Appalachian History
On a quiet day in Greensburg you can stand on the public square and hear little more than traffic around the old limestone courthouse. The two story building looks older than the rest of the square because it is. Built in 1802, it is one of the oldest surviving courthouses in Kentucky and the oldest courthouse west of the Alleghenies. Local tradition remembers it as a place where men mustered for earlier wars, where famous lawyers argued cases, and where residents later fought to keep it from being demolished. During the Civil War it very nearly went up in flames.
Green County never hosted a large set piece battle. Instead, the war arrived through recruiting camps, marching columns just over the county line, scattered guerrilla fights, and a bitter struggle over slavery and Black enlistment. Yet this small Green River town produced two Union generals, supplied men to both blue and gray, and became part of the contested landscape of emancipation in Kentucky.
What follows is the story of how a county without a major battlefield still became deeply entangled in the Civil War.
Greensburg on the Eve of War
When the sectional crisis deepened in 1860 and 1861, Greensburg was a modest county seat on the Green River. The stone courthouse on the square had already served the community for nearly sixty years. A later historical study describes it as a two story limestone structure, thirty four by forty feet, erected in 1802 and later altered with a bell, new flooring, and relocated stairway. Men had mustered here for the War of 1812, and figures such as Andrew Jackson and Ninian Edwards passed through its courtroom in the decades before the Civil War.
The courthouse itself was the work of Thomas “Stone Hammer” Metcalfe, a stonemason who later became governor of Kentucky. Metcalfe built other landmark structures around the commonwealth, and his work in Greensburg gave the town a civic symbol that would endure war, fire threats, and twentieth century redevelopment schemes.
By 1861, Greensburg also claimed two prominent citizens whose careers would shape the county’s wartime experience. William T. Ward, born in Amelia County, Virginia in 1808, had settled in Greensburg, studied law, and entered politics. He served in the Kentucky legislature and represented the state’s Fourth District in Congress in the early 1850s before returning to law practice in town.
Edward Henry Hobson was Greensburg born. He entered business with his father, a merchant and steamboat operator, and by the 1850s had become president of the local branch of the Bank of Kentucky. Hobson already had military experience. He had enlisted in the Second Kentucky Volunteer Infantry during the Mexican War and earned promotion at Buena Vista in 1847 before returning home to his commercial career.
When civil war came to Kentucky, Ward and Hobson brought national attention to an otherwise small county seat along the Green River.
Camp Hobson and the Making of Green County’s Regiments
Kentucky tried to remain neutral in 1861, but the state quickly filled with recruiting camps for both Union and Confederate forces. Near Greensburg, the key Union site was Camp Hobson, also known as Camp Andy Johnson, established near the Green River bridge west of town. Later historical markers place Civil War Camp Hobson beside the Green River Bridge and note its connection to the network of Federal stockades, hospitals, and picket posts that guarded this strategic crossing.
From the standpoint of Green County’s Civil War story, what matters most is that two important Union regiments began their service here. A statewide compilation of Civil War activity by county, produced from Kentucky Historical Society marker files and Dyer’s Compendium, notes that the Thirteenth Kentucky Infantry Regiment was organized at Camp Hobson in Green County on December 10, 1861, and mustered out in January 1865. The same source records that the Twenty first Kentucky Infantry was organized at Camp Hobson and mustered in between December 31, 1861 and January 2, 1862, serving until December 1865.
These units drew heavily from Green and neighboring counties, which is why later genealogical and local history compilations describe the Thirteenth Kentucky as “Hobson’s regiment” and list long rosters of Green County men who served in its companies.
The landscape around Camp Hobson would see fighting twice. In the winter of 1861 and 1862 it was a training ground, with raw recruits drilling in the mud near the Green River. In July 1863, the same river crossing at Tebbs Bend in neighboring Taylor County became the site of a hard fought action during John Hunt Morgan’s famous raid. On July 4, 1863, a small Union force held off repeated assaults by Morgan’s cavalry at what contemporary and modern accounts call the Battle of Tebbs Bend or the Battle of Green River Bridge.
The men in that fight were mostly Michigan soldiers, but for Green County residents watching troop movements along the turnpikes and river roads, it drove home the reality that their local recruiting ground sat on a contested front line.
