Bugle Briefs...

Middle Creek, Perryville featured
as prominent Southern battlefields

The Battle of Middle Creek and the Perryville Battlefield were two Kentucky sites featured in a recent USA Today article about Civil War battlegrounds in the South.

Neal Turnage wrote, “it’s impossible to deny the compelling narrative the Civil War still weaves into the culture of the South. A visit to former battlegrounds and sites where the war played out offers the visitor a gateway into why the issue remains important.”

He noted that Prestonsburg and Perryville were “tickets to that history and its present day resonance.”

Middle Creek, he related, provides two trails – Confederate and Union – and the opportunity to learn about the role of each side along the way. At Perryville, he cited the re-enactment as an event that “takes your breath away.” He also rated the Perryville museum as being excellent in telling the story of what occurred there.

Ten battlegrounds were cited in total: Franklin and Chattanooga in Tennessee; Appomattox and Fredericksburg in Virginia; Hillsboro, W.Va.; Four Oaks, N.C.; Ehrhardt and Charleston, S.C.

Capt. Jack Jouett descendants highlighted

The Jack Jouett House Historic Site featured the history of two Jouett descendants at June and August events.

Battle of Perryville participant George Payne Jouett was the focus at Jack Jouett Patriot Day, June 1, and portrait painter Matthew Harris Jouett was highlighted at a Civil War Sesquicentennial Program, Aug. 10. George was the grandson of the American Revolution hero and Matthew was one of his 12 children.

On the night of June 3-4, 1781, Capt. John “Jack” Jouett Jr. rode 40 miles through the backwoods of Virginia to warn Gov. Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia legislature of the approach of 250 British troops. Jack Jouett’s heroic act saved the American Revolution by preventing the capture of its most important political leaders. Jouett migrated to the Bluegrass after the war where he played an important role in the Kentucky statehood convention, served in the legislature and became a prosperous planter and breeder of fine horses and cattle.

The Jouett historical site is a rural homestead in Versailles and includes a 1780s frontier stone cabin used as a kitchen by the Jouetts. A 1797 Federal-style brick house features a formal parlor, a dining room and three bedrooms. Period furnishing complements the rooms.

Richmond golf classic draws team record

The Battle of Richmond Preservation Celebrity Golf Classic drew a record 23 teams and 100 players Aug. 15 at Battlefield Golf Course.

The tournament supports the Battle of Richmond Association (BORA) and the Roy and Sue Kidd Scholarship Fund for Eastern Kentucky University’s football manager.

Roy Kidd retired as EKU’s football coach in 2002 after 39 seasons. He was a 1953 All-American at Eastern, a 2003 inductee into the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame. He retired as the sixth-winningest coach in NCAA Division I history, winning two national I-AA championships and coaching 55 All-Americans and 41 players who signed with NFL teams.

It was the tournament’s 10th annual event.

Six takes first place again for another photo

Photographer Mark Six continues to win awards for his High Dynamic Range (HDR) photo process, again taking first place in the altered category of Kentucky Living magazine’s 2014 photo contest.

“I’ve had two first-place and one second place win in Kentucky Living contests,” the Shepherdsville photographer said. “I’ve had the good fortune to have them choose Civil War photos in the last two years.”

This year’s winner was of Union soldiers at the Battle of Sacramento re-enactment.

“I processed the shot in color originally, then copied a second layer in Photoshop over top of the original,” he explained. “I then selected black-and-white and went back over the B/W photo and ‘erased’ the B/W revealing the color of the flag below.”

As a result, the photo has the look of a three-dimensional painting.

Wurtland living history event scheduled Nov. 14-15

A Civil War Living History event featuring speakers, authors and a ladies’ tea is scheduled in Wurtland, Nov. 14-15.

The Greenup County activity will take place in and around the historic McConnell House. Completed in 1834, the home is utilized as a tourism center, educational resource and event venue.

For more information, e-mail Col. Charles Dahnmon Whitt at c-dahnmon@roadrunner.com.

180 cannonballs make for enormous blast

Residents in upstate New York were shaken by three enormous blasts in mid-August as hundreds of Civil War-era cannon balls were detonated without warning.

About 180 unexploded cannonballs were found on the grounds of the nation’s oldest arsenal near Albany and were detonated in a nearby quarry. The cannonballs were found on the grounds of the Watervliet Arsenal on the Hudson River just north of New York’s state capital.

Although the cannon balls were not a major explosive threat, authorities said they had no answers as to why the public was not warned about the controlled blasts – three booms moments apart at about 5:30 p.m. – that rattled buildings and startled people for miles. A spokesman for the U.S. Army arsenal said the cannonballs had been found on the grounds during construction projects over the years and stored in the facility’s museum, which closed last fall.

Deer population being thinned out at parks

The National Parks Service has tentatively approved a plan that will allow sharpshooters to kill more than 2,800 white-tailed deer at three Civil War battlefields in Maryland and Virginia over the next five years to curb damage to plants and trees.

With public hunting prohibited in the parks, the deer per square mile ratio has soared above 130 at Antietam, 172 at Manassas and 235 at Monocacy, according to the park service.

The normal population is considered to be 15-20 deer per square mile.

Civil War oddities about…
Slaveholding, Breckinridges, McVey, Mrs. Lincoln

• Slaveholding in the South wasn’t as pervasive as thought. Some numbers: 75 percent of white Southern families did not own slaves; half of all slave owners owned one to five slaves; fewer than one percent of slave owners owned more than 50 slaves.

• During the Battle of Atlanta, Union officer W.C.P. Breckinridge captured Confederate J.C. Breckinridge, his own brother. They were members of the prominent Breckinridge family of Kentucky.

• Hugh McVey, Confederate Company D, 4th Kentucky Infantry, was killed at Shiloh. What makes him an oddity is that he was 70 years old and a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo.

• Mary Todd Lincoln’s closest confidant during the war and her principal comfort on the death of the president was Elizabeth Keckley, a black seamstress who once had been employed by Varina Davis, wife of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.