Appalachian History Series – The Battle of Leatherwood: Kentucky’s Mountain War
Where Leatherwood Creek meets the North Fork of the Kentucky River, the mountains open just enough for a narrow bottom, a cluster of houses, and the ruins of an industry that once mattered far beyond Perry County. In the 1800s the place was known for one thing above all others: salt. Long before anyone spoke of a “Battle of Leatherwood,” families talked about Brashear’s Salt Works, the boiling kettles at a little settlement often called Brashearville or simply “the salt works at Leatherwood.”
Like other eastern Kentucky brine operations, Brashear’s began as a frontier experiment and grew into a modest industrial center. A Kentucky legislative journal in the 1830s already counted a salt works at the mouth of Leatherwood among several along the Kentucky River, proof that men were drilling wells and boiling brine there before the great coal booms ever reached Perry County. According to later economic surveys, the Leatherwood works opened in the mid 1830s under men remembered as General White and Colonel Brashear. By 1840 the site represented an investment of many thousands of dollars, employed a small crew, and produced several thousand bushels of salt a year.
Salt making was simple in theory and exhausting in practice. Workers bored down to salt water, pumped it up, and fed it into heavy iron kettles that sat over trenches of firebrick and stone. Wood and later coal kept the furnaces going. As the brine boiled, white crystals crusted along the kettle rim. When enough water had boiled away, workers scraped salt into barrels bound for country stores or river landings. A single bushel might require sixty or seventy gallons of brine.
By the eve of the Civil War, Brashear’s Salt Works fit easily into a regional network that stretched from Clay County’s famous Goose Creek works to smaller furnaces on Lost Creek, Troublesome Creek, and Middle Creek. Writers who have reconstructed that network estimate that Brashear’s could produce on the order of seven thousand bushels in a good year. The works drew on both enslaved labor and local wage workers, tied Perry County into wider markets, and anchored a little river settlement that depended on the kettles for cash and trade.
When the Civil War came, that modest industrial site turned into a military target.
Humphrey Marshall and Confederate Control of Brashear’s
In the fall of 1861 Confederate Brigadier General Humphrey Marshall brought his small Army of Eastern Kentucky into the river counties along the Virginia border. Facing shortages of everything from shoes to bacon, he looked at the Kentucky River valley and saw not just a refuge but a resource. In a December 10 report to his superiors he noted that he had taken possession of Brashear’s Salt Works in Perry County, with the intention of producing enough salt to feed his command and build up a reserve of packed meat.
The same correspondence, preserved today in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, shows Marshall thinking like a quartermaster as much as a general. He hoped the Leatherwood works and a second operation at Middle Creek could together furnish several dozen bushels each week, enough to keep his men supplied through winter and perhaps to stockpile rations for future operations.
Marshall soon pushed further, persuading owner Robert S. Brashear to lease the works to the Confederate government. A surviving draft of that lease, quoted in a later research essay on eastern Kentucky salt works, granted Confederate authorities the right to operate the Leatherwood property for three years. The agreement allowed them to cut timber, mine coal, build housing and storage, and station troops at the mouth of Leatherwood.
In other words, Brashear’s Salt Works became part of the Confederate logistical system. For a time Leatherwood’s kettles boiled for Richmond’s cause. That status helps explain why, a year later, men from Harlan County marched over the ridges to attack the works.
A Harlan Battalion in a Borderland War
Harlan County lay just over the Pine Mountain divide from Leatherwood, but in the early 1860s it felt like a separate world. Its people had family ties in both Union and Confederate armies. Its courthouse and town seat were small, but the county sat astride routes that connected the Cumberland Gap to the North Fork of the Kentucky River and the Pound Gap corridor into Virginia.