Two Greensburg Generals
The best known individual stories from Green County in the Civil War belong to the two Union generals who claimed Greensburg as home.
William T. Ward’s military career spanned two wars. He first served as colonel of a Kentucky regiment in the Mexican War. During the Civil War he entered Union service again and rose to the rank of brigadier general, eventually leading a division in the Army of the Cumberland. He saw action at Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga, and in the Atlanta and Nashville campaigns. After the war, state and local historical programs remembered him as one of “Two Greensburg Generals” and placed highway markers acknowledging both his military service and his ties to the town square.
Edward Henry Hobson followed a similar path, but his Civil War story ties more directly back to Green County’s regiments. When Kentucky organized the Thirteenth Kentucky Infantry, Hobson took command. Later biographical sketches emphasize that he would be best remembered for his role in pursuing John Hunt Morgan during the 1863 raid into Indiana and Ohio. He commanded a provisional cavalry division that left Greensburg in pursuit, correctly guessed Morgan’s route toward Brandenburg, and eventually helped corner the Confederate raider at Buffington Island.
After the war, Hobson returned repeatedly to Greensburg, serving again as a banker and becoming involved in Republican politics. His home in town and the place of his burial are both now marked, and modern biographical projects such as House Divided and battlefield organizations draw on nineteenth century reference works to tell his story.
The presence of Ward and Hobson gives Green County’s story an unusually high profile, but their careers also illustrate the county’s broad Union leanings. Even so, that loyalty never translated into a simple or peaceful wartime experience.
Guerrillas, Scouts, and a Quiet Front Line
Although no large battle took place on Green County soil, the county did not escape wartime violence. Like many parts of Kentucky, it suffered from raids, bushwhacking, and skirmishes between Federal scouts and Confederate guerrillas.
The best surviving snapshots of this shadow war appear in the official dispatches of officers like Edward H. Hobson. In July 1864, by that point a brigadier general headquartered at Memphis, Hobson wired Major General William T. Sherman that a detachment of the Thirteenth Kentucky Cavalry had attacked a guerrilla band in Green County, killing and wounding some of the rebels.
About ten days later he reported another small action. In a brief field report later printed among the War of the Rebellion volumes, Hobson summarized the work of Captain Crandell’s detachment in Green County. Crandell’s men, he wrote, had killed two and wounded one rebel, captured four more, and suffered no losses of their own.
These terse lines do not tell us the names of the dead or which hollows and crossroads saw the fighting. They do show that federal cavalrymen recruited from this region returned to operate on their own home ground, hunting irregulars in familiar terrain. Taken together with state level summaries of county experience, which characterize Green County’s Civil War years in terms of recruiting, regimental organization, and scattered guerrilla activity rather than pitched battles, they suggest a community living under constant low level threat rather than open battlefield occupation.
The thunder of artillery at Tebbs Bend in July 1863 would have carried across the Green River valley, and Morgan’s columns passed close enough that Greensburg residents watched troops move along the roads. The greater part of the county’s wartime story, however, played out in raids, arrests, and political arguments rather than large scale engagements.
Confederates from a Union County
Green County contributed men to Confederate units as well. Kentucky was a deeply divided border state, and archival compilations of regimental histories make clear that even counties with strong Union reputations sent volunteers south.
The same “Paper Trail of the Civil War in Kentucky” that records the creation of Hobson’s Thirteenth Kentucky Infantry at Camp Hobson also notes that Company D of the Sixth Kentucky Infantry (Confederate) was composed of volunteers from Barren and Green counties. The company mustered at Cave City in Barren County in September 1861 and joined the famous First Kentucky or “Orphan” Brigade in the Army of Tennessee.
Ed Porter Thompson’s nineteenth century History of the Orphan Brigade, cited in that summary, preserves many of the personal stories behind those brief county level notes. For Green Countians who took the Confederate route to war, the journey often involved leaving home in small groups, slipping through Union controlled areas to reach camps in Tennessee, then fighting in the major Western Theater battles where the Orphan Brigade gained its grim reputation.
Thus, even as the courthouse square and Camp Hobson became icons of Union Kentucky, families in Green County navigated divided loyalties, with sons or cousins in Hobson’s regiment and others in Confederate ranks.
Enslaved Green Countians and the Struggle over Black Enlistment
The Civil War in Kentucky cannot be understood without considering slavery and emancipation. Green County was no exception.
One of the clearest surviving individual stories is that of Thomas W. Penick. Born into slavery in Green County in 1830, Penick escaped during the war with his wife Mona and their daughter. According to later biographical work based on court papers and military records, he reached a Union camp and enlisted in the United States Colored Troops. Penick served in the 125th United States Colored Infantry, while his wife and child worked for the army as cook and laundress.
His life is far from unique. A statewide study prepared for the Kentucky National Guard notes that more than twenty three thousand African Americans from Kentucky served in USCT units, whether in cavalry, artillery, or infantry. Many of these men had been enslaved in central Kentucky counties like Green and seized wartime opportunity to leave plantations or small farms for recruiting posts such as Camp Nelson, Louisville, or Bowling Green.
Although access to certain online collections is limited, scholarship on Unionism and emancipation in Civil War Kentucky by historians such as James F. Lee and John W. Blassingame relies on provost marshal reports that describe white resistance to Black enlistment. These reports include accounts of enslaved men from central Kentucky counties being beaten, threatened, or turned back when they tried to reach Union recruiting officers.
Genealogical and archival work focused on African American history in Green County adds further depth. The “Kentucky U.S. Colored Troops Pension Files” project, for example, compiles pension applications by former USCT soldiers and widows, some of whom listed Green County, Kentucky, as their residence at the time of filing. Mary Bishop’s Green County Black Records, a locally produced volume, draws on court and vital records to track Black families in the county from the era of slavery into the twentieth century.
Taken together, these sources show that Green County’s Civil War story involved not only white Unionists and Confederates but also enslaved and formerly enslaved people who turned wartime upheaval into a path toward military service and, eventually, freedom.
The Courthouse That Almost Burned
The old stone courthouse on Greensburg’s public square survived the war, but only barely.
A modern local history entry on the building, based closely on its National Register nomination, recounts that in late 1864 Confederate Brigadier General Hylan B. Lyon led a raid through Kentucky with explicit orders to burn courthouses. He succeeded in destroying a number of them, particularly in the western and south central part of the state. When Lyon’s column approached Greensburg, he reportedly intended to burn the Green County courthouse as well. According to this account, once he learned that a Union force under Colonel Orlando Moore was in the town to protect the structure and its surroundings, Lyon altered his route. He marched instead to neighboring Campbellsville, where his men burned the Taylor County courthouse on December 25, 1864.
The Kentucky National Guard’s “Paper Trail” offers statewide context for this episode, citing Kentucky Historical Society marker files to observe that twenty two Kentucky courthouses were burned in the Civil War, nineteen of them in the last fifteen months of the conflict. Twelve were destroyed by Confederate troops, eight by guerrillas, and two by accident on the Union side.
In other words, Greensburg was almost typical. It sat squarely within the zone Lyon intended to ravage. What makes the county unusual is that the courthouse escaped both wartime fire and peacetime “progress.”
In 1928, a county judge proposed building a new courthouse and demolishing the old limestone building. Local citizens rallied in response. A later historical summary describes how residents organized petitions, wrote editorials, and even obtained a court injunction to save the structure. Their efforts succeeded, and the old courthouse remained on the square, later gaining recognition as one of the oldest public buildings of its kind in Kentucky.
Today the building’s survival makes it a rare physical witness to both the Civil War years and the community’s later debates over how to remember them.
Markers, Memory, and Green County’s Civil War Landscape
Visitors who come to Greensburg today encounter the Civil War story mostly through roadside markers, courthouse plaques, and nearby battlefields. Kentucky Historical Society markers recognize “Two Greensburg Generals” and tell the story of William T. Ward and Edward H. Hobson as local men who rose to Union generalship and helped secure victory for the United States.
