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If large families are a sign of marital bliss, the period from 1809 to
1833 was a happy one for Samuel May and his wife Catherine. Records show
that during those years, she bore him six sons and eight daughters. Like
most frontier couples, they took seriously the God's command to "Be
fruitful and multiply." Of course, in 19th Century America, a world
without combustion engines or electric appliances, large families were an
economic necessity. Samuel needed sons to help him operate his farm,
ferry, grist mill, saw mill, lumber yard, contractor's business, and other
concerns, and Catherine needed daughters to help her cook, wash, clean,
mend, spin, weave, and a hundred other tasks.
Listed below are the names and birth dates of their fourteen children:
Thomas, born March 11th, 1809.
John, born April 13th, 1810.
Elizabeth, born October 20th, 1811.
Catherine, born September 11th, 1813.
Samuel, born June 1st, 1816.
Sarah Minerva, born March 20th, 1818.
Mahala Jane, born November 11th, 1819.
Louvina, born January 19th, 1822.
Amanda F., born October 22nd, 1824.
Charlotte T., born October 22nd, 1824.
Lucretia C., born January 18th, 1827.
Andrew
Jackson, born January 28th, 1829.
George Washington, born about 1831.
Daniel Wesley, born October 22nd, 1833.
The Mays were a high-spirited, fun-loving group, and that many a candle-lit party
was held in the upstairs ballroom before the second owner of the house converted
it to a bedroom. She also says that Catherine was very proud of her children,
especially her daughters, and that when the eight of them would set out for church
on Sunday "dressed in their finery," they were a sight t o behold. Indeed, this love of
luxury may have contributed to the financial reverses which caused Samuel to
surrender ownership of the May Farm in 1842.
Records show that when the May children reached maturity, they scattered
to the four winds. No one knows what happened to Thomas. All we know about
John is that he "went to Oregon." Elizabeth married Ephriam Hill and moved
to New Market, Platte County, Missouri. Catherine married Elias Kenard and
moved to Bazaar, Chase County, Kansas. Samuel "lived and died in Indian
Territory." Sarah Minerva married James H. Layne and moved to Wisconsin.
Mahala Jane married Dr. Perez S. Randall, who later became a surgeon in
the Union Army, and after the war they settled in Maysville, Mason County,
Kentucky. Louvina married Jacob McDonald and moved to Eaton, Delaware
County, Indiana. Amanda married John M. Burnett, a local tailor, and
stayed in
Prestonsburg. Andrew Jackson grew up to become the leading
Confederate officer in the Big Sandy Valley, and after the war he became a
successful lawyer in Tazewell, Virginia. No one knows what happened to
George Washington. Daniel Wesley became a lawyer and moved to Hazard,
where he married Martha Brashears in 1858.
As this roll-call illustrates, most members of the May family chose to
support the Confederacy. However, at least one member of the clan favored
the Union cause. Fred T. May points out that Reuben May (1815-1902), son
of Thomas and Dorcas Patton May and a nephew of Samuel May, enlisted in
the Union Army on September 23rd, 1861. During the war Reuben advanced to
through the ranks to become Colonel of the 7th Kentucky Infantry. He saw
action in a number of famous battles, including Perryville (1862) and
Stones River (1863). After the war he moved to Veroqua, Vernon County,
Wisconsin, became a successful farmer, and entered politics. In 1879, at
the age of sixty-four, he ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Wisconsin on
the Greenback ticket.
The son who inherited Samuel's driving ambition was Andrew Jackson May,
known to his contemporaries as Jack. Born in 1829, Jack reached adulthood
during the period when his father's business empire was collapsing.
Fiercely loyal, he shared his father's dream of recouping the family
fortune, and in 1849, when he was twenty, he accompanied Samuel on an
ill-fated journey to the California gold fields. Following Samuel's death
in 1851, he returned to Kentucky, settled in Prestonsburg, and began
studying for the law. He was licensed to practice in 1854, and in 1855 he
married Matilda Davidson, the daughter of a prosperous Floyd County
farmer. By 1860, Jack was practicing law in West Liberty, a town thirty-five
miles west of Prestonsburg in Morgan County, Kentucky.
Chapter Six: Senator May
and the Pound Gap Road
Like most frontiersmen of his period, Samuel May was a loyal Democrat and
a strong supporter of Andrew Jackson, the champion of backwoods causes on
Capitol Hill. When his loyal wife Catherine bore him his fourth son on
January 28th, 1829--increasing the size of his family to fourteen, all
counted--Samuel named the boy after his hero, who was just beginning his
first term as president.
In thirty-two years the boy would become Colonel Andrew Jackson May, the
Hero of the Battle of Ivy Mountain. No doubt it was Jackson's success in
politics which inspired Samuel to throw his own hat into the ring. In
1832, riding on the coat-tails of Jackson's victory over Henry Clay,
Samuel was elected State Representative for Floyd and Pike Counties, and
from 1835 to 1839 he served as Floyd County's State Senator.