When Kentucky began organizing home defense forces in 1862, Harlan answered the call. The Adjutant General’s report for the state lists a “Harlan County Battalion” that mustered into service on October 13, 1862, with roughly five hundred men enrolled. This short lived unit, under Major Benjamin F. Blankenship, was not a Federal regiment but a state militia organization charged with patrolling the borders, guarding roads, and harassing Confederate detachments in neighboring counties. Later federal reports would still remember it as a militia battalion that served along the Tennessee and Virginia lines and in eastern Kentucky that autumn and winter.
The battalion left few detailed narratives, but one document stands out. Among the papers of the Kentucky Adjutant General is Blankenship’s after action report of an October 1862 operation that carried his men out of Harlan, over the mountains, and into Perry County to strike Brashear’s Salt Works. That report, preserved in state archives and quoted heavily by later researchers, is the closest thing to an official Union account of what became known locally as the Battle of Leatherwood.
Blankenship wrote that in mid October he detached about forty men from his Harlan County Battalion and marched north along Poor Fork. His column included volunteers from Companies A and B under Captains George W. Morgan and Ambrose Powell. Their guide and advance scout was a wiry Harlan frontiersman named James H. “Clabe” Jones, already building a reputation as a daring Union scout and bushwhacker.
Their objective was simple and dangerous. Confederate forces still lingered in the mountains after the main Southern army withdrew from Kentucky in the wake of the October 8 Battle of Perryville. The Harlan men were ordered to push into Perry County, check Confederate movements, and if possible “drive the rebels from Brashear’s Salt Works.”
Clabe Jones’s Version of the March
What Blankenship described in the language of orders and movements, Clabe Jones later turned into a vivid story. Decades after the war he dictated an autobiography that survives in several editions, among them a small volume called Clabe Jones: Autobiography of a Mountain Union Scout.
Jones remembered picking a handful of trusted men and slipping ahead of the main column as a scout party. They followed Poor Fork up toward the head of the watershed, then crossed into what is now Letcher or Perry County and dropped down toward Leatherwood. The country was rough. Trails curled along steep slopes or plunged into thickets.
In Jones’s retelling, the scout party reached the vicinity of Brashear’s Salt Works just as Confederate soldiers were preparing a meal near the kettles. He claimed that some of Captain David J. Caudill’s men were joking, eating, and cutting into late season watermelons when the Union skirmishers crept into position above them.
However embellished the details, Jones’s memoir matches Blankenship’s basic outline. Both men agreed that a small Harlan detachment left in mid October, pushed over the ridges toward Leatherwood, and caught a Confederate force off balance near the saltworks.
The Confederate Garrison at Brashear’s
The Confederate troops at Brashear’s Salt Works belonged to Colonel Benjamin E. Caudill’s 10th Kentucky Mounted Rifles, a Letcher County based regiment that would later be redesignated the 13th Kentucky Cavalry, Confederate States Army. Captain David J. Caudill, a cousin of the colonel, commanded Company B, the company on duty at the saltworks.
Family genealogies and county military histories describe David J. Caudill’s men as local mountaineers who knew every ridge and creek in Perry and Letcher counties. They guarded Brashear’s because it provided not only salt but also a protected place to camp, drill, and monitor movement along the river road.
By October 1862 the strategic situation had turned against them. The Confederate high command had ended its Kentucky invasion. Humphrey Marshall’s scattered detachments were under pressure from Union columns advancing out of the Bluegrass and from home guards in the eastern counties. The Confederate garrison at Brashear’s sat at the end of a long and vulnerable logistical line.
October 19, 1862: The Fight at Leatherwood
Most local sources, and both Kentucky Historical Markers at Cornettsville, agree that the clash at Brashear’s took place on October 19, 1862. Blankenship’s report does not always give exact calendar dates, but it clearly places the expedition in the middle of that month. Later lists compiled by the U.S. War Department would list “Leatherwood, Ky.” as an engagement in early November, but that federal summary probably reflects confusion or the lag between field reports and Washington paperwork rather than a separate fight.
