Friday Caching in Elizabethtown 4/24/2009

Out caching again today in and around E-town. Our first cache was something to behold. We got it down ok with a stick but putting it back was another story. I had to boost Mom up a pine tree so she could put the cache container in a small hole in a branch. Wish I had hadf a camera with me, but we got it back and she got down with no problem. After a few NRV caches one in group of pine trees near a hold concrete bunker, 2 at a local church and another on the edge of the Elizabethtown Cemetery.
Next we did go into the cemetery for our next 3 caches, 2 of which were very interesting and historical. The first was near where a cannon was placed during the Battle for Elizabethtown. John Hunt Morgan (June 1, 1825 – September 4, 1864) was a Confederate general and cavalry officer in the American Civil War. Morgan is best known for Morgan's Raid in 1863, when he led 2,460 troops racing past Union lines into Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio in July 1863. This would be the farthest north any uniformed Confederate troops penetrated during the war. John Hunt Morgan was born in Huntsville, Alabama, the eldest of ten children of Calvin and Henrietta (Hunt) Morgan. He was an uncle of geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan and a grandson of John Wesley Hunt, an early founder of Lexington, Kentucky, and one of the first millionaires west of the Allegheny Mountains. He was also the brother-in-law of A.P. Hill and of Basil W. Duke.
Morgan's father lost his Huntsville home in 1831 when he was unable to pay the property taxes following the failure of his pharmacy. The family then moved to Lexington, where Calvin Morgan would manage one of Hunt's sprawling farms. Morgan also attended Transylvania College for two years, but was suspended in June 1844 for dueling with a fraternity brother. In 1846, Morgan joined the Freemasons, as had his father before him.
In 1846 Morgan enlisted in the U.S. Army as a cavalry private during the Mexican-American War, and saw combat at the Battle of Buena Vista. On his return to Kentucky, he became a hemp manufacturer and eventually took over his grandfather's prosperous mercantile business. In 1848, he married Rebecca Gratz Bruce, 18-year-old sister of Morgan's business partner. Morgan raised a militia artillery company in 1852, but it was disbanded two years later.
In 1853, Morgan's wife delivered a stillborn son. Rebecca Morgan contracted septic thrombophlebitis, an infection of a blood clot in a vein, which eventually led to an amputation. Relations with his wife's family suffered over different views on slavery and with her health problems. In 1857, Morgan raised an independent infantry company known as the "Lexington Rifles," and spent much of his free time drilling them.
Like most Kentuckians, Morgan did not initially support secession. Immediately after Lincoln's election in November 1860, he wrote to his brother, Thomas Hunt Morgan, then a student at Kenyon College in northern Ohio, "Our State will not I hope secede[.] have no doubt but Lincoln will make a good President at least we ought to give him a fair trial & then if he commits some overt act all the South will be a unit." By the following spring, Tom Morgan (who also had opposed Kentucky's secession) had transferred home to the Kentucky Military Institute and there began to support the Confederacy. Just before the Fourth of July, he quietly left for Camp Boone, just across the Tennessee border, by way a steamer from Louisville to enlist in the Kentucky State Guard. John stayed at home in Lexington to tend to his troubled business and his ailing wife. Becky Morgan finally died on July 21, 1861. In September, Captain Morgan and his militia company went to Tennessee and joined the Confederate States Army. Morgan soon raised the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Regiment and became its colonel on April 4, 1861.
Morgan and his cavalrymen fought at the Battle of Shiloh in May 1862, and he soon became a symbol to secessionists in their hopes for obtaining Kentucky for the Confederacy. A Louisiana writer, Robert D. Patrick, compared Morgan to Francis Marion and wrote that "a few thousands of such men as his would regain us Kentucky and Tennessee." In his first Kentucky raid, Morgan left Knoxville on July 4, 1862, with almost 900 men and in three weeks he swept through Kentucky, deep in the rear of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's army. He reported the capture of 1,200 Federal soldiers, whom he paroled, acquired several hundred horses, and destroyed massive quantities of supplies. He unnerved Kentucky's Union military government and President Abraham Lincoln received so many frantic appeals for help that he complained that "they are having a stampede in Kentucky." Historian Kenneth M. Noe wrote that Morgan's feat "in many ways surpassed J.E.B. Stuart's celebrated 'Ride around McClellan' and the Army of the Potomac the previous spring." The success of Morgan's raid was one of the key reasons that the Confederate Heartland Offensive of Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith was launched later that fall, assuming that tens of thousands of Kentuckians would enlist in the Confederate Army if they invaded the state.