Jackson's politics were populist, agrarian, and anti-aristocratic. He
favored a protective tariff for American farm products, and he opposed the
centralization of power represented by the Bank of the United States. Like
many Democrats, he believed that the Bank's tight money policy had brought
on the Panic of 1819 and the Depression of 1819-1823. When a bill
rechartering the national bank passed Congress in 1832, Jackson promptly
vetoed it. Some historians believe that his destruction of the bank and
his policy of distributing government funds among state banks set the
stage for the Panic of 1837.
In the 1830s the life of a Kentucky politician was filled with hardships.
Since no wagon roads existed between Prestonsburg and Frankfort, Senator
May had to make the trip to the annual session on horseback. Furthermore,
since his district contained no auditoriums or high school gymnasiums, he
often delivered his speeches in an open field, standing on a tree stump.
It is from this practice that we have derived the modern expression,
"stump speech." George Caleb Bingham's painting, The County Election,
painted in 1854, gives us some idea of what Samuel's political campaigns
must have been like:
Old-timers in Whitesburg recalled that Samuel, during his senatorial race against Nathaniel Collins, delivered one of his speeches from a rock cliff above the banks
of the Kentucky River.
Samuel was an excellent orator, and that his senatorial speeches were "considered fine" by all who heard them. One indication of his popularity with other politicians is the fact that the Governor, on one occasion, gave him a special gift as a reward for his
service to the Commonwealth. After Samuel's death in 1851, this heirloom,
a finely-wrought sword-cane, passed from his widow to R. F. Vinson of
Louisa, who married the daughter of Dr. Perez S. Randall and Mahala May
Randall. From Vinson, according to Francis, the cane passed to Colonel A.
J. May and his son, Andrew J. May, Junior. Its present whereabouts is
unknown.
During his term in the legislature, Senator Samuel May fought hard to
bring internal improvements to Floyd County. More specifically, he fought
for funds to dredge the Big Sandy and make it navigable for steamboats,
and he fought for funds to improve county roads. In the 1830s the county's
road system consisted of old wilderness trails passable only by shank's
mare or saddle horse. To be a successful farmer, Samuel needed wagon
roads, because success in farming depends on the producer's ability to
ship large quantities of grain over long distances. To make them fit for
wagons, roads had to be surveyed, graded, drained, and corduroyed with
logs in places where the ground was marshy.
The road project which preoccupied Senator May during the 1830s was the
improvement of the Mount Sterling--Pound Gap Road
This road, one of Kentucky's wilderness traces, started in Mount Sterling
and went through West Liberty, Hazel Green, Licking Station, Prestonsburg,
Laynesville, and Piketon to Pound Gap, the gateway to the rich lands of
the Clinch River country. In the early years of the 19th Century, by means
of this trail, stockgrowers in the Bluegrass region drove their stock to
markets in Western Virginia and Eastern Tennessee. According to Mary
Verhoeff, who wrote a Filson Club essay on the subject, "A market was
found on the headwaters of the James and Potomac Rivers, where the stock
brought by the Kentucky drovers was fattened before it was sent farther
east." She also says that farmers living along the road exhausted their
lands in the effort to furnish these herds with the grain and forage they
needed to survive the journey.
William Ely claims that in addition to livestock, the road was used for
commercial trade between Washington County, Virginia and Bath County,
Kentucky. Wagons of salt from the Washington County saltworks--known later
as Preston's Saltworks in Smyth County, Virginia--were hauled through
Pound Gap to supply a demand for the product in Pike, Letcher, Floyd, and
Perry Counties. On their return journey, the wagons carried pig iron
produced by Bath County furnaces.
Because it crossed his property at Abbott Shoals, Samuel's interest in
improving the road was personal as well as political. An engineer's report
describing the road, written in 1836, shows that it crossed Abbott
Mountain, came down Abbott Creek, and forded the Big Sandy at the very
spot where he operated his ferry:
Abbott Mountain is in Floyd County and is eighty miles southeast of Mount
Sterling. It is 320 feet high on the east side, and over it the road is
steeper, rougher, and more difficult to pass than at any other point. The
east side is the steepest, and few wagons venture to pass it. The road
crosses the Sandy River at a ferry, nearly two miles below Prestonsburg,
and above the town again crosses the river, passing across a promotory
formed by a great bend in the river of about twelve miles in length.
Efforts to improve the road began in 1817. In that year the Kentucky
General Assembly appointed three commissioners to survey the road and
estimate the cost of improvements. One of the commissioners was Floyd
County Representative Alexander Lackey, a wealthy Virignian who had
established a farm at the Forks of Beaver Creek . When their work was
completed, they strongly recommended that the project be funded and
estimated that the cost wouldn't exceed $5,000.
Unfortunately, Bluegrass and Western Kentucky lawmakers rejected the
proposal. Because of the state's unwillingness to support the project,
local politicians began looking elsewhere for funds. In 1822, for
example, they organized the Prestonsburg Highway Company and sought the
state's permission to operate a lottery. When this scheme subsequently
failed, they tried raising subscriptions for the company at $100 a share.