Blankenship recorded that his detachment reached the vicinity of Brashear’s Salt Works and made contact with Confederate pickets. After a short advance, the Harlan men opened fire. In his account the engagement lasted only minutes. Jones, writing from memory many years later, made it feel much longer, with scattered shots, sudden volleys, and the chaos of men scrambling for cover along the creek.
According to Jones, he himself fired on Captain David J. Caudill as the Confederate officer tried to rally his men and mount his horse. Jones boasted that his bullet struck Caudill “behind,” sending the captain out of action. Caudill family histories and local military sketches accept that he was indeed wounded at Leatherwood and later rose to field grade rank despite the injury.
Confederate memories add a striking detail. A roster of the 13th Kentucky Cavalry preserved in Knott County genealogical files lists a “Margaret S. Frizell” as wounded on October 14, 1862, “wounded by Clabe Jones at the Battle of Big Leatherwood.” It appears that at least one local woman, likely caught near the Confederate camp or working at the kettles, became a casualty of the short, sharp fight.
The Harlan County men, some sheltered behind trees and rocks and others in shallow positions along Leatherwood Creek, poured in enough fire to break the Confederate line. Blankenship reported that the enemy fled, leaving arms and supplies behind. He counted several Confederates killed and wounded, while his own detachment suffered at least one man mortally hit. Later retellings often refer to a single Union fatality and several wounded.
When the firing stopped, the Harlan detachment controlled the saltworks site, at least for the moment.
Taking and Leaving Brashear’s Salt Works
In his report Blankenship emphasized what mattered most to his superiors. His men had scattered the Confederate guard, seized or destroyed supplies, and denied Brashear’s kettles to the enemy. They were too few to hold the works for long, surrounded by mountains and cut off from immediate reinforcement, so he withdrew back toward Harlan after taking what he could carry.
Even that temporary blow hurt Confederate logistics. Marshall’s December 1861 hope of building up a surplus of salted meat from Leatherwood had already collided with the realities of war. Now, after the October 1862 fight, Confederate forces never again held Brashear’s with the same confidence. The saltworks site continued to see activity, but it became more of a contested hollow, raided and occupied by whichever side had the upper hand at a given moment.
For Perry County civilians, the change did not bring peace. The saltworks remained a focal point for violence long after the brief firefight that later generations remembered as the Battle of Leatherwood.
Gilbert Creech and Later Wartime Violence at Leatherwood
One of the starkest episodes tied to Brashear’s Salt Works took place the following spring. On April 14, 1863, Confederate cavalry under Major Thomas J. Chenoweth, operating as part of Caudill’s command, captured a group of Unionist home guards on Leatherwood Creek. Among them was Gilbert Creech, a Perry and Harlan County man whose wartime reputation was already fierce.
Drawing on newspaper accounts and local tradition, the Eastern Kentucky Civil War research blog reconstructs what happened next. Creech and dozens of captured home guards were taken to a Confederate camp at or near Brashear’s Salt Works, tried for various alleged offenses, and eventually paroled, with one exception. Creech was accused of multiple killings and robberies, including the murder of an elderly couple. When asked whether he had been bushwhacking Confederate men, he reportedly answered that he had and would do so again.
Chenoweth’s officers sentenced Creech to death. On April 14 a firing squad of Confederate soldiers, some of whom had lost family members in earlier violence, shot him at Brashear’s Salt Works, on ground remembered later as part of Cornettsville. Genealogical sketches and Find A Grave memorials place his burial in a local cemetery and repeat the story that he faced death calmly, guiding the soldiers’ aim by patting his own chest.
This execution did not involve regular battle lines or maneuver, but it shows how Brashear’s remained a stage for Civil War brutality long after the October 1862 fight. For Unionists, Creech’s death became an example of Confederate vengeance. For Confederate veterans and their descendants, it was remembered as the punishment of a feared bushwhacker. Either way, the event anchored Leatherwood even more firmly in postwar memory.
