By Berry Craig
NKyTribune columnist
A souvenir of Confederate cavalry Gen. John Hunt Morgan’s famous “Christmas Raid” of 1862 is stuck in a brick wall in Elizabethown, the Hardin County seat.
The unique Civil War relic is a tourist attraction. “People have heard about it or read about it and they ask about it,” said Mary Hikes, director of guest services at the town tourism and convention bureau at 1030 N. Mulberry St., just off Interstate 65.
The cannonball is at 39 Public Square, across from the courthouse.
Morgan was from Lexington and most of his horsemen were Kentuckians. They struck on Dec. 27, pumping more than 100 cannon rounds into the city and killing or wounding several of its outnumbered Yankee defenders, eight hard-pressed companies from the 91st Illinois Infantry Regiment.
A cannonball plowed into the old Depp Building on the court square. Twenty-five years later, the building burned and was restored, ultimately with the cannonball back in place.
Painted black, the iron sphere is half-embedded in the blue-painted brick, several feet above the sidewalk.
A weathered bronze plaque fastened to the wall at eye-level reads, “CIVIL WAR CANNON BALL BELOW UPPER WINDOW FIRED FROM CEMETERY BY MORGAN’S MEN.”
If that’s not plain enough, a black metal arrow points toward the missile, which looks to be close to five-inches in diameter. The solid iron projectile was almost certainly fired from a 12-pounder “Napoleon” howitzer, a mobile gun commonly used by both sides.
Tourists and other visitors often take photos of the cannonball. A sidewall sign tells about it and Morgan’s attack on the town. Nearby is a stone marker that commemorates the assaulters and defenders.
About 650 Yankees held the town against Morgan’s 3,900 Rebels. The Union troops “set up a strong resistance,” wrote Edison H. Thomas in John Hunt Morgan and his Raiders. “For protection they had fortified a number of brick warehouses near the railroad station, complete with loopholes through which they could aim rifles.”
Morgan posted his artillery on cemetery hill about a mile south of where the cannonball landed, and ordered the Yankees to give up. When they refused, Morgan’s gunners opened fire, the sign says. “The bombardment, along with a quick ‘cavalry’ charge on foot along the streets, soon convinced the enemy that Morgan meant business, and they surrendered,” Thomas wrote.
After paroling their captives, Morgan and his men galloped off to destroy two railroad trestles at nearby Muldraugh Hill. “Elizabethtown residents went to work repairing the damage inflicted by the missiles,” according to the sign.
The cannonball remained a reminder of America’s most lethal war until an 1887 fire destroyed the city block that included the Depp Building. The cannonball ended up buried in the charred rubble.
Miss Annie Nourse asked the building’s owners if she could have the relic, according to the sidewalk sign. They agreed.
Nourse offered a 25 cent reward to any local lad who mined the cannonball from the debris and brought it to her.
“A lively scramble instantly ensued in the pile of hot bricks,” Nourse was quoted in a 1932 newspaper article, part of which is reprinted on the sign. “I left them digging and went on home. In the afternoon, a man brought it to me and demanded $5 for it. I told him it was already mine. After some hesitation he decided to leave it for 50 cents, which I gave him.”
Ultimately, the buildings were reconstructed. Eventually, somebody decided the cannonball ought to be put back as close to where it was as possible. Nourse was happy to hand it over, according to the sign.
By then, the Depp Building was a bank. (It is now a law office.) “Many years after…I restored [the cannonball]…to the bank and they had it placed in the same spot, as near as possible [in the new building], where it is seen today…,” she said.
Berry Craig of Mayfield is a professor emeritus of history from West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah and the author of five books on Kentucky history, including True Tales of Old-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon and Burgoo and Kentucky Confederates: Secession, Civil War, and the Jackson Purchase. Reach him at bcraig8960@gmail.com