Name

Birth Date

Death Date

Notes

Jun 2, 1939

(1)

[Previously published in Traces, Quarterly of the Southcentral Kentucky Historical & Genealogical Society. Revised, April, 2008.]

Henry Has Gone For a Soldier: A Civil War Story

by

Charles R. Arterburn

In 1861 when the Civil War began, my great great grandfather, Henry Isenberg (1828-1891), owned a small farm on Glover's Creek in the vicinity of Nobob, a rural community located about 10 miles south of Glasgow, by way of Hwy. 90, in southeast Barren County.

After President Lincoln's call for troops, Henry presented himself for duty on or about the 1st of September and joined a new Union regiment of volunteers then forming locally. Camp Joe Underwood was the site where Company E of the 9th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment (USA) was first organized and drilled. Captain Archibald S. Chenoweth served as its first commander. (Two of Henry's brothers, John and Harvey Isenberg, and his brother in law, William T. Turner, also joined sister companies of the 9th Kentucky Regiment, in Monroe County.)

But before they could march off to Camp Boyle, Columbia, Kentucky, to be mustered into the Union Army, the men of Company E were surprised in the predawn darkness of the morning of October 24 by a Confederate assault. A superior force of Confederate infantry and cavalry had marched overnight from Cave City, intent on destroying the camp.

Camp Underwood sat atop a gentle bluff known as Huffman's Hill, overlooking Glover's Creek, and the story goes that some of the Confederate raiders on horseback came storming through the camp in darkness without knowledge of the terrain and plunged over the bluff into the creek. There are no known casualty reports on the Federal side, since Company E wasn't officially in the Union Army yet. But local tradition has it that a nearby farmhouse served as a makeshift hospital after this skirmish, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Huffman's Hill. The Confederate commander submitted the following report of this engagement to his superior:

Report of Col. R. D. Allison, Twenty-fourth Tennessee Infantry.

HDQRS. TWENTY-FOURTH REG'T TENN. VOLS., Cave City, Ky., October 25, 1861.

SIR: In compliance with your order, I left Cave City on the 23d instant at 4 p.m. for Camp Joe Underwood, a distance of 25 miles, with the following force: 250 infantry, Twenty-fourth Regiment Tennessee {p.215} Volunteers; 120 Tennessee cavalry, under Captains Hamilton and Biffle, and one piece of artillery, under the command of Lieutenant -, and arrived at the camp of the enemy the next morning about 5 o'clock. Our advance guard was fired upon by the enemy's pickets, and a general skirmish ensued, when the entire force under my command charged upon the camp, routing the enemy, capturing 14 prisoners, 3 of whom were released upon a parole of honor by me; the others were delivered to you. A number of the enemy were wounded and several reported killed.

All the officers and men under my command acted bravely. We returned to Cave City on the 25th without the loss or injury of a man.

The following contraband articles and property were captured, to wit: 1 gray horse, 11 muskets, 3 rifles, a small lot of ammunition, 3 drums, a lot of knives, &c., besides other articles that have never come into my possession. All of the above articles, &c., are subject to your order.

Respectfully submitted.

R. D. ALLISON, Colonel, Commanding.

Major-General HARDEE.

Henry was on picket duty when the attack occurred, and was among several who were quickly overwhelmed and captured (also Isaac Denham and Samuel Piercy, and unknown others). Under the shock of a surprise attack, most of the men probably scattered. (Company E re-formed afterwards and later, in December, marched on to Columbia and to the War.) The camp and the unit's records were destroyed, and Henry and most of his fellow captives were carted off as POWs. Henry ended up in Salisbury, North Carolina, in a Confederate prison camp. He was held there at forced labor for 7 months, during which time he suffered exhaustion and a severe hernia, until he was eventually traded (paroled) in a prisoner exchange. According to his pension application and War Department records, Henry was then transported with other paroled POWs via ship from Washington, North Carolina to New York City, and eventually back to a Union Army hospital in Louisville. He remained in the hospital until the doctors told him he was unfit for service due to his health, and was sent home to Barren County.

Upon his return to the family farm in June, 1862, Henry would discover that his first wife, Nancy Ann Sherfey Isenberg, had died in February, leaving behind a family of 9 children—the oldest, his daughter, was 15 years old. According to family tradition, the farm had already been plundered by raiders. As Henry approached on foot, his oldest son, 12 year-old Jacob, was plowing in the field. The boy pleaded with the stranger not to take the family's only remaining horse, until his emaciated father spoke and was recognized. Henry never returned to the war, but, according to family tradition, remained active in the Home Guard, a local militia defense force.

When Henry applied for a pension (1885), Daniel and Samuel Stout and Isaac Chenoweth—veteran officers of Company E, along with Samuel Piercy, one of his fellow prisoners, wrote letters of affidavit to the government supporting Henry's application. (Company E's commander was already deceased by this time.) All of his officers affirmed that Henry had contacted his unit after his release, and was advised to remain at home unless called. All attested that Henry had always been a "good Union man and stanch Republican." Henry's application for a pension was denied. The Adjutant-General's reply was summarily concise and unsympathetic: “There is no record of the enlistment, muster in, or service of this man. He was paroled at Salisbury, N.C., May 28 1862, went home and never returned. He is regarded as a deserter from that date.”

Henry apparently never appealed this decision. (One of his fellow captives, Isaac Denham, did appeal to his Congressman and Denham's descendant still has the Congressional resolution that formally recognized his ancestor's service as honorable.) Perhaps Henry felt that too many years had passed and that he had no other evidence to offer, except for the testimonies of his former comrades.

After the War, Henry eventually recovered his health but suffered the ill effects of a hernia for the rest of his life. He remarried and was a widower twice, and also had additional children. In 1869, Henry witnessed a solar eclipse and recorded it in his family Bible. After the War, he bought a farm in Hart County, where he raised his family and lived until his death on June 7, 1891. Henry is buried there with his third wife, Sarah Colbert, in Page Cemetery, near Horse Cave, Kentucky.

Sources:

1. Henry Isenberg's pension application. National Archives and Records Administration.

2. Historical Sketch and Genealogy of the Isenberg Family , by Ruth Isenberg Savage, for some details of Henry's life and family.

3. The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies , Volume IV. 1882. (Vol. 4, Chap. 12), for Col. Allison's report of the engagement.

4. Cecil Goode, writing in the Glasgow Daily Times, for some details about the "Battle of Huffman's Hill."