Markers, Battle Lists, and Local Memory
Historians today know about Leatherwood and Brashear’s Salt Works through a patchwork of sources: Blankenship’s official report, Jones’s memoir, Confederate correspondence, genealogies, and scattered newspaper accounts. They also rely heavily on what communities chose to inscribe onto the landscape.
On the roadside near Cornettsville, Kentucky Historical Marker 2478, titled “Battle of Leatherwood,” summarizes the fighting on October 19, 1862. It notes that the Harlan County Battalion attacked Captain David J. Caudill’s Company B of Caudill’s Army at Brashear’s Salt Works, captured supplies, and briefly held the saltworks. A second marker, titled simply “Salt Works,” interprets Brashearville as a major early industry in Perry County and links the Civil War skirmish to a longer story about salt as an Appalachian resource.
These markers, erected by the state and local partners, are near primary sources for how Perry Countians chose to remember Leatherwood in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. They emphasize the date of October 19, the role of the Harlan County Battalion, and the importance of salt. They also fix the battle site geographically at the mouth of Leatherwood Creek along modern Kentucky Highway 699.
Other reference works capture Leatherwood in more compressed form. Frederick H. Dyer’s early twentieth century Compendium of the War of the Rebellion includes Leatherwood in its lists of Civil War actions in Kentucky, and regional biographical works from Virginia and Kentucky occasionally refer to the engagement when tracing the service of officers like Ben Caudill. A War Department alphabetical list of battles compiled after the conflict also contains an entry for Leatherwood, though it dates the action in early November, illustrating how even official summaries could drift from local memory.
Genealogies add yet another layer. Caudill family histories, hosted on reunion sites and RootsWeb mirrors, highlight David J. Caudill’s wounding at Leatherwood and quote passages from Jones’s autobiography about the encounter. Knott County military lists remember Margaret S. Frizell as “wounded by Clabe Jones at the Battle of Big Leatherwood.” These entries treat Leatherwood as a family landmark, one more episode in the long saga of mountain kin networks and war.
Reenactment and the Modern Battlefield
The most visible sign that Leatherwood still matters comes every October when reenactors and visitors descend on Cornettsville. Since 2002 local organizers have staged an annual Battle of Leatherwood reenactment on fields close to the original saltworks site. County tourism material advertises the event as a living history weekend that includes sutler camps, school tours, and a Saturday afternoon battle demonstration.
Regional television coverage has helped carry Leatherwood’s story beyond Perry County. WYMT news segments from recent years show lines of blue and gray trading volleys while smoky cannon fire drifts up the hollow. Organizers explain to reporters that the event is scheduled for the fourth weekend of October because local tradition holds that the original fight took place on October 19, 1862, at two o’clock in the afternoon.
Short videos on YouTube and other platforms feature drone footage of the battlefield, interviews with reenactors like Paul Taulbee, and commentary on the strategic importance of Brashear’s Salt Works within the wider eastern Kentucky war. Viewers can see the steep ridges that hem in the valley, the modern highway that traces old roads, and the approximate ground where Jones claimed he shot Caudill.
Today the salt kettles are gone, their iron melted or scattered, but the hollow still carries layers of history. For some visitors, Leatherwood is a chance to watch cannon crews drill or children to hear a school program. For others, it is a family pilgrimage, a place where an ancestor’s name appears on a roster, grave marker, or genealogy page tied to one October afternoon.
Why Leatherwood Matters
Measured against Civil War giants like Perryville or Chickamauga, the Battle of Leatherwood was small. Fewer than a hundred men were actively engaged, the firing lasted perhaps fifteen minutes, and the casualty list fits on a single line. Yet the fight at Brashear’s Salt Works illuminates some of the war’s most important themes in the southern Appalachians.
