The Armstrong Hotel

The Armstrong Hotel, which once stood at the corner of 6th and Main in Shelbyville, must have been an interesting place in the good old days. The historical marker notes that it was "known for its good food and lodgings" since 1859, but also for two newsworthy murders.


Henry Denhardt, former Lt. Governor of Kentucky from Bowling Green, was charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Verna Garr Taylor, and tried in LaGrange in November, 1936.

That trial ended in a hung jury, and while free on bail and awaiting his second trial, he was shot to death by Verna's brothers in front of the Armstrong Hotel on September 20, 1937. Denhardt, who had a reputation as a heavy drinker, had just come from a tavern down the street and was about to go back up to his room at the Armstrong.

Verna's brothers got off scot free, incidentally, and to this day no one can say for sure whether Denhardt was guilty or innocent of Verna's murder.

And back during the Civil War, Union guerilla leader Edwin Terrell stopped here on May 26, 1866 while on the run from the law. A posse caught up with him at the Armstrong, and though he tried to escape, he was shot to death nearby after fleeing the Hotel. Terrell sounds like an interesting rogue; according to an article by Stewart Cruickshank:

"Prior to the Civil War it is thought that Edwin Terrell performed in a circus. He reportedly killed a bartender in Baltimore but was acquitted of the charges. Oral tradition has it that Terrell served in the 1st Kentucky Infantry, C.S.A., in 1861. Terrell himself claimed that he'd served under General John Hunt Morgan and had escaped a court martial sentence of death for killing an officer. There is a record of an Edward Terrell enlisting in August 1862 in Morgan's 7th Kentucky Cavalry. This soldier deserted in September."

The Beriah Magoffin Monument

Beriah Magoffin was Kentucky's 21st Governor, serving during the Civil War.

Magoffin, who attended Centre College in Danville and Transylvania University in Lexington, believed strongly in the right of states to secede from the Union. Though he was sympathetic to the Confederate cause, he supported Kentucky's position of neutrality in the war.

As far as Civil War-era Governors go, Magoffin really wasn't terribly notable and his actions in office did little to sway the conflict one way or the other. Historically, he is probably best known for his telegram to President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln called for deployment of Kentucky troops on April 15, 1861, and Magoffin defiantly responded: "I will send not a man, nor a dollar, for the wicked purpose of subduing my sister Southern States."

After the Civil War ended, however, Magoffin became a civil rights advocate and urged passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.

His main legacy today is that he left behind an interesting tombstone: the Beriah Magoffin Monument is located in Spring Hill Cemetery in his hometown of Harrodsburg. The grave peculiarly renders Magoffin's bust in Neo-classical style, wearing a Roman toga.

Naked Civil War Battle

An interesting historical anecdote about a nude combat skirmish involving John Hunt Morgan, from the Washington Times:

"The Union pickets didn't know what to think of soldiers fighting as naked as jaybirds," Confederate Lt. Bennett H. Young wrote in an unusual report to his superiors about a skirmish between Union and Confederate forces on the Cumberland River in western Kentucky on July 2, 1863.

In late June, Morgan's men scouted the rain-swollen Cumberland River marking the border between Tennessee and Kentucky. The normally placid river was now half a mile wide, choked with floating logs and other storm runoff. Anxious to get his raid on the road, Morgan began crossing his men on July 2 when the river was still overflowing its banks. He had more than 2,500 with him, 1,000 more than his orders authorized.

The impetuous Morgan should have waited for the swirling river to fall, as it was an impediment to keeping his men together, but because of the flood conditions, the Federals on the Kentucky side had relaxed their patrols. The Federals believed no one would try such a dangerous crossing.

Morgan's men carefully wrapped their cap-and-ball weapons and paper cartridges in rubber blankets and tossed them into make-shift rafts and leaky boats. Many forgot modesty, stripping off their clothes to keep them dry. They jumped into the river, literally swimming bareback or holding onto their horses' tails.