The project didn't really get off the ground until 1833. In their session
that year, at the urging of Representative Samuel May, the General
Assembly passed "An Act to provide for improving the roads in the counties
of Floyd, Pike, and Perry." Seventeen hundred dollars worth of land
warrants were appropriated for the purpose, and the Floyd County Court was
given the authority to designate roads, appoint superintendents, and "sell
the aforesaid warrants for money or labor."
In 1834, the General Assembly passed an act to improve the road "from
Prestonsburg, by way of Piketon, to the Virginia line." The bill
specified, among other things, that two hundred and fifty dollars worth of
land warrants be spent for the improvement of that segment of the road
which crossed Abbott Hill in Floyd County, and that Samuel May and John
Osborne be appointed commissioners of that part of the project. State
Engineer N. B. Buford was ordered to survey the road and estimate the cost
of improvements.
On the first day of the 1835 session, marking his first term in the
Kentucky Senate, Samuel May was appointed to the Committee of Internal
Improvement, whose stated purpose was "to take under consideration all
matters concerning the public highways and navigable streams." On May 1st,
1836, Engineer Buford published the results of his survey in a lengthy
document titled Survey of Mountain Roads. Buford recommended that the road
be improved, for the following reasons:
It is greatly used for the driving of stock (hogs, horses, and cattle) to
the Virginia and Southern markets, and is about one hundred and forty
miles shorter from Lexington in Kentucky to Petersburg in Virginia than
the road between the same points which passes the Crab Orchard and
Cumberland Gap, and is about forty miles shorter than the road by the
mouth of the Sandy. The population on the road is sparse, but more than
sufficient to afford every accommodation that might be required for the
stock-drovers.
Reading this, we begin to understand why Samuel's interest in the road was
so strong. An improved Pound Gap Road would not only have increased his
ferry traffic, but would have provided a local market for his corn, oats,
wheat, and hay. He was dreaming of the day when his farm would be a
feeding station on the road and his house would be a prosperous wayside
inn.
On January 14th, 1837, Senator Samuel May introduced a bill "to improve
the road from Mount Sterling, by way of Prestonsburg, to the Virginia
line." A month later the bill was passed and signed into law by Governor
James Clark. To fund the project, the Assembly appropriated $25,000.
According to Mary Verhoeff, the amount actually spent was $23,243.40. The
work was performed by local contractors, including Samuel's brother Thomas
May, who was paid $3,000 to improve a seven-mile stretch of the road from
Piketon to "the top of Island Hill." The greater part of the work
consisted of "grading and draining the worst hills and bridging some of
the worst water-courses." Six bridges were built over the Big Sandy
between Piketon and Prestonsburg.
Henry Scalf calls Jack May The Plumed Knight of the Southern Cause in the
Big Sandy Valley. A fervent Democrat like his father, Jack supported the
Confederacy from the start, and it was partly due to his influence that
the region contributed heavily to its armies. On October 21st, 1861, he
was elected Captain of Company A of the 5th Kentucky Infantry, C.S.A., a
unit he personally recruited. According to the pro-Confederate Louisville
Courier, the 5th was composed of "hardy, raw-boned, brave mountaineers"
who were "burning with desire to drive out the Abolition hordes of King
Lincoln, who have dared to invade the sacred soil of Kentucky."
Although Captain May's company was mustered at West Liberty, most of the
companies of the 5th Kentucky were mustered at Prestonsburg, and local
tradition says that the regiment was organized in the meadow below the May
House, on land which is now occupied by the Highlands Shopping Mall. Hiram
Hawkins of Owingsville, a Colonel in the State Militia, served as Camp
Commander, and W. H. Burns of West Liberty, Judge of the Circuit Court,
served as Commissary in charge of supplies.
On October 2nd, 1861, Jack May, Benjamin Desha, Ezekiel Clay, Henry
Chapman Swango, and other Confederate leaders sent a telegram to President
Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia, asking him for immediate
assistance. They informed him that more than one thousand volunteers had
gathered at Prestonsburg, and urgently requested that he send them
officers so that their recruits could be trained for battle. Scalf says
that the recruits were drilled "in a field north of town"--probably the
meadow below the May House.
On September 15th, 1861, William T. Sherman, the ranking Union commander
at Louisville, ordered William "Bull" Nelson, the commander of Camp
Robinson in Garrard County, to go to Maysville, organize a force, and
drive the 5th Kentucky out of the Big Sandy Valley.
On October 23rd, 1861, Nelson's command, consisting of four Ohio regiments
and an assortment of Kentucky volunteers and militiamen, marched from
Maysville to West Liberty, where they engaged Captain May's company in a
brief skirmish. With Nelson's columns in pursuit, May then marched his men
up the Pound Gap Road to Prestonsburg, bivouacked them at the May Farm,
and began looking for a place to make a stand. By this time, Colonel
Williams had moved the main body of the 5th Kentucky to Piketon.
Recalling how the narrow defile at Thermopylae had helped a small Greek
army defeat a much larger army of Persians, May decided to make his stand
at Ivy Narrows, a stretch of road between Prestonsburg and Piketon. On Ivy
Mountain, located on the east side of the river, was a level benchland
overlooking the narrow pass. Here May built breastworks and positioned his
own company and companies commanded by Hiram Hawkins, James M. Thomas, and Ezekiel Clay--a force of approximately three hundred men. Then, mounting
his horse, he galloped over to the road and began scouting for the enemy.
