23 July 2012 ( late afternoon)
JC pulled over and it was my turn to drive. The weather was hot and humid. Suddenly, as I pulled over to get my bearings, I was transported back to my days in South Carolina. I was that 18 year old girl again, plucked up from her home and transported from a well known environment to a strange and alien country. The culture shock was one thing, but the heat and humidity was another. I hated it. Now, I knew why I had never really sought out living this far East and South.
Beautiful country, but if I had not acclimated after three months back in 1974, and then living three months in Texas, in corpsman school, I knew I never really would.
Years ago, I had spent a week in the month of June, locked up with two of my kids, in their Great Grandmothers home in Pampa, Texas. Lightening storms with bolts of electricity pounding the front lawn and across the street. The boom, Boom...was deafening, drowning out my terrified, screaming babies.
Not safe to go outside; can't turn on the TV or talk on the phone. Heat and humidity was enough to drive me up the wall. Here I was trapped, with their Great Grandmother chain smoking, Two half smoke cigarettes smoldering in an ashtray, one still burning in the bathroom, and I can't even escape with my two babes, ( Ken was a young infant) to the kitchen where another was lighting up. The humidity was stifling.
Kentucky this time of year was no different. I did not remember, and neither did Ken, being this bad in 2009 when we were last here.
As we resumed driving, I was on the alert for tornado's.....Yes, I was worried. This is the time they are present in the South and Midwest.
Give me earthquakes over lightening, or tornado's....
We arrived at some railroad tracks. "Lets see where it takes us," I encouraged my bored 19 year old JD. The 23 year old Ken, just shrugged, hoping to get into the mood, to please me. Mom is the English and History buff. He was sure, I would find a one room schoolhouse, all decked out in the original furnishings, and I would be posing them for pictures. (My husband, and the rest of the family, had coined me the 'shutterbug.')
I was reminded Not to do so, if there was a "Dunce" cap in the corner, like their Grandfathers old school, now turned museum in Columbia State Park, near Angels Camp, California. They weren't little kids anymore, and
would dig their heels to resist certain pictures, they assured me. I smiled at their protest, knowing they were serious. Icecream would no longer work.
The railroad tracks had been " built in 1893 as the "Texas Route," to connect Louisville and St. Louis. A few years later it had been renamed the Louisville Henderson & St. Lewis Railway."
As we explored further, we found that we were at a previous Civil War fort. Fort Duffield had in 2011, celebrated its 150th Anniversary - 1861-2011! We were greeted by a "Welcome" sign that informed us that this was "Kentucky's Largest and Best Preserved Earthen Civil War Fort." We would have to walk 1/4 mile up hill all the way.
I was getting excited, and all worked up! Someday, if I ever got my degree, and teaching credentials, I could trade my stethoscope for seeing the looks on students who may love history the way I do.
If not, I would certainly try to inspire them, the way I wish someone had opened those doors of History and reading and writing for me, way back when!
JC could not walk due to his recent surgeries, and he was content to stay with the car. Ken, Justin and I took off.
At the Fork in the road, one sign said "Fort Duffield," and the other pointed to the cemetery, which was at a smaller incline. Due to my recent knee surgeries, I asked the boys to take one camera and head to the Fort. "Take Lots of Pictures guys!" I had the other digital. Boy, was I glad I had brought both! I prayed they would get good pictures, not knowing what they would find.
I headed the other way. I loved, Loved, LOVED exploring by myself, sometimes. This was One of those times. I knew I could not climb the steeper hill, besides, I felt that going to this sacred place, was where I, a soldier myself, belonged.
The Fort had been built in 1861 as a Homestead area. It was high about the farm lands, and was a perfect vantage point, and perfect security. If the enemy came from down below, they would be seen easily. It was mostly built by 9th Michigan soldiers. Many who died from 1861-1862. They have there, modern VA type
tombstones, but no one is buried beneath them. It is written that perhaps the soldiers appeared to be actually buried, in unmarked graves, about 100 feet from these tombstones, and from the Flag Pole.
They are unmarked, except for flat stones that had been placed there, to mark their graves.. Someone, in Our century had taken button snaps like from an old tent flap, and placed them on each stone, that they thought is marking a soldier. The stones are like walking path cobblestones, and certainly had been dug a long time ago, out of this terrain. They were old and cracked and had seen over a hundred years of wear.
Looking down into the valley floor, I saw in my mind, the South and the North, locked in battle. Brothers and Fathers and relations, fighting for causes they themselves would question later.
While building Fort Duffield, many had died of various diseases.
Here I found a name, "Jessie L. Benson," he was a private with Co B. 9TH Mich Infantry. He had died Nov 29, 1861.
Benson was the maiden name of my maternal Great Grandmother who died during the 1918 Spanish Flu in Tacoma Washington. She had relations that had come from Michigan.
Could he have been a distant relation, before she was born? "Reuben C. Smith," a private in Company K also of the Michigan Infantry. They knew he had died Nov 30, 1861. "Patrick O'Brien." was a private with Co H of the Michigan Infantry. He had died March 29, 1862. These were just a few of 36 known names.
I began to feel sorrow, that 100 feet away from these engraved tombstones, somewhere under those flat rocks covered in grass and moss... may .lay some of these 36 men, in unmarked graves.......It is not really clear. But a historian Richard Briggs who is a West Point, Kentucky historian, says that many of the "Flat stones....were still in neat rows as recent as 1970." Where the exact location of some or all of the remains is not important, only that they are never forgotten.
A marker engraved, says Fort Duffield, 1861 - 1865 "In Memory of our Civil War dead."
It appears that some may have been taken back to Michigan for reburial. Some were taken to the National Cemetery in New Albany, Indiana. But the US Army and the Veterans administration, can find no record of them being moved to another site.
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