Morgan was promoted to brigadier general (his highest rank) on December 11, 1862.[2] He received the thanks of the Confederate Congress on May 1, 1863 for his raids on the supply lines of Union Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans in December and January, most notably his victory at the Battle of Hartsville on December 7.[4] Also in December, Morgan married Martha "Mattie" Ready, the daughter of Tennessee United States Representative Charles Ready and a cousin of William T. Haskell, another former U.S. representative from Tennessee.
Hoping to divert Union troops and resources in conjunction with the twin Confederate operations of Vicksburg and the Gettysburg in the summer of 1863, Morgan set off on the campaign that would become known as "Morgan's Raid". Morgan crossed the Ohio River, and raided across southern Indiana and Ohio. After many skirmishes and battles, during which he captured and paroled thousands of Union soldiers[citation needed], Morgan's raid almost ended on July 19, 1863, at Buffington Island, Ohio, when approximately 700 of his men were captured while trying to cross the Ohio River into West Virginia. (Intercepted by Union gunboats, less than 200 of his men succeeded in crossing.) Most of Morgan's men captured that day spent the rest of the war in the infamous Camp Douglas Prisoner of War camp in Chicago, which had a very high death rate. On July 26, near Salineville, Ohio (actually closer to New Lisbon-now called just Lisbon), Morgan and his exhausted, hungry and saddlesore soldiers were finally forced to surrender.
On November 27, Morgan and six of his officers, most notably Thomas Hines, escaped from their cells in the Ohio Penitentiary by digging a tunnel from Hines' cell into the inner yard and then ascending a wall with a rope made from bunk coverlets and a bent poker iron. Morgan and three of his officers, shortly after midnight, boarded a train from the nearby Columbus train station and arrived in Cincinnati that morning. Morgan and Hines jumped from the train before reaching the depot, and escaped into Kentucky by hiring a skiff to take them across the Ohio River. Through the assistance of sympathizers, they eventually made it to safety in the South. Coincidentally, the same day Morgan escaped, his wife gave birth to a daughter, who died shortly afterwards before Morgan returned home.
General John Hunt Morgan
Though Morgan's Raid was breathlessly followed by the Northern and Southern press and caused the Union leadership considerable concern, it is now regarded as little more than a showy but ultimately futile sidelight to the war. Furthermore, it was done in direct violation of his orders from Gen. Braxton Bragg not to cross the river. Despite the Raiders' best efforts, Union forces had amassed nearly 110,000 Union militia in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio; dozens of United States Navy gunboats along the Ohio; and strong Federal cavalry forces, which doomed the raid from the beginning. The cost of the raid to the Federals was extensive, with claims for compensation still being filed against the U.S. government well into the early 20th century. However, the Confederacy's irreplaceable loss of some of the finest light cavalry[citation needed]in American history far outweighed the Union's replaceable losses in equipment and supplies. When taken in together with the defeats at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, the loss of Morgan's cavalry brigade dealt another serious blow to Confederate morale.
After his return from Ohio, Morgan was never again trusted by General Bragg. On August 22, 1864, Morgan was placed in command of the Trans-Allegheny Department, embracing at the time the Confederate forces in eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia.
However the men he was assigned were in no way comparable to those he had lost. Morgan once again began raiding into Kentucky, but his men lacked discipline and he was either not willing or able to control them, leading to open pillaging as well as high casualties. By now Confederate authorities were quietly investigating Morgan for charges of criminal banditry[citation needed], likely leading to his removal from command. He began to organize a raid aimed at Knoxville, Tennessee.
On September 4, 1864, he was surprised and killed while attempting to escape capture during a Union raid on Greeneville, Tennessee. His men always believed that he had been murdered to prevent a second escape from prison, but it seems he was simply shot because he refused to halt.
Morgan was buried in Lexington Cemetery. The burial was shortly before the birth of his second child, another daughter.
Next cache also in the cemetery was at the site of a Sacred Medicine Wheel burial site in honor of a Native American Ancestor. It was the burial site of the remains of an ancestor of 3000 years ago. The Medicine Wheel is representative of American Indian Spirituality. The Medicine Wheel symbolizes the individual journey we each must take to find our own path. Within the Medicine Wheel are The Four Cardinal Directions and the Four Sacred Colors. The Circle represents the Circle of Life and the Center of the Circle, the Eternal Fire. The Eagle, flying toward the East, is a symbol of strength, endurance and vision. East signifies the renewal of life and the rebirth of Cherokee unity.
