The four hundred-acre May Farm, with its steam-powered grist mill, served as a recruiting post and staging area for the region’s leading secessionists. In September 1861, Jack May, Hiram Hawkins, Ezekial Clay, James M. Thomas, Benjamin Desha, and other Kentucky secessionists marched their militia companies there and organized the 5th Kentucky Infantry, C.S.A. Hawkins’ Bath County volunteers were the first to pitch their tents at the farm, and Jack May’s Morgan County volunteers arrived the next day. William James May, owner of the farm, was Jack’s cousin, and the farm was Jack’s birthplace and boyhood home. The 5th Kentucky later joined Marshall’s command and fought at the Battle of Middle Creek on January 10, 1862. On October 2, 1861, Confederates camped there sent President Jefferson Davis in Richmond a letter saying that their legislature had betrayed them, that they had marched to that point because of its strategic importance with one thousand men, that hundreds were joining them daily, that they could have five thousand men there in two weeks, and that they respectfully asked for an experienced military commander to make them effective in furthering what they called the cause of civil freedom, to which they pledged their lives and sacred honor; the letter was signed by Benjamin Desha, E.F. Clay, James M. Thomas, T.R. Worsham, H.C. Swango, J. May, Jesse Meek, G.W. Connor, G.M. Ewing, John W. Sparks, and John Shawhan.