Morgan in Scottsville

On August 29, 1862, at the beginning of the Confederate invasion of Kentucky, Colonel John Hunt Morgan rode into Scottsville leading a brigade of 1,100 cavalrymen on the way to Lexington to join General Kirby Smith's forces. With him were his brother-in-law and second in command, Basil Duke, Captain John Breckinridge Castleman of a prominent Lexington family, and Colonel George St. Leger Grenfell, a former British army officer and French cavalryman. Many Scottsville citizens came out to see Morgan, including eight-year-old Sallie Porter Edmonds, who more than 65 years later remembered him as a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome man with watchful eyes and a tender, kind expression. From the steps of the Scottsville Hotel on the courthouse square, Morgan told the assembled citizens that the Confederates had come to liberate Kentucky and permanently occupy the state, while his men distributed handbills urging men of the Commonwealth to enlist for the Confederate cause. One listener, young Isaac Hunt, then not quite fifteen, was persuaded to enlist as a private in Company C, 3rd Kentucky Cavalry, CSA. He rode with Morgan until both were captured in Chester, Ohio, in July 1863, after which Hunt was interred at Camp Chase near Columbus, Ohio, paroled at Camp Douglas in Springfield, Illinois, and eventually transferred to Point Lookout, Maryland, for exchange on March 2, 1865. After the war, Hunt, then only 18, married Elizabeth, returned to his boyhood home near Gainesville in Allen County, and died on November 16, 1916, after which he was buried with his wife in the Hunt family graveyard at Gainesville.

Scottsville, Kentucky · United States