Kimbrough's Crossroads

In November 1863, Confederate Gen. James Longstreet led a force from Chattanooga to attack Union Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside’s army at Knoxville, but the campaign failed, and in December his men marched east along the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad to winter quarters at Russellville, where they remained until March 1864 as numerous small engagements occurred between Longstreet’s and Burnside’s armies. Two days after Union Gen. Samuel D. Sturgis’s cavalry divisions occupied Dandridge on January 14, 1864, he ordered his division commanders to reconnoiter and secure the countryside at Long Creek on Chucky Road and at Kimbrough’s Crossroads, while Longstreet likewise ordered cavalry and infantry divisions to reconnoiter toward the Federals. As Col. Israel Garrard of the 7th Ohio Cavalry led his division down the road past Ebenezer Church, he suddenly encountered Confederate Gen. Micah Jenkins’s infantry division on the Morristown Road at Kimbrough’s Crossroads. After several minutes of intense fighting, the Federals counterattacked, but Confederate artillery halted the advance, and when additional Confederate infantry reinforced Jenkins, Sturgis ordered Garrard to fall back to Dandridge. The next day, January 17, the same units fought another action there at the town. Confederate Pvt. Francis M. Kelley of the 59th Alabama Infantry was shot early in the fight and died a short time later. His brother-in-law Lt. William McGrady wrote to Kelley’s wife, Caroline, that he had found Marion lying cold, urged her not to weep for him, and said that he trusted he was better off than they were because he was done with this troublesome world. Kelley is buried in the Ebenezer Church Cemetery.

Tennessee · United States