It is hard to hide 2,500 men, scores of wagons and hundreds of mules swimming a river. Union patrols discovered the crossing and rushed to the bank to start shooting at the men in the boats that they could see. What they could not see was that hundreds of Confederates had already landed and were now hidden from view by the bank's slope and trees.

Nineteen-year-old Lt. Bennett Young of Morgan's command, who would gain fame the following year for leading a raid on St. Albans, Vt., remembered: "Those who had clothing on rushed ashore into line. Those who swam with horses, unwilling to be laggard, not halting to dress, seized their cartridge boxes and guns and dashed upon the enemy. The strange sight of naked men engaging in combat amazed the enemy."

Jefferson Davis Monument

And hey, speaking of obelisks, how about the Jefferson Davis Monument in Fairview, KY? (That's the one in Todd County, by the way - Kentucky has several Fairviews)

Most people, for whom the Washington Monument is their only frame of reference for obelisks, do a double take when they view this for the first time.

The Jefferson Davis Monument is the tallest unreinforced concrete structure in the world - no steel was used to reinforce the concrete. I don't know about you, but that makes me more than a little concerned. Then again, the building has stood up just fine since 1924.

Since all the taller obelisks are constructed of blocks of stone, that also makes the Jefferson Davis Monument the tallest poured-concrete obelisk in the world.


It's generally regarded as the third tallest obelisk in the world, behind the San Jacinto Monument and the Washington Monument. However, the San Jacinto Monument is not quite a true obelisk, and so technically the Jefferson Davis Monument should be number two.

The Testicles of Black Bess

John Hunt Morgan (he of the Hunt-Morgan House) is honored for his Civil War service with an ostentatious statue in downtown Lexington (Which is rather odd, since he fought for the Confederacy). Created by Italian sculptor Pompeo Coppini, it depicts the General atop his beloved horse, Black Bess.

As you might surmise from her name, Black Bess was female. Yet Coppini, for reasons opaque to me, declared that it would be more heroic if Morgan was astride a stallion instead of a mare - and so took the extreme artistic license of giving Black Bess prominent testicles.

James Loewen, in his book Lies Across America, wrote about the quaint tradition among UK frat-boys to paint Black Bess' testicles blue and white, and relayed an old, clunkily-written anonymous poem passed along as local folklore:

So darkness comes to Bluegrass men —
Like darkness o'er them falls —
For well we know gentlemen should show
Respect for a lady's balls.

Black Bess was probably named after the English highwayman Dick Turpin's horse, even though some say that Black Bess was strictly fictional, invented for William Harrison Ainsworth's novel 1834 Rookwood and pulp fiction like Black Bess or the Knight of the Road, published in 254 weekly installments beginning in 1867.

The Hunt-Morgan House

Lexington's haunted Hunt Morgan House, a.k.a. "Hopemont", is at 201 N. Mill Street, the corner of N. Mill and W. Second.


It was built in 1814 by millionaire John Wesley Hunt,who died of Cholera in 1849 and left it to his daughter Henrietta and her husband Calvin. Their son John Hunt Morgan, went on to become a noted Brigadier General in the Civil War. He was killed in Greeneville, TN, shot in the back by Union soldiers.

John Hunt Morgan's nephew, geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan, was born here in 1866 and won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933. (He is, incidentally, the only Kentuckian so far to have won the Nobel Prize.)




Supposedly, the house is haunted by John Wesley Hunt himself (who has been allegedly sighted walking the halls), and by Mammy Bouviette James, the nursemaid of John Hunt Morgan's children. There are various online reports of her apparition being seen on the third floor, where the nursery had been located.

Kentucky Civil War Soldier in Oz

That's Oz as in Australia, of course, not the place with the Wizard.

