Taylor County Treasure
Tebbs Bend area documents region's rich history

“Many of our best men were killed or wounded. It was a sad, sorrowful day.”

So wrote Confederate Major (and later governor of Kentucky) James B. McCreary after the July 1863 Battle of Tebbs Bend in Taylor County, fought over control of a vital Federal supply route. What should have been a Southern rout became a clash regarded as one of the bloodiest in the Civil War’s western theater, even though troop numbers involved were relatively small.

On July 4, at the beginning of John Hunt Morgan’s Great Raid into Indiana and Ohio, the Confederate general and about 800 of his 2,500 troops took on 200 well-entrenched Feds under Colonel O. H. Moore just south of Campbellsville, Ky., near a kink in the Green River known as Tebbs Bend. After eight valiant but fruitless charges against dug-in infantrymen of the 25th Michigan, Morgan surrendered.

Now a well-visited stop on the John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail, the Tebbs Bend area abounds with history in well-preserved sites near Campbellsville, which itself boasts a thriving downtown commercial district on the National Register of Historic Places. Just out of town, a three-mile, 10-stop driving tour – the Morgan-Moore Trail – retraces significant points of the skirmish. Among them is the stone-walled Confederate Cemetery, where a monument was placed in 1872, marking a mass Southern grave.

Thanks to the exhaustive research of Taylor County historian Betty J. Gorin, each of those unknown soldiers now has his own named marker, joining a 1988 Michigan Highway Marker that commemorates the valiant stand made by its native sons.

Just down the road at Green River Lake Reservoir, the information center at the Army Corps of Engineers’ Green River Lake Park is impressive. The Atkinson-Griffin Log House, a two-story, double-pen structure built in 1840, served as a Confederate hospital and now houses a museum of the local conflict. Bloodstains on the second floor bear witness to its previous use.

Originally built about a mile from its present location, the log dwelling was slated for demolition, but Gorin, author of Morgan is Coming: Confederate Raiders in the Heartland of Kentucky, helped move and restore it.

Another of her preservation success stories with a connection to Tebbs Bend is in Campbellsville. When a shopping development threatened a house where the Johnny Rebs had stopped to forage, Gorin stepped in to rescue, move – stone by stone – and restore what turned out to be a significant Federal-style example of one of Central Kentucky’s best settlement-period houses.

One of only 12 German stone houses in the state and one of only three outside the Bluegrass, the Jacob Hiestand House and detached kitchen today are pretty enough to move into. Thanks to its owner’s meticulous journals and Gorin’s attention to historic detail, the interior of the 1823 home reflects its former incarnation well.

“I drove to Shakertown (Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill) to see how the Shakers did masonry, and then I came back and had it done here,” Gorin explains. “This house was built at the same time the Shakers were building theirs, in the early 1800s and 1820s.”

She took the road Hiestand would have traveled when he moved his family from Ohio to Kentucky around 1816 to start a tannery. When Gorin saw the same type of stone house as the Campbellsville structure, she would stop and ask to see its trim.

As a result of her persistence, the Hiestand home’s ash, yellow poplar and walnut floors are immaculate. Its walls – 16 inches thick – shine with Federal blues, brick reds and apple greens, colors originally made from herbs, berries and buttermilk. Hand-tooled masonry abounds. Two fireplaces are of local limestone. The furniture – all period, some original family pieces – includes a lovely 1840 plantation desk, once put on a wagon to be taken to the fields for use and then returned. Certainly, the original owner would be pleased.

Originally a member of the strict German Church of the Brethren, which eschewed slavery and chose community service over war participation, Hiestand rejected his pacifist upbringing, acquired more than 1,000 acres and 16 slaves, and became a colonel in the 99th Regiment of the Kentucky militia. Of 10 children he fathered, one, C. V. Hiestand, became a Campbellsville mayor and physician. He practiced until he turned 90, delivering some 6,000 babies.

“Jacob Hiestand was a remarkable man,” says Gorin. “He became bilingual and very successfully assimilated into Central Kentucky life.”

Call (270) 789-4343 to tour this upscale 19th-century abode or contact the Taylor County Tourist Commission at (800) 738-4719. Learn more about Taylor County’s historic sites and events at www.campbellsvilleky.com or www.kycivilwar.org.

Katherine Tandy Brown is a staff writer for The Lane Report.
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