To his men he shouted, "Don't fire until you hear my pistol crack."
Nelson's force reached Prestonsburg on November 5th, 1861. After pausing
for several days, they continued their march up the Pound Gap Road. On
November 8th they came within sight of May's position at Ivy Mountain.
Recognizing that May had picked a favorable place to fight, Nelson wheeled
his two cannons to the river's edge and aimed them at the main rebel
position. Then he ordered Colonel Harris and his troops to deploy along
the mountainside, and sent Colonel Marshall's regiment up the road in a
frontal attack. When the Federals came within range, May's pistol cracked,
the Confederate line erupted in fire, and the battle began.
The first volley was a bloody one. In his battle report, written at
Piketon several days later, Nelson wrote:
"The skirmish was very sharp. The mountainside was blue with puffs of
smoke, and not an enemy to be seen. The first discharge killed four and
wounded thirteen of Marshall's men. I ordered the Kentuckians to charge.
Colonel Harris, whose regiment was immediately behind me, led his men up
the mountainside most gallantly, and deployed them along the face of it."
According to Nelson, the battle lasted for an hour and twenty minutes. The
Confederates weren't dislodged from their position until a third Federal
regiment under Colonel Norton climbed the northern side of the mountain,
reached the crest, and descended on the rebels from their rear. When
Norton's men pressed their attack, May's company and the other Confederate
units gave ground and beat a hasty retreat across the Ivy Creek bridge. In
the confusion, some were pushed off the bridge and into the shallow water.
However, says Scalf, "The retrograde movement did right itself enough to
prevent utter disaster." After the Confederates had gone several miles up
the road toward Piketon, they blocked their retreat by felling trees and
destroying bridges.
During the battle, six Union soldiers were killed and twenty-four were wounded. Confederate casualtie were ten killed, fifteen wounded, and forty missing.
According to Marshall Davidson, a retired lawyer living in Prestonsburg,
the Battle of Ivy Mountain was fought on and around a large farm belonging
to Samuel Davidson (1800-1854), Jack May's father-in-law. Marshall's
family preserves the tradition that during the battle, Samuel's children
crossed the Big Sandy in a boat in order to avoid being hit by rifle fire.
The Davidson Farm covered the land on which the Town of Ivel now stands.
Oldtimers say that the battleground was located several hundred yards
north of the present Ivel Post Office and immediately west of the Wagon
Wheel Restaurant. When U.S. Highway 23, the main route between
Prestonsburg and Pikeville, was widened in 1971, the side of the mountain
was excavated and the battleground was destroyed.
Although the Battle of Ivy Mountain was a Confederate defeat, it did delay
Nelson's progress long enough to allow Williams to withdraw his troops
from Piketon and establish a winter camp at Pound Gap. After occupying the
town, Nelson decided not to pursue the rebels any farther, reasoning that
their lack of supplies and the lateness of the season would make a
counter-attack unlikely. He then withdrew his troops from the region.
After several weeks of near starvation at Pound Gap, the 5th Kentucky was
joined by General Humphrey Marshall's Virginia regiments, which reached
Pound Gap on November 28th, 1861.
At Ivy Mountain Jack May earned a reputation for bravery, and subsequent
exploits added to his fame. On May 16th,1862, at Princeton, West Virginia,
he commanded the 5th Kentucky and helped Marshall win a decisive victory
over a Union force led by General Jacob D. Cox. When Marshall's Army of
Eastern Kentucky invaded the region during the weeks leading up to the
Battle of Perryville, Jack's regiment led the advance. On October 20th,
1862, Jack resigned his command, claiming that he was unable to perform
his duties "for health reasons." However, his subsequent actions show that
his real reason for leaving his post was to gain the independence he
needed in order to recruit a cavalry regiment for mountain service.
During the Fall and Winter of 1862-63, Jack canvassed the Big Sandy Valley
in search of good men and good mounts, and in the Spring of 1863,
according to John B. Wells III, he used the May House as his recruiting
center. Moreover, a letter from this period shows that whenever Colonel
May's outfit passed through Prestonsburg, it camped "around the race
course in front of the house." By the Summer of 1863, May's 10th Kentucky
Cavalry was ready for active duty, and on July 18th, in Wythe County,
Virginia, he led it on a spectacular charge and rescued a company of
Confederate infantry from the rearguard unit of a Union cavalry regiment
commanded by Colonel John Toland.
The record of the 10th Kentucky is a distinguished one. In October, 1863,
under Colonel Edwin Trimble, it participated in the Battle of Blue
Springs, in Greene County, Tennessee, an engagement in which a small force
of Confederate cavalry commanded by General John S. Williams repulsed a
much larger force under General Ambrose Burnside. On November 6, 1863, in
Hawkins County, Tennessee, it helped Colonel Henry Giltner win the Battle
of Rogersville, and later that month, it joined Longstreet's Corps and
participated in the Seige of Knoxville. Later that winter, the regiment
performed picket duty guarding Longstreet's grizzled veterans when they
went into winter camp near Bull's Gap.