East = Red = success; triumph
North = Blue = defeat; trouble
West = Black = death
South = White = peace; happiness
There are three additional sacred directions:
Up Above = Yellow
Down Below = Brown
Here in the Center = Green
Winter=go-la
The color for North is Blue which represents sadness, defeat.
It is a season of survival and waiting.
The Cherokee word for North means "cold" u-yv-tlv.
Spring=gi-la-go-ge
The color for East is Red which represents victory, power.
Spring is the re-awakening after a long sleep,
victory over winter; the power of new life.
The Cherokee word for East is ka-lv-gv
Summer=go-ga
The color for South is White for peace, happiness & serenity.
Summer is a time of plenty.
The Cherokee word for South means "warm" u-ga-no-wa.
Autumn=u-la-go-hv-s-di
The color for West is Black which represents death.
Autumn is the final harvest; the end of Life's Cycle.
The Cherokee word for West is wu-de-li-gv.
RED was symbolic of success. It was the color of the war club used to strike an enemy in battle as well as the other club used by the warrior to shield himself. Red beads were used to conjure the red spirit to insure long life, recovery from sickness, success in love and ball play or any other undertaking where the benefit of the magic spell was wrought.
BLACK was always typical of death. The soul of the enemy was continually beaten about by black war clubs and enveloped in a black fog. In conjuring to destroy an enemy, the priest used black beads and invoked the black spirits-which always lived in the West,-bidding them to tear out the man's soul and carry it to the West, and put it into the black coffin deep in the black mud, with a black serpent coiled above it.
BLUE symbolized failure, disappointment, or unsatisfied desire. To say "they shall never become blue" expressed the belief that they would never fail in anything they undertook. In love charms, the lover figuratively covered himself with red and prayed that his rival would become entirely blue and walk in a blue path. "He is entirely blue, " approximates meaning of the common English phrase, "He feels blue. "The blue spirits lived in the North.
WHITE denoted peace and happiness. In ceremonial addresses, as the Green Corn Dance and ball play, the people symbolically partook of white food and, after the dance or game, returned along the white trail to their white houses. In love charms, the man, to induce the woman to cast her lost with his, boasted, "I am a white man," implying that all was happiness where he was. White beads had the same meaning in bead conjuring, and white was the color of the stone pipe anciently used in ratifying peace treaties. The White spirits lived in the South.
Two numbers are sacred to the Cherokee. Four is one number, it represented the four primary directions. At the center of their paths lays the sacred fire. Seven is the other and most sacred number. Seven is represented in the seven directions: north, south, east, west, above, bellow, and "here in the center" the place of the sacred fire. Seven also represented the seven ancient ceremonies that formed the yearly Cherokee religious cycle. The other cache was a NRV one in a hollow tree.
Our last 3 caches were NRV caches one near a new housing development sign that never took off, one in a pet store and the last cache of the day was off a small park and walking trail.
Then we took a drive out to Bethlehem Academy which is now a private home, use to be a restaurant, and also use to be a convent later a hotel. It is said that several nuns were murdered here along with others. Cold spots are present and during restaurant hours chairs are moved and things are misplaced. Drive by at any hour after midnight and you will see windows open and close along with lights being turned on and off. If you`re brave enough walk up on the porch and feel the bad feelings that seem to radiate from the building. Then we drove another 10-12 miles out to the Gates of Hell Cemetery. At least that what the locals call it and it is actually the Kasey Family Cemetery. The "Gates of Hell" is the nickname of the cemetery at the end of St John Rd and is supposedly haunted. The cemetery is surrounded by overgrowth and downed trees and contains graves of unknown people from the 1700's and 1800's. The iron gate and fence have been torn down and many of the graves have been destroyed. People have reported that while parked outside the cemetery at night a large green orb suddenly suspended above them. After a couple of minutes the green orb suddenly shot straight up so fast it was gone in seconds. Others have reported that they have heard screams, strange noises, people talking, seeing shadow people, and havinf electrical problems with their cars. We got there walked through the cemetery and back out and never sensed or heard anything at all. We drove back to the RV and had lunch and Mom did our logs and I caught up on the blogs. By then it was dinner time and we ate and called it a day. Well until next time we love and miss you all. Mom and Dad