In my rambling rounds around the world weird web, I happened upon some archivist's collection of data regarding American Civil War soldiers buried in Australia and New Zealand. Three cheers for the ant-like stuff-organizers, researchers for research's sake, and obsessive-compulsive list-makers of the world!

I was surprised to see what a lengthy list it is, and I wondered how and why so many Civil War soldiers ended up down under. And of course, the reason I mention all this here is that there's one from Kentucky. In the New South Wales town of Eden, we find this listing for a Confederate soldier:

John Keon, Co D, 3rd Kentucky Cavalry Regiment, CSA; Co un, 7th Kentucky Cavalry Regiment, CSA.

There's also a list of Civil War soldiers born in Australia and New Zealand - and again, I didn't realize such a sizable group of such existed - but Keon's not on the list.


You can read more about Australia's connection to the American Civil War here and here, and how the CSS Shenandoah (pictured above) figures into it. I still don't see how the 3rd Kentucky Cavalry Regiment or the 7th Kentucky Cavalry Regiment figures into it, though, so Keon's presence in Australia may or may not be related to those events.

Lost River Cave

The only underground boat tour in Kentucky is at Lost River Cave in Bowling Green, or at least so says their website. It also says that Ripley's Believe It or Not has called this river the shortest, deepest in the world. They have a great underground ballroom for events and weddings.

Upcoming events at Lost River Cave include a geocaching tutorial on September 20; a fine art fair on October 3-4 (with wine tasting provided by Greenwood Spirits Shoppe, beer samples from the Bowling Green Brewing Company, and cheese samples from Kenny’s Farmhouse Cheese); and a weekend of Civil War reenactments on October 16-18.

Climax Cave

I've been in many Kentucky caves but I don't think Rockcastle County's Climax Cave is one of them. I just happened to read about it tonight while researching something else, as so often happens with this here internet thingie.

Someone named Jenna Martin has a very interesting report of a trip to the cave in 2000, an excerpt from which follows:

Climax is one of those caves that, once you get to a certain landmark, you can wander around the many passages and not get lost because they all, for the most part, lead back to that main room. We did some exploring. We sat in one passageway for a bit and let the bats zoom by our faces. And we carried on some deep, philosophical discussions while we crawled through the mud. Good times. Around 1 am, we decided to head for the exit. With some caves, you have to exit where you came in because the passage eventually becomes impassible. Climax, though, has a separate exit that spits us out into a hilly cow field with a winding trail that brings us about a mile down the road from the church. In the middle of the night, you not only have to watch out for giant cow patties all over the place, but you also have to pass one of those ancient, scary-movie cemeteries with the complimentary creaking iron gated archway while hearing what we imagine to be wild, rabid dogs barking and howling in the not-so-distant distance. Creepy as hell, but if you call yourself a caver, you've gotta at least pretend you've got some balls.

We turned the last corner before we got to the exit. Before us, lining the 30 foot high and about 50 foot wide mouth of Climax, were about 100 or so lit candles. For years and years, this area has been thought to be highly paranormally active. (Not to mention all of the creepy "Deliverance" parallels we've noticed, on occasion.) Spirit hunters attribute ghost sightings and strange events to civil war activities that occurred in the area, extreme suffering of people living and dying in these "hollows", and the bizarre fundamentalist religions and occult rituals that were practiced by reclusive clans of Kentucky mountain people.

Climax Cave can be entered by way of an opening near the Climax Baptist Church, which is located in the small town of Climax, KY (home of Climax Mountain Spring Water). If you go, note that Climax Cave is closed from September through April, to allow the indigenous population of endangered Indiana Bats some quality alone-time.

Climax Cave is 1.554 miles long, which puts it at #626 in the Top 1000 Longest Caves in the USA.


These photos were filched from here. Click it to see some more great photos of Climax Cave.

Ebenezer Cemetery Vandalized

Just noticed this news story of yet another instance of cemetery vandalization a couple of weeks ago. This time it's in Jessamine County, at the Ebenezer Cemetery - A historic site with many Revolutionary War and Civil War graves. According to the story:

More than a dozen headstones were knocked over, vandalized, and destroyed over the weekend.

