Civil War

  By James G. Ogden, 1931   Battle of Richmond.  General Smith was reported to be invading Kentucky.  General Nelson stated in Richmond that he would meet General E. Kirby Smith at Richmond for Battle and that it would be no more than a mere breakfast spell.  A battle ensued which might properly be called a veritable slaughter of Union forces.  Two brothers by the name of Jett and two brothers by the name of Washburn, all older than me, but with whom I attended school, lost their lives in the battle.  A great many of the Union soldiers who engaged in that battle were Ohio people who had little or no military training and many of them, on their way to their respective homes, passed through Milford on one Sunday and local physicians were kept busy all that day treating and dressing their lacerated and bleeding sounds.  

One night during the year 1862, my father and I spend the night with Daniel Ogden, a cousin of my father.  They day before the Confederate soldiers captured Augusta, and the home guards in Augusta, as it was reported, opened fire on them out of the windows of the buildings and a real battle ensued in which several persons were killed, including Clarence Prentiss, the youngest son of George D. Prentiss, then the editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal.   In 1862, the Confederates captured a mail boat at Foster’s Landing and a large amount of food-stuffs and pressed into service many wagons and teams to haul the mail and food stuffs to Falmouth, where there was a large force of Confederates then encamped.   

From the papers of E. E. Barton at the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort.