Appalachian History
When the Civil War began, Johnson County sat in the middle of a contested borderland. The Big Sandy River corridor linked the Ohio River to the interior of eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia. Control of that valley meant control of roads, river landings, and salt and livestock routes that both armies needed.
Most Johnson Countians leaned Union, but loyalties in the hills were complicated. In October 1861 the county fiscal court passed an unusual ordinance fining anyone fifty dollars for publicly raising either a United States or Confederate flag. The court hoped that if no banners flew, tempers would cool. Instead the order underscored how divided the community already was.
Men from the county and its neighbors soon enlisted on both sides. Johnson County sent volunteers into Union units like the 14th Kentucky Infantry and, later, the 39th Kentucky Mounted Infantry, regiments that would spend much of the war patrolling the creeks and gaps of eastern Kentucky. Others slipped south to Camp Boone in Tennessee, joining Company D of the 5th Kentucky Infantry, a Confederate unit that later became part of the famed Orphan Brigade.
The county government might have tried to prevent overt displays of loyalty, but by the winter of 1861–62 the war was coming up the valley regardless.
Garfield’s march and the fight at Jenny’s Creek
In December 1861 Brigadier General Don Carlos Buell ordered a newly promoted colonel from Ohio, James A. Garfield, to march up the Big Sandy and drive Confederate forces from eastern Kentucky. Garfield’s brigade included the 42nd Ohio, 40th Ohio, 14th Kentucky, and 22nd Kentucky, supported by cavalry from Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky.
Confederate Brigadier General Humphrey Marshall was gathering his own force around Paintsville, Hager Hill, and the forks of the Big Sandy. Garfield’s dispatches in late December reported that Marshall’s regulars and “irregular bands of local rebels” were in and around Paintsville, throwing up defensive works and raiding Unionists in the countryside.
By New Year’s 1862 Garfield’s column was slogging south from Louisa through frozen mud and flooded creek bottoms. On January 6 his men reached the outskirts of Paintsville. The next day he sent about three hundred Union cavalry up the valley toward the mouth of Jenny’s Creek, a tributary just above town that emptied into Paint Creek and the Big Sandy. A Kentucky Historical Society marker and later battlefield brochures describe a sharp clash there between Garfield’s troopers and Confederate cavalry guarding Marshall’s retreat.
Private Homer N. Dowd of the 2nd West Virginia Cavalry remembered that week in a letter home. His regiment rode nearly eighty or ninety miles into Kentucky, surprised Confederate horsemen “near the mouth of Jenny’s Creek not far from Paintsville,” and chased them toward Middle Creek. The Federals, he wrote, killed around thirteen “secesh” while losing two men and a few horses.
Local histories and the Kentucky National Guard’s “Paper Trail of the Civil War in Kentucky” treat this January 7 skirmish as the only substantial set-piece fight fought entirely inside Johnson County’s borders. It was brief, but it marked the moment when national armies quite literally rode into the county’s hollows.
Camp Buell and the cost of occupation
After the Confederate cavalry fell back, Garfield’s brigade occupied Paintsville and established “Camp Buell” on nearby high ground. From there they prepared to march on Middle Creek, where they would defeat Marshall again on January 10 and drive his column out of the Big Sandy Valley.
For Johnson County residents the weeks that followed were not remembered for battlefield glory but for sickness, burials, and new pressures to declare one’s loyalty.
The Eastern Kentucky Civil War blog has traced the dead from Paintsville’s wartime cemetery using National Cemetery burial registers and the Roll of Honor volumes. During January through March 1862 at least thirteen men of the 14th Kentucky died of disease while garrisoning Camp Buell, along with numerous soldiers from the 42nd Ohio, 40th Ohio, 1st Kentucky Cavalry, and other units. Many were later reinterred at New Albany National Cemetery in Indiana.
Occupation also brought new paperwork into people’s lives. At Camp Buell on February 17, 1862, a Magoffin County man named James Oney signed a bond and loyalty oath after having “formerly enlisted in the rebel army.” In the document, now reproduced by a family historian, he pledged one thousand dollars and promised to remain a faithful citizen of the United States. The story did not end there. Oney later resurfaced on a Union prisoner roll as a captured Confederate officer, arrested by men of the 14th Kentucky and again released on bond and oath.
Other loyalty papers from Camp Buell, such as the February 1862 certificate for James K. Hunter, show Garfield’s staff promising protection to mountain Unionists who swore to keep the peace. These fragile sheets of paper tell us more than any battle map about how the war reordered power in Johnson County. Men who might once have been influential neighbors could suddenly find themselves arrested as “disloyal,” forced to prove allegiance in writing, or watched closely as suspected Confederate sympathizers.
“Johnson County, December 1, 1862”
One small line in the 14th Kentucky Infantry’s official service record hints at another, now-forgotten clash. In its detailed chronology the regiment notes an action simply as “Johnson County, December 1, 1862,” sandwiched between scouts in Floyd County and operations in eastern Kentucky that winter.
So far no surviving official report has surfaced to explain what happened that day. The absence of a narrative suggests a short skirmish or scouting brush that headquarters never thought worth expanding into a full report. Yet the entry matters. It reminds us that long after the famous winter of 1862, armed men were still trading shots in Johnson County’s ridges and river bottoms, even when the fighting left no battlefield name for highway markers to commemorate.
Clay’s attack on Paintsville and the Half Mountain campaign
By 1864 the formal battlefront in Kentucky had shifted far to the south, but the Big Sandy corridor remained strategically important. Union authorities relied on eastern Kentucky as a recruiting ground and as a buffer against Confederate raiders who slipped through the mountains. The 14th Kentucky and the 39th Kentucky Mounted Infantry spent much of this period on anti-guerrilla duty, riding from Louisa, Paintsville, and other posts in seemingly endless chases after small bands.
In April 1864 Confederate Colonel Ezekiel F. Clay tried to break that control. Pulling together several hundred cavalry, Clay struck north from the Licking River country in an effort to disrupt Union recruiting and supply lines in Johnson and Magoffin Counties.
According to the Kentucky National Guard’s compilation of marker texts, Clay’s troopers attacked Union forces under Colonel George W. Gallup at Paintsville on April 13. The Federals, chiefly men of the 14th and 39th Kentucky, repulsed the assault. The next day they pursued Clay’s retreating column into Magoffin County and struck again at Half Mountain along the Licking River. There Clay’s command suffered heavy losses and the Federals captured dozens of prisoners, at least two hundred horses, and hundreds of saddles and small arms.
Regimental chronologies for both the 14th and 39th Kentucky list “Paintsville April 13” and “Half Mountain, Magoffin County April 14” among their engagements, followed by a fight at Salyersville on April 16. A later Highway Marker in Magoffin County frames the whole sequence as the “Civil War Action” at Paintsville and Half Mountain, emphasizing how closely linked the Johnson and Magoffin County fights were.
The fighting was not bloodless. Burial research identifies at least one 39th Kentucky soldier, Isaac Vicars of Company C, killed by a “rebel ball” at the Battle of Paintsville on April 13. Genealogical work on another soldier, Chockla “Chockley” King, suggests that his Civil War pension papers later referred to wounds suffered at Paintsville that spring, evidence of how the battle left marks on individual bodies and families long after the gunfire died away.
Clay’s failed strike underscored something soldiers on both sides already knew. Even in 1864 the Big Sandy corridor was still contested ground, and an enemy force that reached Paintsville or the Licking River could threaten Union posts deep into Kentucky.
Morgan’s last raid and the summer of guerrillas
The most famous Confederate horseman to pass through Johnson County may have done so in retreat. During what is often called Morgan’s Last Kentucky Raid in June 1864, General John Hunt Morgan’s battered command swept through parts of central Kentucky, only to be badly defeated at Cynthiana. As the expedition unraveled, one wing of his column retreated eastward. A Kentucky Historical Society marker on “Morgan’s Last Raid” records that elements of Morgan’s force passed through South Paintsville in mid June on their way back toward Virginia.
By then, formal Confederate invasions were giving way to a murkier kind of violence. Guerrilla bands and partisan rangers crisscrossed eastern Kentucky, sometimes under nominal Confederate commissions, sometimes little more than heavily armed neighborhood gangs.
The Eastern Kentucky Civil War blog, drawing on scattered military reports, newspaper accounts, and county records, traces one such group led by Dan and Sid Cook. In July 1864 Cook’s guerrillas rode a five day circuit through Lawrence and Johnson Counties. Along the way they apparently held a meeting “near the mouth of Jenny’s Creek” where they captured several local Union men. A few days later they raided Paintsville, robbed a store, then rode out toward Flat Gap and into Morgan County.
These raids never drew the attention that Garfield’s campaign or Clay’s Half Mountain defeat did, yet for civilians they may have been just as frightening. Instead of one short battle followed by an occupying army, people lived with the constant possibility that armed men loyal to either side could appear at their doors, demanding food, horses, or loyalty.
Johnson Countians in blue, gray, and Black
One way to see the war in Johnson County is through the service records of its people. Company D of the 5th Kentucky Infantry (Confederate) included volunteers from Breathitt and Johnson Counties, men who fought in the Western Theater with the Orphan Brigade and did not return home for years.
The 14th Kentucky’s rolls list Johnson County men scattered through its companies, and the 39th Kentucky Mounted Infantry drew its soldiers from nearly every county along the Big Sandy, including Johnson. Those who have traced their family trees through regimental rosters find kin on both sides of the lines, sometimes even facing one another across skirmish sites in Floyd or Magoffin Counties.
Burial and pension records add another layer. The Eastern Kentucky Civil War blog’s survey of Paintsville burials includes not only white Union soldiers from Ohio and Kentucky but also a trooper of the 6th United States Colored Cavalry, Joseph Nelson of Company C, who died in the Paintsville hospital in December 1864. His grave reminds us that Black soldiers, many of them formerly enslaved Kentuckians, passed through this same valley in the war’s final years.
Remembering a “contested borderland”
For a long time Johnson County’s Civil War story was overshadowed by better known battlefields. When historians wrote about eastern Kentucky, they tended to focus on Logan’s Crossroads, Cumberland Gap, or the climactic battles around Knoxville and Atlanta. Brian McKnight’s study Contested Borderland and the Kentucky National Guard’s “Paper Trail” project helped change that by pulling scattered references to places like Paintsville and Jenny’s Creek into a single narrative.
Today a visitor who follows the highway markers and roadside waysides can trace most of the major episodes. One sign near Hager Hill explains Garfield’s mission to clear the Big Sandy Valley and notes how his approach to Paintsville helped set up the Battle of Middle Creek. Another at the Magoffin County line tells the story of Clay’s failed attack and Gallup’s counterblow at Half Mountain. A wayside titled “Eastern Kentucky’s Civil War Battles and Skirmishes” plots Paintsville, Half Mountain, Salyersville, and other small fights on a regional map, reminding travelers that what looks like a quiet mountain drive once formed part of a busy war zone.
Yet much of Johnson County’s Civil War history still lies in quieter places. It lives in the old town cemetery where stones stand in neat government rows or have been lost altogether. It survives in family stories about ancestors who rode with Garfield, Clay, or Dan Cook, and in pension files that quietly record when and where those ancestors were wounded or widowed. It lingers in that long vanished fiscal court order that tried, unsuccessfully, to keep both Union and Confederate flags off the courthouse square.
When we ask “What really happened in Johnson County during the Civil War,” the answer is not a single battle. It is a series of moments: skirmish lines splashing across Jenny’s Creek, a frightened farmer signing a loyalty oath at Camp Buell, a cavalryman falling in the streets of Paintsville, a store door splintered by guerrillas on a July night. Taken together those moments show how a small Appalachian county became part of a much larger struggle over nation, loyalty, and the meaning of home.
