Appalachian History Series – The Battle of Middle Creek: Eastern Kentucky’s Turning Point
If you pull off Kentucky 114 east of Prestonsburg and walk out into the open ground at Middle Creek National Battlefield, it is hard to imagine the noise that once filled this little valley. Today there are mown fields, split rail fences, and wayside panels. In January 1862, there were frozen ruts, smoke drifting through the timber, and Kentuckians firing at neighbors across the ridges that hem in the forks of Middle Creek.
The Battle of Middle Creek on 10 January 1862 was not large by Civil War standards. Fewer than three thousand men were engaged and fewer than one hundred became casualties. Yet the fight on the Fitzpatrick farm broke a Confederate advance into Eastern Kentucky, helped secure the Commonwealth for the Union in early 1862, and launched an obscure Ohio colonel named James A. Garfield toward national office.
This article leans first on the official reports collected in the War of the Rebellion, Garfield’s letters and diaries, unit histories, and local land and casualty work around the Fitzpatrick farm. It then turns to detailed studies by John David Preston, Allan Peskin, and others, as well as the National Register nomination for the battlefield and modern interpretation on the ground.
A borderland valley in a divided Kentucky
When the Civil War opened in 1861, Kentucky tried to stand neutral between the Union and Confederacy. On the ground that line was impossible to hold. In the hill country along the Big Sandy River, families and communities sorted themselves in uneasy ways. Some men rallied to defend the Union and keep federal authority on the Ohio River. Others were drawn to the Confederate promise of defending states’ rights and local autonomy.
The Big Sandy Valley, running between the Ohio River and the Virginia border, became one of the most contested corridors in the state. John David Preston’s careful study of the region follows how counties like Floyd, Pike, Johnson, and Lawrence experienced the war as a rolling series of recruiting drives, skirmishes, and occupations rather than one continuous front line. Confederate and Union columns moved up and down the same narrow roads and creek bottoms, feeding local tensions that had been building for years.
By the fall of 1861, a Confederate force under Colonel John S. Williams occupied Prestonsburg and used the Big Sandy Valley as a recruiting ground and shield for the more important Confederate defensive line that arced across southern Kentucky. A sharp skirmish at Ivy Mountain in November sent Williams’s command back toward Virginia, but it did not end Confederate interest in the region.
In December, Confederate authorities sent Brigadier General Humphrey Marshall to rebuild their presence in Eastern Kentucky. Marshall, a former congressman and Mexican War veteran, chose Paintsville on the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy as his base. From there he began raising men for the 5th Kentucky Infantry (Confederate), gathering scattered companies from Virginia units, and trying to arm recruits from the surrounding counties. Contemporary reports and later historians agree that he soon had more than two thousand men on the rolls but could only partially equip them.
Federal commanders in Louisville saw Marshall’s camp as both a direct threat to Unionist strongholds in the Big Sandy and a symbol of Kentucky’s uncertain loyalty. If the Confederates held Eastern Kentucky, they could threaten the left flank of Union forces in the state and shield supply routes into southwest Virginia and East Tennessee.
Garfield and the march down the Big Sandy
On 17 December 1861, Major General Don Carlos Buell gave an unexpected order to a young Ohio colonel. James A. Garfield, a former preacher and college instructor who commanded the 42nd Ohio Infantry, was placed in charge of a scratch brigade and told to clear Marshall out of Eastern Kentucky. Buell’s written instructions made the mission plain. Garfield was to operate against the rebel force that had been plundering its way through the Big Sandy Valley and push it back into Virginia.
Garfield’s brigade, later known as the 18th Brigade of the Army of the Ohio, included his own 42nd Ohio, the 40th Ohio, the 14th Kentucky Infantry (U.S.), the 22nd Kentucky Infantry (U.S.), and elements of the 1st Kentucky Cavalry and other mounted units.
From the first days of the campaign, Garfield’s letters and diary entries stressed the hardship of campaigning in the Big Sandy country. He wrote home about muddy roads that were little more than creek beds, endless fords of icy water, and the difficulty of dragging wagon trains and artillery into a landscape of narrow bottoms and steep hillsides. The Official Records preserve his complaints about scant supplies and the challenge of keeping his men both fed and disciplined in a valley where every corncrib could be described by somebody as “secesh property.”
