Switch from Union to Confederate
delayed Jessamine County memorial

With the outbreak of the Civil War, many U.S. soldiers – including Robert E. Lee – switched allegiances to the Confederacy.

A Jessamine County courthouse figure probably was among the last to do so. Some 35 years after the war ended, a monument featuring a seven-foot-tall soldier cast in bronze was dedicated at Nicholasville on June 15.

The soldier was a Rebel, but originally, he was a Yankee. The monument company that sculpted the figure had an unclaimed soldier it was willing to part with at a discount. Alterations were made to render the unclaimed warrior into a Rebel.

Looking onward, ever watchful, the soldier gazes down Main Street, resting with much of his weight on his rifle.

By being stationed on the courthouse lawn, he would have seen Union troops on their way to reinforce Camp Nelson.

The bronze-cast soldier stands atop an 11-foot pedestal of unpolished granite. The memorial has been described as the “handsomest public monument in Jessamine County.” It was erected by the Jessamine Confederate Memorial Association and was dedicated to Confederate soldiers who were buried at the nearby Maple Grove Cemetery. In 1997, the monument and its base were listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Memorial Association began raising funds for the monument in 1880 some 15 years after Gen. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. It would take another 16 years before the Association would be able to dedicate the structure.

Before a crowd of some 3,500, the Confederate Soldier Monument was dedicated on the courthouse lawn in Nicholasville on June 15, 1896.

“The city of Nicholasville royally entertained all those who came to unite in the ceremonies,” wrote Col. Bennett H. Young, author of “A History of Jessamine County, Kentucky.”

Young, then living in Louisville, attended and spoke at the dedication:

“We come in tenderness and devotion and affection to mark, beautify and bless the soil that garners their dust, and to declare by this monument,” he said, “which we trust will remain forever, that ... our departed comrades shall be as deathless.”