First, it shows how a resource as basic as salt could draw armies and guerrillas into rugged hollows far from state capitals. Without reliable salt, neither side could preserve meat or leather, and mountain saltworks like Brashear’s became strategic assets. Confederate occupation of the works in 1861 and 1862, backed by a formal lease and guarded by mounted riflemen, confirms that fact.
Second, Leatherwood reveals the complex loyalties of eastern Kentucky. The Harlan County Battalion was a Unionist force raised in a county that also sent men into Confederate units. Its march against Brashear’s brought neighbors into open conflict and linked one hollow to a wider campaign that stretched from the Cumberland Gap to the Kentucky River.
Third, the continued violence at Brashear’s, especially the execution of Gilbert Creech in 1863, reminds us that mountain wars did not end when flags shifted hands. The same public space that hosted a short formal skirmish also became an arena for bushwhacking, reprisals, and wartime “justice” carried out by firing squad.
Finally, Leatherwood’s thick web of markers, reenactments, genealogies, and local histories demonstrates how small battles can loom large in community memory. The fight over Brashear’s Salt Works might not appear in most national textbooks, but for Perry, Harlan, and Letcher County families it stands alongside courthouse burnings, guerrilla ambushes, and flood disasters as one more turning point in the story of a mountain borderland.
Sources & Further Reading
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. 16, Pt. 1: Operations in Kentucky, Middle and East Tennessee, North Alabama, and Southwest Virginia, June 10–October 31, 1862. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1886. https://www.wiu.edu/libraries/govpubs/war_ofthe_rebellion/series_1_vol_1-29.php
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. 7: Operations in Kentucky, Tennessee, North Alabama, and Southwest Virginia, November 19, 1861–March 4, 1862. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1882. https://www.wiu.edu/libraries/govpubs/war_ofthe_rebellion/series_1_vol_1-29.php
Kentucky Adjutant General’s Office. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky, Civil War, 1861–1866. Vol. 2. Frankfort: John H. Harney, Public Printer, 1866–67. https://books.google.com/books?id=9X1JAQAAMAAJ
Blankenship, B. F. “Report of Operations, October 1862.” Kentucky Adjutant-General Papers, Military Records and Research Branch, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, Frankfort, Kentucky. Partial transcription in Faron Sparkman, “Salt Works of Eastern Kentucky,” East Kentucky Civil War blog. https://eakycivilwar.blogspot.com/2012/10/salt-works-of-eastern-kentucky.html
United States Congress, House. Pensions for Militia Organizations of the State of Kentucky. 66th Cong., 2d sess., H. Rept. 779. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1920. https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/SERIALSET-07653_00_00-030-0779-0000
United States War Department. Alphabetical List of the Battles of the War of the Rebellion, with Dates. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1889. https://babel.hathitrust.org
National Archives and Records Administration. Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Kentucky. Microfilm Publication M397, Record Group 94. Washington, DC: National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/civil-war
National Archives and Records Administration. Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Kentucky. Record Group 109. Washington, DC: National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/civil-war
Jones, James Claybourn. Autobiography of Old Claib Jones. Hazard, KY: Hazard Book Company, 1915. https://books.google.com/books?id=WLSU8cU25e4C
Hall, J. W., and Noah M. Reynolds. Autobiography of Old Claib Jones / Mountain Feuds of Kentucky: History of the Feuds of the Mountain Parts of Eastern Kentucky. Hazard, KY, and Bristol, TN: Hazard Book Company and King Printing Company, ca. 1915. https://www.biblio.com/book/autobiography-old-claib-jones-mountain-feuds/d/1584406186