In May, 1864, the 10th Kentucky was attached to a new command being
organized by General John Hunt Morgan. Under Morgan, it participated in
his famous Last Kentucky Raid and fought desperately at Mount Sterling
and Cynthiana. Although Jack May commanded his regiment sporadically
during the Fall of 1863, he did not accompany it when it came into
Kentucky during the Summer of 1864. On July 4th, 1864, complaining of "a
chronic inflammation of the bladder," he resigned his commission a second
time and surrendered control of the regiment to Colonel Edwin Trimble, a
native of Prestonsburg and a close personal friend.
Jack's wife Matilda and their two small children spent the first year of
the war at the Samuel Davidson Farm near modern-day Ivel, Kentucky.
Sometime during the Summer of 1862, fearing that his wife would be
arrested by General Jeremiah Boyle's Federal Marshalls and taken to
prison, Jack left his base in Tazewell County, Virginia and, with the help
of others, rescued his wife and children and took them to Virginia.
Following the surrender at Appomattox, he purchased a home in Tazewell and
opened a law practice.
During their years in Tazewell, Jack and Matilda raised six children, four
of whom reached adulthood: Byrd May, Samuel Davidson May, Andrew Jackson
May, Jr., and Mary Catherine May. Following Matilda's death in 1901, Jack
married a second time. On June 17th, 1902, in Tazewell, he married Nellie
Bly Davidson (1878-1918) of Prestonsburg, a lady forty-nine years his
junior. :
Life is full of odd coincidences and strange twists of fate. On Friday,
May 1st, 1903--yes, May 1st--Nelle Bly Davidson May delivered a bouncing
baby boy. With characteristic audacity, Jack promptly named him Colonel
May, hoping to pass on to him some of the luster of his own reputation. On
Sunday, May 3rd, Jack suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed and unable
to speak. When his physicians arrived at his bedside, he wrote them a note
asking them to make his death as easy as possible. Then he wrote a second
note to his wife and children, telling them that he had "no fear of the
great future uipon which he was about to enter." Then he lost
consciousness. The end came at 11:30 that evening.
Jack's funeral drew a very large crowd. Several days after the funeral,
the Tazewell Bar adopted a resolution describing Jack as "a brave and
daring soldier" and praising him for his courage, fidelity, industry,
generosity, and public spirit.
Jack's young widow, Nelle Davidson May, returned to Prestonsburg several
years later, bringing with her their only child, Colonel May. She
inherited a large estate from her husband, and with her inheritance she
was able to build a large home on Arnold Avenue. Today this beautiful
mansion is owned by H. D. Fitzpatrick, Jr. of Prestonsburg. Nelle died
during the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918 and was buried in the Weddington
Cemetery above Trimble Branch. Her son Colonel May died on March 27th,
1956 and is buried in the Mayo Cemetery in South Prestonsburg.
During the first months of the Civil War, Kentucky Governor Beriah
Magoffin and other Kentucky leaders fought hard to keep the state neutral.
Their hopes were dashed by the August 1861 election, which sent a Unionist
majority to Frankfort. When the new legislature convened in early
September, it passed laws which encouraged Federal occupation and
suppressed the rebellion. Home guards were organized in every county,
Federal Marshalls began arresting men suspected of treason, and Federal
Soldiers took possession of Paducah, Louisville, and other strategic
points.
This sea-change in the state's political fortunes had a dramatic effect on
Kentuckians who favored the Southern cause. Take Hiram Hawkins, for
example. A Bath County farmer, Hawkins was a pro-secessionist member of
the legislature and a colonel in the state militia. One afternoon in early
September, 1861, a messenger arrived at his home in Owingsville and warned
him that Federal troops were coming to arrest him and throw him in jail.
Hawkins immediately called together seventeen of his most trusted
militiamen, and, at twelve o'clock that evening, armed and equipped for
battle, they set out for West Liberty, a town thirty-five miles east of
Owingsville, where a young lawyer named Jack May was organizing a
pro-secessionist
company of Morgan County Guards.
When Hawkins reached May's camp, the two men analyzed the situation and
decided that it would be prudent to move their little army to a more
secure location. Prestonsburg was the logical choice. There, deep in the
mountains of Eastern Kentucky, surrounded by people of Virginia ancestry,
recruits could be collected, organized, and trained for battle. Moreover,
Jack's cousin William James May owned a farm north of town--Jack's boyhood
home--with a meadow big enough and level enough for a military camp.
One of the problems facing the two men was the question of how their
recruits would be fed. The best thing about the May Farm was that it was
located next to the steam-powered grist mill which Jack's father had
erected at the mouth of Abbott Creek in 1849. Indeed, this feature of the
farm eventually became so important that throughout the duration of the
war, commanders on both sides referred to the farm as "the steam mill" in
their battle reports.