Garfield left Louisa near the mouth of the Big Sandy at the end of December and worked his way south in stages, pushing Confederate detachments before him and drawing on local Unionists for guides. In early January he closed in on Paintsville. Facing this pressure, Marshall abandoned his entrenchments there and pulled his mixed Confederate force back toward Prestonsburg, choosing a defensive position near the forks of Middle Creek in Floyd County.
Garfield followed, though not as quickly as he had hoped. The same creeks and hills that made the Big Sandy a good defensive country for Marshall slowed the Union brigade to a crawl. By the evening of 9 January 1862 Garfield was still short of Prestonsburg, somewhere near Abbott Creek, with enough intelligence to know that Marshall was close but not enough to know his exact ground.
Marshall’s stand on the Fitzpatrick farm
Marshall chose his defensive position with care. Middle Creek runs westward toward the Levisa Fork and splits into several branches east of Prestonsburg. Near the Fitzpatrick farm, the main stream and forks are pinched on both sides by steep ridges. Nineteenth century maps and modern battlefield studies show a narrow bottomland at the center with hills rising sharply to the north and south. Whoever held those heights could command the road and the fields below.
On the morning of 10 January, Marshall deployed his troops along these ridges. Infantry of the 5th Kentucky and 54th Virginia and attached companies from other regiments occupied the high ground, while artillery took positions covering the road and creek crossings. Confederate cavalry screened the front in the open plain near the creek. From this vantage point Marshall hoped either to block Garfield’s advance outright or to bloody the Union brigade badly enough to discourage any further push into the valley.
Garfield, leaving camp before daylight on 10 January, marched his men toward Prestonsburg. As he rounded a bend near the Left Fork of Middle Creek about midday, he saw a level plain ahead of him alive with Confederate cavalry. The horsemen charged, fired, and then fell back toward the hills, drawing Union skirmishers after them. At first Garfield thought he had caught up with Marshall’s rear guard. The volume of fire and the sight of infantry forming along the ridges soon told him that he had in fact stumbled into the teeth of the Confederate line.
The battle of Middle Creek, 10 January 1862
On the spot, Garfield had to improvise a plan in ground that he had never seen before that day. Official reports and later accounts agree on the broad outline. He halted the column, brought up artillery, and formed his infantry into two main groups. One force would cross Middle Creek and pin the Confederate front on the ridges. Another would work around Marshall’s right, climbing the hills and trying to roll up the line from the flank.
Men of the 14th and 22nd Kentucky Infantry, recruited largely from Eastern Kentucky counties, found themselves scrambling up steep slopes under fire to press the flanking attack. On the opposite ridge they traded shots and then close range volleys with fellow Kentuckians of the 5th Kentucky Infantry in Confederate gray. The official battlefield history and marker texts at Middle Creek stress that this was neighbor against neighbor warfare in a very literal sense. Floyd County men stood in both lines.
The fight see-sawed through the winter afternoon. Garfield’s own letters and the later regimental history of the 42nd Ohio remember a series of piecemeal charges and countercharges up the ravines and across the ridges, with units losing and retaking the same ground. Cannon smoke clung to the hillsides, and muskets fouled quickly in the damp cold. On the Fitzpatrick farm below, family members and neighbors sheltered in the house and outbuildings while shot and shell passed overhead, an experience reconstructed in detail by later local research using land records and casualty lists.
Sometime after three in the afternoon, fresh Union troops appeared on the field. Garfield’s straggling columns finally closed up, and additional companies took their places on the flanks and in the firing line. Marshall, whose own men were short of ammunition and food after weeks of hard marching and recruiting, saw no prospect of breaking the Federal line. As daylight began to fail, he ordered a withdrawal from the ridges and fell back through Prestonsburg toward Virginia.
The numbers involved were small, but the casualties mattered intensely to the households along the Big Sandy. National Park Service and battlefield preservation studies estimate about ninety two total casualties at Middle Creek, roughly twenty seven Union and sixty five Confederate. The exact counts vary by source, especially for lightly wounded men who did not report to hospitals, but the pattern is clear. Confederate losses were heavier, and many of the dead and wounded on both sides came from Floyd County and neighboring communities.