Sources & Further Reading
Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume 7, especially the correspondence and reports of Col. James A. Garfield concerning Paintsville, Jenny’s Creek, and the Battle of Middle Creek.Iron Brigader
Pvt. Homer N. Dowd, 2nd West Virginia Cavalry, letter of January 12, 1862, describing a scout and fight near the mouth of Jenny’s Creek, published in “1862: Pvt. Homer N. Dowd to Dennis Wayne Brewer,” Spared & Shared.Spared & Shared 1
Camp Buell loyalty documents, including the bond and oath of James Oney (February 17, 1862), reproduced in Becky’s Bridge to the Past, “The Oneys (and a Couple of Great Stories).”Becky’s Bridge
“Civil War Burials – Johnson County, Kentucky,” Eastern Kentucky and the Civil War blog, which compiles cemetery and burial register data for soldiers who died in and around Paintsville, including men of the 14th Kentucky, 42nd Ohio, 40th Ohio, 39th Kentucky, and the 6th U.S. Colored Cavalry.Eaky Civil War
Kentucky National Guard, “The Paper Trail of the Civil War in Kentucky 1861–1865,” Johnson County section, which summarizes company D, 5th Kentucky Infantry (CSA); the fiscal court’s 1861 flag ordinance; the January 7, 1862 Jenny’s Creek skirmish; the April 13, 1864 attack on Paintsville and Half Mountain; and Morgan’s retreat through South Paintsville.KY National Guard History+1
Middle Creek National Battlefield brochure, “Skirmish at Jennie’s Creek” and associated battle descriptions.Middle Creek
Highway markers and waysides from the Kentucky Historical Society and Historical Marker Database, including markers 556 (Civil War Action, Paintsville–Half Mountain), 571 (Jenny’s Creek), 608 (War on the Big Sandy), 700 (Morgan’s Last Raid), and the “Eastern Kentucky’s Civil War Battles and Skirmishes, 1863–1864” wayside map.KY National Guard History+1
“14th Kentucky Infantry Regiment,” in Dyer’s Compendium and summarized in the regiment’s modern reference entry, detailing operations at Paintsville, Johnson County (Dec. 1, 1862), and Half Mountain.Wikipedia
39th Kentucky Mounted Infantry service history and rosters, including MilitaryHistoryOnline and the yeahpot.com “39th Kentucky Mounted Infantry” page, which highlight Paintsville, Half Mountain, Salyersville, and the Johnson County boat fight among the regiment’s engagements.Military History Online+1
Ed Porter Thompson, History of the Orphan Brigade, for details on Company D, 5th Kentucky Infantry and its Johnson County connections.KY National Guard History
FindAGrave memorial for Chockla “Chockley” King, whose Civil War pension papers are noted as linking him to the Battle of Paintsville in April 1864.Find a Grave
J. K. Wells, A Short History of Paintsville and Johnson County (Paintsville Herald, 1962), and C. Mitchell Hall, Johnson County, Kentucky: A History of the County and Genealogy of Its People up to the Year 1927, for local narratives of Jenny’s Creek, Paintsville, and county politics during the war.KY National Guard History+1
Thomas D. Matijasic, “Johnson County” and related entries in The Kentucky Encyclopedia, for analysis of county demographics, the 1861 flag ordinance, and Civil War era movements through the county.KY National Guard History+1
Brian D. McKnight, Contested Borderland: The Civil War in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia (University Press of Kentucky, 2006), for broader context on Garfield’s Big Sandy campaign, Confederate operations in the region, and the guerrilla war that followed.Vdoc.pub+1
Eastern Kentucky Civil War blog (various posts, especially the 2010 chronology of guerrilla actions) for the activities of Sid and Dan Cook’s guerrilla bands around Jenny’s Creek, Paintsville, and neighboring counties in 1863–64.Eaky Civil War
Iron Brigader, “Future President James A. Garfield’s Report on the Battle of Middle Creek, Kentucky,” which reproduces Garfield’s January 14, 1862 report from Camp Buell and situates the Paintsville and Jenny’s Creek operations within the larger campaign.Iron Brigader