Hawkins' men were the first soldiers to pitch their tents at the farm. On
the following day, May's company arrived, and several days later, a
company led by Owingsville store-keeper G.W. Connor showed up. Meanwhile,
at the Floyd County Courthouse, meetings were held, committees were
formed, and resolutions were passed urging all able-bodied men to arm
themselves and prepare for war. W.H. Burns of West Liberty, Judge of the
Circuit Court, was elected Commissary in charge of supplies, and Captain
Hawkins was elected Camp Commander. Throughout the last half of September,
recruits continued to arrive, including two companies from Harrison County
commanded by John Shawhan and Benjamin Desha, and two companies from
Bourbon County commanded by E.F. Clay and James M. Thomas.
During this hectic period, the road through Prestonsburg was thronged with
Confederate volunteers and other individuals seeking refuge behind
Confederate lines. Lewis Collins' Annals of Kentucky shows that during the
last four days of September, 1861, "nearly one thousand armed Kentuckians"
passed through Prestonsburg on their way to Southwestern Virginia. "All
finely mounted and well-armed," they included Colonel William Preston of
Lexington, Congressman William E. Simms of Paris, Colonel George B. Hodge
of Newport, and Senator John C. Breckinridge of Lexington, the nation's
foremost advocate of the Southern Cause.
The Southern Democratic Party's nominee for President in 1860,
Breckinridge had many enemies, and it was rumored in some quarters that he
had been murdered. On October 7th, however, the Wheeling Press reported
that he had eluded his captors and arrived safely at Jeffersonville in
Tazewell County, Virginia, after a two-hundred-mile journey by carriage
through Eastern Kentucky. Along the way he had stopped at Owingsville,
West Liberty, and Prestonsburg, where he had inspected the camp of the 5th
Kentucky Infantry at the May Farm:
At this latter place [Prestonsburg] he made a speech and rallied some
three hundred recruits. Thence to Piketon, in Pike County, where he staid
three days, and thence across the Cumberland Mountains at Dogwood Gap into
Virginia, through Buchanan, Russell and Tazewell counties to Tazewell
Court House, where he remains.
One of the great diarists of the Civil War was Mary Chesnut, wife of
Jefferson Davis' aid-de-camp, Colonel James Chesnut. On October 3rd, 1861,
she recorded: "Breckinridge, William Preston, and Clay have escaped
Seward's little bell and are safe now in the part of Kentucky which is
loyal to the South."
Meanwhile, back at the May Farm, tents were springing up like mushrooms
after a summer rain. On October 2nd, Jack May and his comrades-in arms
sent the following letter to Jefferson Davis in Richmond:
To His Excellency Jefferson Davis,
President of the Confederate States of America:
Sir: Our legislature has betrayed us. We have marched to this point on
account of its strategic importance with 1,000 men. Hundreds are gathering
around our standard daily. We can have 5,000 men here in two weeks. We
would most respectfully petition Your Excellency to send us immediately
some experienced military man to command us, and place us upon a footing
to make ourselves available in furthering the cause of civil freedom, in
which we have enlisted, and to which we pledge our lives and our sacred
honor.
Ben Desha,
Captain of Light Infantry Company (armed).
E.F. Clay,
Captain of Cavalry Company (armed).
James M. Thomas,
Captain Mounted Rifles (forty minies, with equipment).
T.R. Worsham,
Infantry (unarmed).
H.C. Swango,
Infantry (unarmed).
A.J. May,
Captain Morgan Guards, Infantry (unarmed).
Jesse Meek,
Infantry (unarmed).
G.W. Connor,
Captain, Infantry (unarmed).
G.M. Ewing,
Captain, Infantry (unarmed).
John W. Sparks,
Captain, Infantry (unarmed).
John Shawhan.
These men were not low-class riffraff. John Shawhan was a former state
representative from Harrison County and a veteran of the Mexican War.
Benjamin Desha, also from Harrison County, was the grandson of Joseph
Desha, Governor of Kentucky from 1824 to 1828. James M. Thomas and Ezekiel
Clay came from Bourbon County, and the latter was the son of Brutus J.
Clay, a wealthy Bourbon County cattle-breeder. G.W. Connor's father owned
a store in Owingsville, and G.W. Ewing's father was the proprietor of an
Owingsville foundry. Henry Chapman Swango was a school teacher in Hazel
Green and the son of a prosperous Wolfe County farmer.
The developments in Prestonsburg alarmed the Union men in Louisville. On
October 13th, the Pro-Union Louisville Evening News reported that a group
of "secessionist notables" were organizing "a large rebel camp" at that
location. "They have a force of 6,000 or 7,000, whom they are drilling
eight hours per day, and they are alarming the mountaineers by circulating
incredible stories as to the intentions of the Government."
Like other secessionists, Jack May and his comrades-in-arms saw themselves
as defenders of "the cause of civil freedom." What did they mean by this
phrase? It is true that certain freedoms had been jeopardized by Lincoln's
election, including the freedom to buy and sell slaves. It would be a
mistake, however, to assume that the slavery issue was uppermost in these
men's minds. The Eastern Kentucky economy wasn't dependent on slavery, and
only the wealthiest farmers owned them. Samuel May never owned more that
two or three at any one time, and the U.S. Census shows that in 1860, Jack
May owned three slaves.
The issue which did concern these men was the issue of Federal coercion.
