Dangerous Times in Kentucky
A tale of harassments and murder
Our guest writer Tad Callin of
joins us as part of our first cohort in the Projectkin Members’ Corner. Monthly posts from members celebrate their contributions to family history storytelling — in all its forms. Posts may be written or recorded (audio or video) will be shared for free each month. Explore the entire Members’ Corner here.
Kentucky was not the safest place to live in 1862.
Several Southern states seceded from the Union after Fort Sumter, but Governor Beriah Magoffin declared Kentucky to be neutral on 20 May 1861. That neutrality only lasted until 11 September, when the legislature called for Confederate troops who had entered the state a week before to leave. They asked Union forces to drive the Confederates out, and since a majority of Kentuckians supported the Union, it was officially a Union state from then to the end of the war.
That did not mean that Kentucky was united behind the Union cause.
In 1862, Thomas West lived in Lewis County, Kentucky, which sat south of the Ohio River, about equidistant from Cincinnati and Lexington. He was an old man, having been born in Maryland in 1789 - which made him about three years older than the state of Kentucky itself.
Thomas probably came to Kentucky as a child. He married Rebecca Staton in Mason County on 16 August 1809, and they moved to Lewis County sometime between the 1820 and 1830 U.S. Federal Census. The census records suggest that they had four sons and eight daughters, though we only know the names of three of them: Elizabeth (West) Wallingford (1823–1899), Frances Mary (West) May (1825-1871), and one of his sons.
Thomas's son, James M. West, was a farmer and preacher for the American Missionary Association. As an abolitionist, he angered the local slaveholders, and they tried to drive him out of Kentucky. In 1855 he moved to Pope County, Illinois, where he followed the occupation of farming during the week and preached on Sunday.1
Miller Grove was a Pope County community founded northwest of Golconda in 1844 by a small group of free African Americans from Tennessee. Evidence suggests that Miller Grove served as a way station for the Underground Railroad. James West lived near the Miller Grove community, visiting often. He would spend the night with Henry Sides, a white man who entered the bonds for many of the freed families from Tennessee. He and his wife Barbara moved from Tennessee to Miller Grove with the original four African American families. West was known in the area for distributing Bibles, and documenting contributions to the “Canada Refugee Fund”. In 1857, he praised residents who became recipients of antislavery literature as “messengers who seem to be doing a work that would otherwise be hard to accomplish”.2
While Pope County may have been James's refuge from Kentucky, it was not necessarily safer, as the country inched closer to the Civil War. In the spring of 1860, James was singled out in the local newspaper:
Golconda Herald - 9th or 16th of March 1860
“We have been credibly informed that an Abolition preacher named West has been engaged in circulation incendiary prints throughout this and adjoining counties, and he has even gone so far as to send some over to gentlemen living in Kentucky. If he has no particular desire to wear the martyr's garment--tar and feathers--he had better decist. Look out for yourself you imp of Baal; for you will be dealt with roughly, if you don't attend to your proper calling, more closely.
“At the request of our Kentucky contemporary, the Uniontown News, we publish a description of Jas. M. West, the abolition preacher whom we noticed last week. Rumor says that once upon a time he was tarred and feathered up in the neighborhood of Uniontown for the same offense of which we accuse him, i.e., circulating abolition prints. We have been informed that said West is agent for an abolition book and document publishing house of Boston, and received $25 per month for his services. We are in favor of the free toleration of all religious and political opinions; but when a traitor comes among us wrapped in the sincere garb of a minister of Christ, and endeavor to rob men of their property, we feel bound to expose him, that those most interested may be on the watch for him. He is about 9 inches over 5 feet high, slenderly made, stooped, sunken breast, long visaged, with Roman nose, light black eyes, dark hair and complexion, free spoken, and is about 40 years old. We don't think he has sufficient courage to steal a negro, but he'll bear watching.”
James responded:
Broad Oaks, Pope Co., Ill.
March 22d 1860
Mr. F. H. Hinan, Dear Sir:
In your editorials of March 9th and 16th, in Golconda Herald, you seem disposed to crush the reputation of a Civil, law-abiding citizen, without any just grounds on which to base the abuses therein contained against me. You base some false statements on what you call "credibly informed," rumor, &c.
1st.--I have never sent what you call "incendiary prints to gentlemen living in Kentucky," within one hundred miles of Golconda, Illinois.
2d.--I was never "tarred and feathered up in the neighborhood of Uniontown," nor at any other place, for circulation abolition documents, nor for any other offense against the law of God or man.
3d.--I am not an "agent for an abolition book and document house of Boston," and never was.
But if believing slavery to be a sin against God and a crime against man, and as such, ought not to be tolerated in church, and proclaiming this from the pulpit and the press, is a crime, then am I a criminal. And if this renders me worthy of wearing the "martyr's garment" then bring on your tar and feathers, and bring those "gentlemen" with you, to put it on, to whom I sent those "incendiary prints living in Kentucky." Find a certificate below of my standing among my neighbors...
I send also a statement of Jas. H. Davis who was well acquainted with me while living in Kentucky. Please do me the justice to give this a place in the columns of the Herald. In haste, yours for Christ and human elevation.
