The small community of Crab Orchard, Lincoln County, Kentucky, finds itself in the midst of a tug of war between Confederate and Union forces. Crab Orchard is under the control of the United States, but today, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan’s Cavalry, the First Kentucky, burns the Dix River Bridge near the town and sets fire to some 120 Union wagons near Crab Orchard and in the surrounding area.
Meanwhile, the Crab Orchard Baptist Church is used as a Union hospital, and remains so for much of the war. The pews have been removed to make room for sick and wounded soldiers. During the war, several Union soldiers who die of measles are buried in the church cemetery.
A Union officer in 1862 thus describes the area around Crab Orchard:
We are camped 1 1/2 miles from craborchard on the same ground that the 33 Ma Reg was campt… It is a poore part of the world. I would not give congress price for the land that is beyond the craborchard. It looks like a God for saken place and the people are poore yet they say before the troubles comensed that their land was worth 30-50 dollars per Acre.
Much of the war unfolds in poor, rural, small southern towns such as Crab Orchard.
Sources: “Civil War in and Around Crab Orchard,” Lincoln County Historical Society (link); “Civil War Letters of Captain John A. Ritter,” January 29, 1862, from Crab Orchard, Kentucky (link)