They held fast to the doctrine that states had the right to withdraw
peacefully from the Federal Union. In the political climate of 1861, as
the case of Hiram Hawkins illustrates, Kentuckians who publically
advocated this doctrine risked being arrested and jailed.
Ultimately, however, it was a question of loyalty more than principle. As
my history of the May House shows, the first families to settle Eastern
Kentucky had migrated from Southwestern Virginia and Eastern Tennessee,
and their descendants felt bound to the South by ties of family, custom,
and tradition. George Washington Noble of Breathitt County, a private in
Captain Henry C. Swango's company, put the matter this way:
I was in the Confederate army because it was just as good as the Northern
army, and my grandfather came from the South, and I liked the Southern
people the best.
Sometime in mid-October, learning that a Union army was being organized at
Maysville, Jack May moved his Morgan guards back to West Liberty. At that
location, on October 21st, 1861, it was mustered into the service as
Company A of the 5th Kentucky Infantry, C.S.A. The terms of their
enlistment obligated them to serve twelve months. About this same time,
Colonel John S. Williams, a Montgomery County farmer, railroad-builder,
and Mexican War hero, arrived in Prestonsburg and took command of the rest
of the regiment.
According to the pro-Confederate Louisville Courier, the 5th was composed
of "hardy, raw-boned, brave mountaineers" who were "burning with desire to
drive out the Abolition hordes of King Lincoln, who have dared to invade
the sacred soil of Kentucky."On September 15th, 1861, General Sherman, the
Union commander at Louisville, ordered William "Bull" Nelson to go to
Maysville, organize an army, and drive the 5th Kentucky out of the Big
Sandy Valley.
The army which Nelson put together consisted of four Ohio regiments and an
assortment of Kentucky volunteers and militiamen. On October 23rd, they
marched from Maysville to West Liberty, where they engaged Captain May's
company in a brief skirmish. With Nelson's columns in pursuuit, May then
marched his men up the Pound Gap Road to Prestonsburg, bivouacked them at
the May Farm, and began looking for a place to make a stand. By this time,
Colonel Williams had moved the main body of the 5th to Piketon.
Recalling how the narrow defile at Thermopylae had helped a small Greek
army defeat a much larger army of Persians, Jack decided to make his stand
at Ivy Narrows, a place on the wagon road between Prestonsburg and Piketon
where it was hemmed in on the left by the steep slopes of Ivy Mountain,
and on the right by the steep banks of the Big Sandy River. Half of his
men he concealed behind breastworks on a level benchland overlooking the
pass, and the other half he concealed in a cornfield on the opposite side
of the river, hoping to catch the Federals in a deadly cross-fire. While
his men fortified their position, they were joined by companies led by
Captain Hawkins and Captain Thomas, making a total of approximately two
hundred and fifty men. Then, mounting his horse, May galloped up the road
and began scouting for the enemy. To his three companies he shouted,
"Don't fire until you hear my pistol crack."
On November 5th, the New York Times reported that Nelson had reached
Prestonsburg and captured it without a fight.
Realizing that the rebels had retreated to Piketon, Nelson devised a
two-pronged attack on that town, sending two regiments up Johns Creek and
three regiments up the east side of the Big Sandy on the Pound Gap Road.
Three days later, his scouts discovered May's position at Ivy Mountain.
Recognizing that the rebel position was a strong one, Nelson wheeled two of
his six cannon to the river's edge and began shelling the rebels. Then he
ordered Harris' regiment to climb the mountain and deploy along its side,
and sent Marshall's regiment up the road in a frontal attack. When the
Federals came within range of the rebel guns, Jack's pistol cracked, the
rebel line erupted in fire, and the battle began.
The first volley was a bloody one, killing four Federals and wounding
thirteen. Nelson later reported that "the mountainside was blue with puffs
of smoke, and not an enemy to be seen." The report of the rebel commander,
Colonel John S. Williams, reads as follows:
At 1:30 o'clock on the 9th instant, the enemy moved up to Captain May's
position [Ivy Creek] with a force of 1,600 men and a battery of six
pieces, and were received by 250 rifles and shot-guns, in point-blank
range, every one of which took effect. Their columns wavered and fell
back, but returned in good order, and attempted to carry the pass by
assault under cover of their cannon, but were repulsed again with terrific
slaughter. They then withdrew beyond the range of our shot-guns, and their
infantry up the hills soon outflanked our little band, compelling them to
fall back behind the burned bridge. Here our force made a stand, but the
enemy advanced no farther.
According to Nelson, the battle lasted for an hour and twenty minutes. The
rebels weren't dislodged from their position until a third Federal
regiment under Colonel Norton climbed the northern side of the mountain
and descended upon the rebels from their rear. When Norton's men pressed
their attack, May's company and the other rebel units gave ground and beat
a hasty retreat across the Ivy Creek Bridge. In the confusion, some were
pushed off the bridge and into the shallow water. By and large, however,
according to Floyd County historian Henry Scalf, the retreat was an
orderly one. In his account of the battle in Kentucky's Last Frontier, he
says that "the retrograde movement did right itself enough to prevent
utter disaster." After the Confederates had gone several miles up the road
towards Piketon, they blocked their retreat by felling trees and
destroying bridges.