Jas. M. West
Colp. A. M. A.
Not long after that, James was driven out of Pope County and published another letter from his new home in Richview, Illinois:
Chicago Tribune - May 1861
Letter from one of the Persecuted.
(The following is from a worthy and excellent man, who with his family was expelled from Pope County, Ill., for the crime of being a Republican.)
Richview, Ill., May 1st, 1861
Editors Chicago Tribune:
The losses which we have sustained, connected with our expulsion from Pope County, Illinois, including robbery, damage, sacrifice, and removal, amounts to much more than we at first supposed it would be, say from $1,200 to $1,500... This has reduced us to circumstances of great necessity; but Christ said, "blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake."
It is very gratifying indeed, to know that our persecutors had nothing to charge against us that is immoral, or that which the law of God, or the law of the land condemns...
The secessionists in this part of "Egypt" are growing more mild, and many of them have abandoned their disunion principles, and with the exception of four or five of the Southern counties, our State may be said to be a unit against secession.
The cloud of gloom overhanging this part of the State, is fast disappearing, and we trust the Union States may adhere to the principles of justice, love, and mercy, and avert the evil with which we have been threatened. May God speed the right.
It may be gratifying to you to learn that I have no disposition to relax my efforts to promote the cause of Christ, and of Liberty and human elevation.
In haste, yours truly,
Jas. M. West, Colp. A.M.A
While James lived and worked throughout Illinois, seeking to defeat secessionist sentiments in that state, his father remained in Kentucky. James’s mother, Rebecca, died in 1859, leaving her husband alone, and Thomas took a young family into his home. That family departed for the weekend on Saturday, 18 June 1862, and returned the following Monday to find Thomas dead.
Newspaper accounts vary. The clipping from the Shelby (KY) News James received said Thomas was found “in his bed, dead, with a bullet hole through his body.” That account also said, “Circumstances attached suspicion to his son-in-law, named May & a possee [sic] went to his (May's) house & near it found a letter revealing a conspiracy on the part of five strong secessionists to murder old man West who was a Union man for his money, some $600, & also to murder Capt Brown & Major Hambrick for their political sentiments.”
James forwarded a copy of that account on 11 August to his correspondent, Rev. S.S. Jocelyn of New York, saying, “The foregoing conflicts considerably from what Mr. May wrote me.” In a second letter to Rev. Jocelyn, dated 8 September, James stated:
“I am sorry that I have nothing more definite relating to the brutal murder of my Father. All that we have goes to prove the certainty of the foul deed, but all accounts conflict with each other in many respects. My brother-in-law, J.S. May, wrote me on the 10th of July, that the rebels failed to find the money after committing the murder & that they found $754, & this morning we received a letter from my sister, & her husband living in Marion Co., Iowa, containing a copy of a letter sent to them by said May dated July the 6th, stating that they found $557.80. In other respects the two letters harmonise.”
A more complete newspaper account was published in The Courier-Journal of Louisville on 24 July 1862.3 That account described Thomas as “a Methodist classleader,” and printed a coded message from the five conspirators detailing their plans to attack West and three other men.
John Shaw May married Frances Mary West in Lewis County on 5 August 1846, well before her brother’s troubles began. While John appears not to have been involved in the murder of his father-in-law, records show that John S. May accepted a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Kentucky 6th Cavalry, Company C - a Confederate unit - on 12 September 1862. John was captured in battle at Buffington Island, Ohio, on 19 July 1863. John’s record in U.S., Civil War Prisoner of War Records, 1861-1865 shows him listed as a private, imprisoned on 19 July, and sent to Camp Douglas, near Chicago, on 22 August. He remained there until his release on 21 Feb 1865.
Buffington Island spelled the end of “The Morgan Raid,” an event which put my 3rd-great-grandfather, John May, on the other side of the battlefield from my 2nd-great-grandfather, John Henry Callin, who fought in an Ohio artillery unit that day. It’s sobering to think that 161 years ago, either of these two men could have died at the hand of the other - with the result being that I wouldn’t be here to write about it.
After the war, John returned home, and he and Frances had two more children before she died in 1871. While we may not have letters explaining his point of view or defending his participation in the secessionist cause, we do know that he remarried and had a son and three daughters with his second wife, Mary St. Clair (1839–1925). John named his son Samuel Tilden May, presumably after the New York Democrat who ran for president in 1876, Samuel J. Tilden. That is the election that famously ended without a clear majority of electoral votes, and was only given to the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, in exchange for an agreement to end Reconstruction.
Samuel Tilden May was born on 28 January 1877. Perhaps that is the only political statement we will ever get from John Shaw May.
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The account of James M. West and his letters quoted in this post can be found on Genealogy Trails.
Much of this paragraph was paraphrased from the website of the Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University’s Morris Library; the virtual exhibit on Miller Grove can be found at this link.
Newspapers.com, The Courier-Journal, Louisville Kentucky, Thu., Jul 24, 1862, Page 3: “A Secession Plot to Murder and Rob”.
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