Near the Green River crossing in Taylor County, a cluster of markers at the Tebbs Bend–Green River Bridge Battlefield explain how Morgan’s cavalry tried and failed to force the crossing on July 4, 1863. Additional markers point out Civil War Camp Hobson, the Green River Bridge skirmish site, Federal stockades, and the locations of wartime hospitals.
Back in Greensburg, the old courthouse and the Hobson family home, both listed or documented in preservation surveys, anchor a small but rich Civil War landscape. Clio’s entry on the courthouse ties together architectural detail, wartime threat, and preservation campaigns, while local history projects and National Park Service documentation further emphasize Greensburg’s unusual distinction as a small Appalachian town that produced two Union generals and kept its early courthouse intact.
For modern Green Countians and visitors alike, the result is a landscape where the Civil War is present not in great battlefields but in layers of memory: a stone courthouse that almost burned, a training camp site downriver, family stories of Union and Confederate service, and the quieter but vital stories of enslaved people who claimed freedom through USCT enlistment.
In that sense, Green County’s Civil War history mirrors much of Appalachia. The war did not always arrive as a single famous battle. It arrived instead as a long season of recruiting drives, rumor, guerrilla scares, courthouse threats, and hard personal choices, leaving behind a legacy that still shapes how the community remembers itself today.
Sources and Further Reading
What follows is a selection of primary and high quality secondary works that underpin this overview and offer starting points for deeper research on Green County and the Civil War.
War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. The dispatches of Brigadier General Edward H. Hobson from July and August 1864 report cavalry scouts in Green County attacking guerrilla bands, including Captain Crandell’s detachment that “killed two and wounded one rebel in Green County” and captured four more. The Portal to Texas History+1
John M. Trowbridge, compiler, The Paper Trail of the Civil War in Kentucky, 1861–1865 (Frankfort: Kentucky National Guard). This workbook style volume draws heavily on Frederick H. Dyer’s A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion and Kentucky Historical Society highway markers. It includes a county by county section in which “Civil War 1861–1865 in Green County” notes the organization of the Thirteenth and Twenty first Kentucky Infantry at Camp Hobson and records a Confederate company from Barren and Green counties in the Sixth Kentucky Infantry (Orphan Brigade). KY National Guard History+1
“Green County and the Civil War,” and related pages at KYGenWeb and KYKinfolk. These volunteer driven sites transpose portions of the Adjutant General’s reports, list Union soldiers buried in the county, and often rely on Edward F. Porter’s local register of Civil War soldiers from Green and neighboring counties. Kygenweb+1
“Two Greensburg Generals,” ExploreKYHistory; “Kentucky’s Civil War: Two Greensburg Generals,” Legislative Research Commission, Legislative Moment 29. These public history treatments synthesize biographical information on William T. Ward and Edward H. Hobson and explain how Green County has commemorated them through roadside markers and local interpretation. Legislative Research Commission+2Explore Kentucky History+2
“Edward Henry Hobson,” House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College; Edward H. Hobson biography at American Battlefield Trust. These entries, based largely on nineteenth century reference works, review Hobson’s life as a Greensburg merchant, Mexican War officer, Civil War general, and postwar businessman and politician. House Divided+2American Battlefield Trust+2
“The Old Green County Courthouse,” Clio entry, with associated National Register nomination for the Greensburg Historic District. These sources document the courthouse’s construction in 1802, its association with Thomas Metcalfe, its near destruction during Lyon’s raid, and the successful twentieth century community effort to preserve it. Clio+2NPGallery+2
J. W. Blassingame, “The Recruitment of Colored Troops in Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, 1863–1865,” Journal of Negro History 52 (1967), and James F. Lee, “Unionism and Emancipation in Civil War Era Kentucky” (M.A. thesis, University of Louisville, 2007). These works use provost marshal records and other federal sources to describe how white opposition to Black enlistment played out in Kentucky counties, including central Kentucky communities comparable to Green County. JSTOR+1
“Thomas W. Penick: Lebanon’s Black Civil War Veteran,” Lebanon (New Hampshire) Historical Society. This public history profile pieces together the life of a man born enslaved in Green County who escaped during the war and enlisted in the 125th United States Colored Infantry, illustrating how one Green Countian turned the war into a path toward freedom and postwar mobility. Lebanon Historical Society