Scalf's claim that the retreat was an orderly one is supported by the fact
that only six of the fleeing rebels were captured. Two of them, William
Osborne and James Hereford, both of Prestonsburg, were captured together,
and the story of their capture has been preserved by their descendants.
According to the tradition, when the two men realized that they were
surrounded and cut off from their unit, Osborne raised his rifle and took
a bead on a Union officer, but Hereford, the wiser man, knocked the weapon
aside. They were subsequently taken to Piketon and lodged in the county
jail along with the other rebel prisoners. Since Hereford's grandfather
was Pike County Sheriff William Ratliff, members of that family soon
obtained his release. By the way, James's father, a Prestonsburg physician
and a loyal Union man, later served as surgeon for Colonel John Dils's
39th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry.
Reports of the battle published in Northern newspapers were wildly
inaccurate. On November 13th, for example, the New York Times reported
that the Federals had "gained a glorious victory," and that four hundred
rebels had been killed and four thousand taken prisoner. Nelson, however,
in his official report, didn't mention any prisoners and noted only that
thirty-two enemy dead had been found on the field. On November 19th, the
Cincinnati Gazette published a report based on an interview with Brigade
Surgeon Bradford, who claimed that eleven enemy dead had been buried by
Federal troops. This is probably an accurate figure. Colonel Williams, in
the report he sent to Richmond, listed his losses as ten dead, fifteen
wounded, and forty missing.
According to Marshall Davidson of Prestonsburg, the battle was fought on
and around the farm of Samuel Davidson (1800-1854), Jack May's
father-in-law. It enclosed land now occupied by the modern community of
Ivel. Old-timers say that the battleground was located several hundred
yards west of the present Ivel Post Office and immediately west of the
Wagon Wheel Restaurant. When Highway 23, the main route between
Prestonsburg and Pikeville, was widened in 1971, most of this site, which
had formerly been marked by a cemetery and a flagpole, was destroyed.
During the antebellum period, the Davidson Farm rivaled the May Farm in
size and importance. The farmhouse was located immediately east of the
oldest section of Davidson Memorial Gardens, one of the oldest cemeteries
in Floyd County, where Samuel and his wife Judith are buried. We can form
some estimate of Samuel's wealth from the fact that in 1860, according to
the U.S. Census, Judith owned seventeen slaves. Henry Scalf claims that
during the Ivy Mountain fight, General Nelson positioned his cannon
"almost at the foot of cemetery hill"--the previously-mentioned old
section of Davidson Memorial Gardens. Marshall Davidson preserves the
tradition that during the battle, Samuel Davidson's children crossed the
Big Sandy in a rowboat in order to avoid being hit by rifle fire.
Although the Battle of Ivy Mountain was a Confederate defeat, it did delay
Nelson's progress long enough to allow Williams to withdraw his troops
from Piketon and establish a winter camp at Pound Gap. After occupying the
town for a week or so, Nelson decided not to pursue the rebels any
farther, reasoning that their lack of supplies and the lateness of the
season would make a counter-attack unlikely. He then withdrew his troops
from the region.
According to an article published in the Cincinnati Gazette on November
19th, one of his regiments was loaded aboard rafts and sent down the river
to Catlettsburg, and the other four were marched back to Maysville and
loaded aboard steamboats bound for Louisville. One of the rafts was
wrecked in the rapids sixty miles above the mouth of the Sandy, and one
man was drowned.
Union sympathizers in the region were dismayed by Nelson's decision to
withdraw. On December 1st, the New York Times published an interview with
Mr. Thomas Turner, "an intelligent citizen of Mount Sterling," who
predicted:
The whole fruits of General Nelson's victory at Ivy Mountain, and of his
fatiguing and extraordinary march through a mountain country and over
miserable roads, and in despite of high waters, will be lost by the
removal of all of his troops; and, I fear, the Union cause in this section
will be greatly injured.
If the future looked bleak for the loyal citisens of Mount Sterling, it
looked even bleaker for the men of the 5th Kentucky Infantry camped in the
snow at Pound Gap. On November 13th, Colonel Williams wrote to General
Humphrey Marshall at Wytheville, asking for "good rifles, clothes,
great-coats, knapsacks, haversacks, and canteens."
"Many of our men are barefooted," wrote Williams, "and I have seen the
blood in their tracks as they marched from Ivy to this place." In early
December, the editor of the Abingdon Virginian visited William's camp and
recorded what he saw in his pocket notebook. A week later, he published
the following melodramatic appeal:
Ladies of Little Tennessee, we saw on Sunday last over one hundred
barefoot, thinly-clad, but heroic Kentucky soldiers near Pound Gap,
shivering with cold and marching to and fro over the frozen ground, with
feet as red as those of pigeons, assisting to keep off from your hearths
the Vandal scoundrels who have already invaded their own. Can you not
spare them a few pairs of woolen socks, flannel shirts, and other
necessities?
Exerpts taken from Robert Perry’s book The Oldest House in the Valley found online
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Let Us Pray Our For Troops In Foreign Lands
The Civil War in Morgan County 2003
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