Jeff Smith says it's not what he ever wanted to see.

"It kinda hurts my feelings someone would come out here and destroy things. It's disgusting", says Smith.

Smith says not only did people destroy the headstones of people he knows, they also broke into the church.

"They used a cinder block trying to break the door down. When that didn't work they tried to kick the door in", says Smith.

In fact, whoever was responsible left their footprint on the door of the church doors. Smith says within the last month they have recently done other damage around the cemetery.

"A lot of trash and beer bottles and things like that", says Smith.

However, this time around it hit Jeff Smith hard. That's because he knows a part of history is now damaged.

Other recent cemetery desecrations have occurred here and here and possibly here.

The Sherley Family Plot

Recently spent another day on safari, deep in the heart of darkest Cave Hill, just before a rainstorm of Biblical proportions dropped on my head.

Visited the Sherley family plot, which has a doorway-to-nowhere portal that I find very interesting for a lot of reasons, probably deeply ingrained in childhood pop culture imprinting of walking through magical doorways (The Chronicles of Narnia, Star Trek, Land of the Lost, etc.) and maybe a few past lives as well.

Z.M. Sherley's grave is also very eye-catching, being a roughly hewn round-ish boulder with his name spelled out in copper appliques in an exquisite font. Z.M. Sherley's name is a memorable one to local historians, not just as a Civil War figure, but for his involvement with U of L's Medical Department and The American Printinghouse for the Blind, for the ferryboat named after him, and for his philanthropic contributions that helped maintain and beautify Cave Hill Cemetery itself during his lifetime.

According to the book Gould's History of River Navigation by Emerson W. Gould, Z.M. Sherley had an identical twin named Thomas, and so identical were they that not even Thomas' wife could tell them apart. Thomas drowned in the Mississippi River while transporting cattle via barge.

Meanwhile, George Douglass Sherley's grave - a large stone cross laying flat on the ground - has a great inscription: "Whatever is, is Best". It immediately struck me as almost Buddhist-like in its transcendent acceptance, but I did a little research and found it's actually quoting a Rosicrucian poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

I know there are no errors
In the great Eternal plan,
And all things work together
For the final good of man.
And I know when my soul speeds onward,
In its grand Eternal quest,
I shall say as I look back earthward,
Whatever is, is best.

George Douglass Sherley was a writer and poet who attended Centre College in Danville, and authored several books including The Valley of Unrest, The Inner Sisterhood, and A Spray of Kentucky Pine.

The Vest-Lindsey House

There's been reports that the Vest-Lindsey House, located at 401 Wapping Street in Frankfort, is haunted by the ghost of George Graham Vest.

I'm not sure how these ghostly identifications end up getting made. Did a ghost say, "hello, I'm George Vest"? Did an eyewitness recognize an apparition as resembling that of Vest's old photos? Or - more likely - did someone hear a weird noise late one night and decide that all of the people who occupied the home over the years, it must logically be the ghost of its most famous occupant, back to haunt his boyhood home for reasons known only to himself?

Of course, this whole area of Frankfort is filled with spooky old haunted historic homes, and I am not of the opinion that a ghost is required to stick to his own turf. I'm sure the area is crawling with spirits at any given time, but who knows whose they really are, where they're going, or what they're up to.

Vest himself was an interesting character, at any rate. As an attorney, he risked his life to defend a young African-American man from bogus murder charges. The man was acquitted, but a local lynch mob burned him at the stake anyway. Yet as a statesman, Vest sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War and became a Confederate State Senator for Missouri.

Today, Vest is most remembered for having coined the phrase "a dog is man's best friend" during the Burden v. Hornsby trial, defending a man whose hunting dog, "Old Drum", was shot and killed by a landowner on whose property the dog had trespassed.