During the winter of 1861-62, CSA commander Nathan Bedford Forrest was stationed in Hopkinsville and lived with his wife and daughter in a log house at the third residence south. As a colonel commanding six companies of CSA Cavalry, he reconnoitered Union forces between Hopkinsville and the Ohio River, defeated the gunboat Conestoga at Canton, and also defeated a US force at Sacramento before withdrawing when CSA forces left Bowling Green. At the same time, six companies of CSA Cavalry under Col. Forrest were camped a mile north at the old fairgrounds while reconnoitering the area. A severe epidemic swept the camp and several hundred men died. When the city enlarged the cemetery in 1887, John C. Latham, a native of Hopkinsville, had the bodies of 101 unknown men reinterred and a large monument erected.