Scalf, Henry P. “The Battle of Ivy Mountain.” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 56, no. 190 (1958): 1–34. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23374266
“Execution of a Kentucky Bushwhacker.” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 18, 1864. Reprinted from the Louisville Journal. Accessible via Chronicling America. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
“Confederates Driven from the Salt Works.” Ligonier Banner (Ligonier, IN), November 14, 1912. Hoosier State Chronicles. https://newspapers.library.in.gov
Kentucky Historical Society. “Battle of Leatherwood.” Kentucky Historical Marker 2478, Cornettsville, Perry County, Kentucky. Historical Marker Database entry. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=74110
Kentucky Historical Society. “Salt Works.” Kentucky Historical Marker 1346, Cornettsville, Perry County, Kentucky. Historical Marker Database entry. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=96963
Hazard-Perry County Tourism Commission. “Battle of Leatherwood Civil War Re-enactment.” Event listings and site description, various years. https://www.kentuckytourism.com
Leatherwood Reenactment Corporation. 150th Anniversary Battle of Leatherwood Reenactment Booklet, Oct. 1862–Oct. 2012. Commemorative program. https://www.ebay.com
Greene, Neeley. “Historical Reenactment Brings the Battle of Leatherwood to Life.” WYMT Mountain News, October 24, 2025. https://www.wymt.com/2025/10/24/historical-reenactment-brings-battle-leatherwood-life
Demmler, Jack. “A Trip to 1862: The Battle of Leatherwood Reenactment.” WYMT Mountain News, October 29, 2023. https://www.wymt.com/2023/10/29/trip-1862-battle-leatherwood-reenactment
Wilcox, Chandler. “EKY Civil War Battle Reenactment Held This Weekend.” WYMT Mountain News, October 23, 2022. https://www.wymt.com/2022/10/23/eky-civil-war-battle-reenactment-held-this-weekend
Noel, Paige. “Battle of Leatherwood Educates Kids about Local History.” WYMT Mountain News, October 26, 2018. https://www.wymt.com/content/news/Battle-of-Leatherwood-educates-kids-about-local-history–498716311.html
Pool, Tommy. “Civil War Comes Back to Leatherwood.” WYMT Mountain News, October 25, 2020. https://www.wymt.com/2020/10/25/civil-war-comes-back-leatherwood
Sparkman, Faron. “Salt Works of Eastern Kentucky.” East Kentucky Civil War (blog), October 2012. https://eakycivilwar.blogspot.com/2012/10/salt-works-of-eastern-kentucky.html
Sparkman, Faron. “The Eastern KY Mountains 1861–1865.” East Kentucky Civil War (blog), June 14, 2011. https://eakycivilwar.blogspot.com/2011/06/eastern-ky-mountains-1861-1865.html
Sparkman, Faron. “Pensions for Militia and State Troops.” East Kentucky Civil War (blog), 2012. https://eakycivilwar.blogspot.com
Sparkman, Faron. “A Little Salt With Your Watermelon: The Battle of Leatherwood.” East Kentucky Civil War (blog), 2016. https://eakycivilwar.blogspot.com
Pike County Historical Society. “Eastern Kentucky Salt Works.” Pike County Historical Society, 2023. https://pikehistoricalsociety.org
Kentucky Heritage Council. The Historic and Prehistoric Resources of Eastern Kentucky. Frankfort: Kentucky Heritage Council, ca. 1992. https://heritage.ky.gov/historic-places/Documents/east-ky-context.pdf
Kentucky Heritage Council. Kentucky’s Civil War Heritage Trail Guide. Frankfort: Kentucky Heritage Council, ca. 2010. https://heritage.ky.gov
Dyer, Frederick H. A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion. Des Moines, IA: Dyer Publishing, 1908. https://archive.org/details/08697590.3359.emory.edu
Hardesty, H. H., ed. Virginia and Virginians. Richmond, VA: H. H. Hardesty, 1888. https://xtf.lib.virginia.edu
McKnight, Brian D. Contested Borderland: The Civil War in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. https://kentuckypress.com/9780813124093/contested-borderland
Author Note: The Battle of Leatherwood was the first Civil War engagement I ever wrote about for AppalachianHistorian.org. It unfolds only a short drive from where I work, in the same landscape I travel through nearly every day. Because of that, it has always been the battle I heard the most about in local stories, school programs, and community events.