On the Union side, Garfield held the field. His brigade entered Prestonsburg briefly and then retired to Paintsville to regroup and resupply before continuing operations down the valley. For the Confederates, Middle Creek marked the end of Marshall’s first serious attempt to hold Eastern Kentucky. Within days his force was retreating back into Virginia, struggling with desertions and supply shortages.
Neighbors on opposite ridges
To understand why Middle Creek still matters in Floyd County memory, it is important to look beyond the brigade and regiment level and think in terms of household and kin networks. Local rosters gathered from the Kentucky Adjutant General’s report and National Archives records show that men from the same extended families appear in both the 14th Kentucky Infantry (U.S.) and the 5th Kentucky Infantry (C.S.A.).
The official battlefield foundation emphasizes this reality for visitors. Interpretive panels along the walking trail highlight Floyd County soldiers serving in the Union 14th and 22nd Kentucky who climbed the ridges on 10 January and Floyd County Confederates in the 5th Kentucky who tried to throw them back. Genealogical work on families like the Fitzpatricks and on individual soldiers who fell that day adds more personal detail, linking the names on unit rosters to graves and descendants in the region.
Historians of the Appalachian borderlands point to Middle Creek as a textbook example of how national politics became intensely local in Eastern Kentucky. Brian McKnight and John David Preston both argue that the Big Sandy Valley’s Civil War was less a clean contest between Unionists and secessionists and more a complicated struggle over local power, older feuds, and survival in a hard place. Middle Creek forced those tensions into the open. For one long winter day, they were expressed in rifle fire across a few narrow ravines.
A small battle with large consequences
Measured in casualties or acreage, Middle Creek was not a major Civil War battle. Its significance lies in timing and context. In early January 1862, the Confederacy still claimed a defensive line across Kentucky and Tennessee that ran roughly from the Mississippi River through Bowling Green and eastward into the mountains. The National Register nomination for the battlefield, drawing on McPherson and other national historians, points out that Middle Creek and the larger Battle of Mill Springs later that month broke the eastern end of this line. Within weeks, Union victories at Forts Henry and Donelson cracked it in the center and opened the way for deeper thrusts into Tennessee.
For Union commanders, Garfield’s success at Middle Creek showed that a relatively small, well handled force could operate aggressively in the hilly counties along the Virginia border and that Eastern Kentucky need not be ceded to Confederate influence. For Confederate leaders, Marshall’s withdrawal underscored just how hard it was to sustain a line in rough country without secure supply and strong local support.
The battle also mattered for the career of James A. Garfield. Newspapers in Ohio, Kentucky, and beyond quickly seized on his report of the fight. Papers like the Cincinnati Gazette and Cleveland Plain Dealer carried detailed accounts that cast him as the “hero of the Sandy Valley,” a phrase Allan Peskin later used as the title of his study on Garfield’s Kentucky campaign. Nineteenth century biographies quoted generously from his letters and speeches about the battle, weaving Middle Creek into the story of a rising statesman.
Soon after the battle, Garfield received a promotion to brigadier general of volunteers, dated from 10 January 1862. His later service in larger campaigns, his postwar political career, and finally his brief presidency have tended to overshadow the muddy little valley in Floyd County where he first proved himself in combat. On the ground, though, Middle Creek remains the place where a future president’s military reputation was made.
From farm field to National Battlefield
For decades after the war, the Fitzpatrick land and surrounding ridges remained working farmland and pasture. Middle Creek lived most vividly in family stories, veterans’ reminiscences, and scattered local commemorations. Early twentieth century regimental reunions and county histories mentioned the fight, but there was no formal park or monument.
That began to change in the later twentieth century as battlefield preservation and heritage tourism gained momentum in Kentucky. State and local partners erected a roadside marker summarizing the battle and emphasizing its place as the largest and most significant Civil War engagement in Eastern Kentucky.
In the early 1990s, historians and preservationists prepared a detailed National Register of Historic Places nomination for the “Battle of Middle Creek” site. That document mapped core and study areas, described the landscape in detail, and assembled a strong bibliography of primary and secondary sources. The site was added to the National Register in 1992, and the battlefield has since been recognized as a National Historic Landmark.
