1880),
Jacksonville, 36" Enum. Dist., 10; (1900), 45" Enum. Dist., 84B; CSR, RG109 (M251, Roll 26),

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Na, William H. Davidson File; Official Records, Ser. 1, Vol. 10, Pt. 1: 497, 503; Vol. 20, Pt. 1:
766; Vol. 30, Pt. 3: 320; Vol 38, Pt. 3: 775; General and Staff Officers, RG109 (M331, Roll 26),
NA, William M. Davidson File; List of Staff Officers of the Confederate Army, 41.

“Wm Garvin” “W. M. Garvin
(Main Cave) Sept 8' 1879”
(Ganter Avenue)

William Garvin (c1847-May 24, 1906), possibly born in Green County, Kentucky, was
one of eleven slaves belonging to Robert Taylor Garvin (1825-1904), a farmer who in 1860
resided near Bear Wallow in Hart County and near the end or just after the war moved to
Bowling Green. At the latter place on January 23, 1865, William was recruited by Captain
Atwood G. Hobson as a private for Company M, 12" U. S. Colored Heavy Artillery. He was
described as a farmer, five feet five and a half inches tall, with brown eyes and complexion and
black hair. He signed his papers with an X but likely later attained the rudiments of reading and
writing. Mustered in fifteen days later he was consistently present until his discharge at
Louisville April 24, 1866, serving in garrisons at Bowling Green, Camp Nelson, and other
places. Settling in Edmonson County, he farmed and became a guide at Mammoth Cave. Various
dates for his cave employment have been suggested, but he certainly was thus occupied by 1876
and continued until about 1902. He was known for his “good humor” and joke-telling ability.
The “Corkscrew,” a narrow passage near Mammoth Dome, was reputedly his discovery. He was
credited by Speleologist Horace C. Hovey with finding in 1895 the original vertical entrance to
what soon was called Colossal Cave and with others exploring the first 1,300 feet of passage,
“Garvin Avenue.” On May 27, 1876, he married Harriet Bransford (c1862/63-1961), daughter of
an earlier cave guide, Nick Bransford, and Charlotte Bishop the former widow of Mammoth
Cave’s most famous black guide, Stephen L. Bishop. Findagrave #201045992 (William Garvin);
Ancestry.com (Robert T. Garvin; Owners of slaves who enlisted in the U.S. army; 1876
Edmonson County, Kentucky, marriages); 1860 Census, Ky., Hart, 1° Dist., Bear Wallow P.O.,
23; (1900), 3 Enum. Dist., 10A; CSR, RG94, NA, William Garvin File; Bob and Judi
Thompson, Mammoth Cave and the Kentucky Cave Region (Charleston, S.C., 2003), 29-30;
Horace C. Hovey, “The Colossal Cavern of Kentucky,” Scientific American Supplement, 56
(November 21, 1903), 23316; Indianapolis News, March 2, 1961.

“Thos H. Hays
Gen’! Supt
Pullman Car Co”
(Proctor Cave)

Thomas Hercules Hays (October 6, 1837-November 9, 1909), son of William Houston
Hays (1812-1897) and Nancy Neill (1811-1873), was born in Hardin County, Kentucky. He
attended St. Joseph College in Bardstown and became a lawyer. Pre-war he was an officer in the
Kentucky State Guard and 1860-61 commanded the “Salt River Battalion.” During October 1861
he helped raise and became major of the 6" Kentucky Infantry, CSA, and the next April

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“behaved well” at Shiloh. Soon, he shifted to staff duty, becoming on June 2, 1862, an additional
assistant adjutant general for Brigadier General William Preston, then from the next fall until
September 20, 1863, he was acting assistant inspector general for his brother-in-law, Brigadier
General Ben Hardin Helm. He was absent sick for two or three months, and on F ebruary 29,
1864, still as major, he was assigned as a Confederate assistant adjutant general and ordered to
report to the Richmond Adjutant and Inspector General’s office. There, April 12, he was
assigned to the Army of Tennessee to make special inspections and to make sure the rosters were
correct. Twelve days later he reported to General Joseph E. Johnston (1807-1 891) at Dalton. His
duties were greatly interrupted by the active movements and fighting during the Atlanta
campaign. Remaining with the “main army” until August 8, he went to Athens, Georgia, to
prepare the rosters of Brigadier General John S. Williams’s (1818-1898) cavalry brigade. The
next day that unit “moved to the enemy’s rear” and Hays went with it, and did not return for
“about sixty days.” By December 3 he was at General John Bell Hood’s (1831-1879)
headquarters in Tennessee, in time for the disastrous Nashville campaign. On March 21, 1865, he
was ordered to Greenbrier County, West Virginia, to inspect a battalion. After the fighting ended
he farmed for a few years before serving two terms as a state senator. He became involved in
railroading, especially the Louisville and Southern and Hodgenville and Elizabethtown lines. He
acquired “large shares” of Pullman Car stock and eventually became president of that company.
He married twice, to Sarah Hardin Helm (1845-1868), with whom he had three daughters, and
Georgia Broughton (1845-1934) of LaGrange, Georgia, who produced six more daughters.
Findagrave #10176644 (T. H. Hays); Confederate Veteran, 18 (1890), 38; Allardice and Hewitt,
Kentuckians in Gray, 293-97; General & Staff Officers, RG109 (M331, Roll 122), NA, Thomas
H. Hays File; Official Records, Vol. 10, Pt. 1: 620; Vol. 45, Pt. 1: 677.

A. HOHL
Philadelphia
Penna
1887-1888”
(Gothic Avenue)

August Hohl (April 9, 1845-November 29, 1908), third son of Christian Hohl (b. c1802),
a ropemaker, and Catherine Ludwig/Miller (1807-1882), was born in the German state of Baden.
His family came to America in early 1848, and two years later lived in Easton, Pennsylvania. In
1860 August resided at the boarding house of a kinsman, Philip Hohl, at 431 Callowhill Street,
Philadelphia, and was a lithographer. From May 9, 1861, to June 20, 1863, he served as a private
and musician in Company C of a two years’ regiment, the 29 New York Infantry, which
operated mostly in Virginia. He returned to Philadelphia, worked as a clerk and druggist, and
again stayed at Philip Hohl’s. Perhaps in 1867 or earlier he married Julia Ann Stevenson Burr
(1846-1889), and they had two children who did not survive. By 1874 he had his own drug store
at the NE corner of 4" Street and Girard Avenue, which he maintained until about 1900. It was
also his residence. He was an “amateur archaeologist and artifact collector” and at his store he
exhibited “relics and curiosities from his travels abroad,” including the Middle East, Egypt,
Europe, and the Mediterrean area. He was first buried in Monument Cemetery, Philadelphis, but

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in 1956 his and Julia’s remains were moved to Lawnview Cemetery, Montgomery County,
Pennsylvania. Library Company of Philadelphia Digital Collections (August Hohl); Findagrave
#209737973 (August Hohl), 209737536 (Julia Ann Stevenson Burr Hohl), 75645825 (Catherine
Hohl); Ancestry.com (Christian Hohl, Catharine Ludwig/Miller); 1850 Census, Pa.
Northampton, Easton, HH510; (1880), Philadelphia, Philadelphia, 316 Enum. Dist., 20; (1900),
17" Ward, 326" Enum. Dist., 1A: Philadelphia Inquirer, December 1, 1908: Dyer,

Compendium, 1415.