The Blacksmith Shop

At the time of the Battle of Mill Springs, a small blacksmith shop stood in this area. According to local tradition, the blacksmith mined shale, low grade coal, from the ground near his shop, and several small depressions here may be the remains of those excavations. The shop stood near the right flank of the final Confederate defensive position on this part of the battlefield, and after the battle, like many nearby structures, it sheltered wounded soldiers. A Union Army chaplain who came here the evening after the battle later recalled finding the shop filled with wounded men, with one lying upon the forge. He wrote that the shrieks and groanings of the wounded and dying kept him from sleep, and that after speaking and praying with one soldier, he asked his regiment. The soldier replied, “I am your enemy, but we will be friends in heaven,” then asked that his grandfather in Paris, Tennessee, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, be told of his condition and of his readiness to die in full triumph of faith. The chaplain said he spoke with several others there and tried to direct them to religion amid a scene of wartime suffering in a place usually devoted to peacetime work.

Kentucky · United States