Local advocates went further, creating Middle Creek National Battlefield with walking trails, interpretive panels, and periodic living history events. Today visitors can follow a loop trail that climbs the ridges where Union and Confederate infantry once wrestled for position, stand near the Fitzpatrick farm site, and look out over a valley that feels both ordinary and deeply marked by its history.
Civil War organizations such as the American Battlefield Trust now list Middle Creek among the key battles in Kentucky and provide concise summaries, maps, and educational materials that help connect this small fight to the broader story of the Western Theater.
Remembering Middle Creek
Standing at Middle Creek today, the scale of the place is what strikes many visitors first. The battlefield is small enough that you can walk from the Union approach route to the Confederate ridges in a short afternoon. That closeness makes it easier to imagine the men of the 14th and 22nd Kentucky, the 5th Kentucky, the 42nd Ohio, and other units trading shots across these hills. It brings home how Civil War lines in Kentucky often ran not hundreds of miles away but through specific farms and hollows, across the property lines of families like the Fitzpatricks.
Middle Creek did not decide the fate of the nation on its own. What it did do was to seal off a Confederate advance into Eastern Kentucky at a critical moment, send a shaken Confederate general and his men back toward Virginia, and give the Union high command proof that Kentucky’s eastern mountains could be held. It also provided the first major headline in the Civil War story of James A. Garfield, whose path from this valley would lead to Congress and the White House.
For Floyd County and the Big Sandy Valley, the battle was one hard day in a much longer season of divided loyalties and contested authority. The preserved ground at Middle Creek invites people to walk that day’s landscape for themselves and to think about what it meant to live in a place where national arguments about union and secession, slavery and freedom, came down to who stood on which ridge on a cold January afternoon.
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 1, Vol. 7. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1882. https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth154610. The Portal to Texas History
Garfield, James A. The Wild Life of the Army: Civil War Letters of James A. Garfield. Edited by Frederick D. Williams. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1964. https://archive.org/details/wildlifeofarmy00garf. Internet Archive
Garfield, James A. The Diaries of James A. Garfield. Edited by Harry J. Brown and Frederick D. Williams. 4 vols. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967-1981. Cataloged and reviewed at Indiana Magazine of History. https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/view/9342. IUScholarWorks
James A. Garfield Papers. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Online collection, accessed 2025. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/collmss.ms000082. Library of Congress+1
Lossing, Benson J. A Biography of James A. Garfield. New York: H. S. Goodspeed, 1882. https://www.loc.gov/item/10029601. The Library of Congress
Mason, Frank H. The Forty-second Ohio Infantry: A History of the Organization and Services of That Regiment in the War of the Rebellion; With Biographical Sketches of Its Field Officers and a Full Roster of the Regiment. Cleveland: Cobb, Andrews & Co., 1876. https://archive.org/details/fortysecondohioi00maso. Internet Archive+1
Kentucky. Adjutant-General’s Office. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky, 1861-1866. Frankfort, KY: Kentucky Yeoman Office, 1866. https://archive.org/details/reportofadjutant01kent. HathiTrust
Kentucky. Adjutant-General’s Office. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky: Confederate Kentucky Volunteers, War 1861-65. Louisville: John P. Morton, 1915. https://archive.org/details/reportofadjutant05kent. Internet Archive
“Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System: Battle Unit Details, 14th Kentucky Infantry.” National Park Service. Accessed 2025. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UKY0014RI. AbeBooks
“History of the Fourteenth Regiment Kentucky Volunteer Infantry.” RootsWeb Freepages. Accessed 2025. https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~us14thkyinfantry/military/history.html. Freepages
“Battle of Middle Creek & The Fitzpatricks.” Floyd County USGenWeb Archives. Accessed 2025. https://files.usgwarchives.net/ky/floyd/military/civilwar/f321001.txt. USGW Archives
Library of Congress. “James A. Garfield Papers.” Selected digitized correspondence and diaries, including material from 1861-1862. Accessed 2025. https://www.loc.gov/collections/james-a-garfield-papers/. The Library of Congress+1
United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service. “Battle of Middle Creek.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, NRHP #91001665, 1992. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/fd84d47d-5383-473a-b332-f80942f0c0e0. NPGallery
Preston, John David. The Civil War in the Big Sandy Valley of Kentucky. Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1984. https://books.google.com/books?id=7o1vGQAACAAJ. Google Books
Preston, John David. Civil War Soldiers of the Big Sandy Valley of Kentucky. Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 2000. https://heritagebooks.com/products/101-p0070. Heritage Books, Inc.
