Built circa 1840, this double-pen log house originally stood on the Campbellsville-Columbia Turnpike, where its occupants witnessed thousands of soldiers and hundreds of supply wagons from both northern and southern armies moving along the road during the Civil War. Its builder, Joel Dupuy Atkinson, had died before the war, and his widow, Virginia Griffin Atkinson, lived there with her daughter Martha Rebecca Atkinson and son-in-law James Madison Griffin, who had married in 1858 and came to live with her during the war. The house stood 440 yards from the site of the Battle of Tebbs Bend on the Green River, fought on Saturday morning, July 4, 1863, in a bloody three-and-a-half-hour engagement between three regiments of Confederate cavalry under Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan and five companies of the 25th Michigan Infantry commanded by Colonel Orlando H. Moore. After the battle, many dead and wounded Confederate soldiers were brought there; the most seriously injured were placed on the porch, where holes were drilled in the floor so blood could run through to the ground, while those less seriously wounded were taken into the parlor and a bedroom, and bloodstains can still be seen in the upstairs bedroom. The critical condition of the Confederate force was shown by Morgan's leaving behind three surgeons, W. B. Anderson, J. F. Keiser, and Edwin M. Sheppard, to care for the wounded, after which they and other captured Confederates were taken by Federal forces to the Louisville Military Prison. The nearby W.W.F. Atkinsons were Confederate sympathizers, and when a son was born during the war, the future Doctor Jefferson Lee Atkinson, the family did not reveal his name until after the war and called him only Brother. Private Bennett H. Young of Company B, 8th Kentucky Cavalry, wrote that outside the disaster at Buffington Island, the sad Fourth of July was the darkest day that ever came to General Morgan's division. Lieutenant James H. Ferguson of Company B, 5th Kentucky Cavalry, was severely wounded, left there as a prisoner, and after recovering enough was sent to Johnson's Island, Ohio, where he remained until the end of the war. Private James Polk Tribble of Company B, 11th Kentucky Cavalry, was brought there after the battle and later named his first child after the family because they cared for him so well.
