By Todd Hatton / Berry Craig
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-991628.mp3
Murray, KY – Today on the Kentucky Civil War Dispatch, as the war enters its first winter, first blood is drawn in the Four Rivers at a skirmish near a Lyon County church. We'll hear how the scars linger still.
On this date in 1861, three companies from the Paducah-based Ninth Illinois Infantry were probably still basking in the glory of their first Civil War victory.
On October 26, the 300 Yankees had routed a company of 160 grayclad horsemen from the First Kentucky Cavalry at Saratoga Springs Methodist Church in Lyon County, about eight miles southeast of Eddyville, the county seat.
The church is still there, and it's still battle-scarred. When members spruced up their house of worship with aluminum siding, they took care to preserve a bullet hole.
Made by a Yankee minie ball, it is framed under glass.
It took the Federals about half an hour to best the enemy at the tiny Saratoga Springs community, four miles east of old Eddyville on the Cumberland River. The church is on Kentucky Highway 293 South, which in 1861 was the Eddyville-Princeton Turnpike.
The church was two years old when America's bloodiest war arrived on its doorstep. Capt. M.D. Wilcox's company of Confederate cavalry was scouting in the neighborhood and using Saratoga Springs as a base.
Princeton, Kentucky historian Sam Steger says the men were from Lyon and adjacent Caldwell counties. Steger says the troopers were part of the First Kentucky Cavalry, a regiment commanded by Colonel Benjamin Hardin Helm, whose wife was Mary Todd Lincoln's half-sister.
The Illinoisans were led by Major Jesse Phillips. They'd come up the Cumberland River aboard the steamer Lake Erie and landed at New Union Forge, today's Kuttawa. The 9th Illinois marched through fields and woods in hopes of surprising Wilcox's force.
Lyon County historian Odell Walker says they found them about daybreak on the Eddyville-Princeton Turnpike. The rebels were caught off-guard.
Major Phillips reported his skirmishers captured the enemy pickets without firing a shot. At about 7 a.m., they formed a battle line in the road some 600 yards distant from the Confederates.
When the Rebel cavalry spotted the Union troops, they dismounted and prepared to defend themselves. The Yankee infantry charged and overpowered the Southern troopers who, according to Phillips, "fled in every direction, some on foot, others on horseback."
The major added, "An occasional firing was kept up for half an hour or more. Six of their men were left dead and one mortally wounded. Several others were seen to ride off clinging to their horses and were wounded."
The victorious Yankees also helped themselves to spoils of war -- 30 horses, several mules, a pair of wagons and other gear, including weapons.
The soldiers took their prisoners and captured equipment to Eddyville, where the Lake Erie, escorted by the wooden gunboat Conestoga, waited to return them to Paducah.
Their captives included a civilian, C.F. Jenkins, who was described as a "notorious secessionist."
Yankee casualties numbered just three men wounded, and Sam Steger says Caldwell countian Elbert Beck may have shot all three himself.
Steger says supposedly, he ran out on the porch of the church, fired both barrels of his double-barreled shotgun and hit a captain, a corporal and another man. Presumably, he then escaped.
The church possibly sheltered the wounded Yankees after the skirmish stopped. Supposedly, the floorboards are still bloodstained.
WKMS produces Kentucky Civil War Dispatches from West Kentucky Community and Technical College history professor Berry Craig. The Murray State alumnus is the author of Hidden History of Kentucky in the Civil War, Hidden History of Kentucky Soldiers and True Tales of Old-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon, and Burgoo. For WKMS News, I'm Todd Hatton.