Peskin, Allan. “The Hero of the Sandy Valley: James A. Garfield’s Kentucky Campaign of 1861-1862.” Ohio History 72 (1963). https://resources.ohiohistory.org/ohj/. NPGallery
Carr, Joseph D. “Garfield and Marshall in the Big Sandy Valley, 1861-1862.” Filson Club History Quarterly 64, no. 2 (1990): 247-263. https://filsonhistorical.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/64-2-4-Garfield-and-Marshall-in-the-Big-Sandy-Valley-1861-1862-Joseph-D-Carr.pdf. Filson Historical Society+1
American Battlefield Trust. “Middle Creek: Battle Facts and Summary.” American Battlefield Trust, accessed 2025. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/middle-creek. UKnowledge
Middle Creek National Battlefield Foundation. “History of the Battle of Middle Creek.” Middle Creek National Battlefield, accessed 2025. https://www.middlecreek.org/history. American Battlefield Trust+1
Kentucky Historical Society. “Battle of Middle Creek.” ExploreKYHistory, accessed 2025. https://explorekyhistory.ky.gov/items/show/640. Kentucky Historical Society
“The Battle of Middle Creek.” Historical Marker Database (HMdb.org), accessed 2025. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=97136. Human Metabolome Database
“Battle of Middle Creek.” Clio: Your Guide to History, accessed 2025. https://theclio.com/entry/11584. Clio
Kentucky National Guard. “Daniel Weisiger Lindsey: A Gentleman and Patriot.” Kentucky Guard eMuseum, accessed 2025. https://kynghistory.ky.gov/Our-History/History-of-the-KYNG/Pages/Daniel-Weisiger-Lindsey.aspx. Kentucky National Guard
Kentucky National Guard. The Paper Trail of the Civil War in Kentucky, 1861-1865. Frankfort: Kentucky National Guard, 2013. Digital pamphlet, accessed 2025. https://kynghistory.ky.gov/Our-History/History-of-the-KYNG/PublishingImages/Pages/Default/paper_trail_civil_war.pdf. FlipHTML5+1
Harrison, Lowell H. The Civil War in Kentucky. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1975. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/16683. AbeBooks
McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/battle-cry-of-freedom-9780195168952. Oxford University Press
Catton, Bruce. This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War. New York: Doubleday, 1956. https://archive.org/details/thishallowedgroun0000catt. Amazon
Buel, Clarence C., and Robert U. Johnson, eds. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. Vol. 1. New York: Century, 1888. https://archive.org/details/battlesleadersof01cent. AbeBooks
Harper, Henry M., ed. Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1866. https://archive.org/details/harperspictorial01guernich. Internet Archive
National Park Service, American Battlefield Protection Program. “CWSAC Report Update: Kentucky Civil War Battlefields.” NPS, 2010. Includes mapping for Middle Creek Battlefield (1862). https://www.nps.gov/abpp/CWSII/CWSACBattlefieldProfiles/Kentucky_Battlefields.pdf. NPS History
Middle Creek National Battlefield Foundation. “Battlefield Maps and Driving Tour of Middle Creek, January 10, 1862.” PDF brochure, accessed 2025. https://www.middlecreek.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/middle-creek-maps.pdf. middlecreek.org
Library of Congress. “James A. Garfield (1831-1881).” Timeline essay in James A. Garfield Papers Collection, accessed 2025. https://www.loc.gov/collections/james-a-garfield-papers/articles-and-essays/james-a-garfield-1831-1881/. The Library of Congress
Author Note: When you walk the ground at Middle Creek, it is easy to forget that this relatively small fight helped close the door on Confederate hopes in Eastern Kentucky and steady the Commonwealth for the Union. I see it as a turning point because Garfield’s victory here not only pushed Humphrey Marshall back into Virginia, but also set the stage for the string of Union successes that reshaped the whole Western Theater in early 1862.