Serving the Tri-state region of Eastern Kentucky, Southern Ohio and Western West Virginia
In the early days of '61, before the rebellion was in fair shape and fighting was new and strange, war lowered about these borders so darkly as to make public apprehension serious and sad. There was a disposition at various points, not remote from the Ohio River, to set up the standards of the Confederacy and maintain the southern idea to the extent of whatever blood-letting was necessary.
In the region of Trout's Hill or Wayne Courthouse [WV-mk] was one of those rendezvous of disloyalty, and many were the alarms that came from that town, of the gatherings hosts setting themselves up to dispute the efforts to maintain the authority of the Union. There was a man known as Bill Smith, whose name brought terror to the listener and whose cruel minions were ever dodging along the Kentucky and Virginia horizons. Col. Zeigler was then forming a regiment in the new and novel town of Ceredo, and every night or so, Bill Smith startled the camp into battle array. Sometimes Bill Smith wasn't within twenty miles of the place, but the name mentioned in the middle of the night, was a call to arms!
Two years ago, the writer of this sketch, stood in the old fashioned Courthouse at Trout's Hill. Not a hammer or brush had been used on the old edifice since the days of Sumter, and many a little scar on wall and pillar recalls those times of excitement and alarm, when from the woods and hills that fringed the town, the watchful bushwhacker sent his bullet to crush the invader of the sacred soil. One bullet hole we noticed in a pillar that sustains the floor - a good round hole that were far better in the pillar than in some soldier's body. We wondered at the time what sort of a history that bullet could tell, and of the scramble it made when it whistled through the door and "chugged" in the wood.
"What's your narrowest escape in the array?" asked the reporter of Captain Thomas Winters who was standing on the corner watching the workmen pulling down the brittle walls of the burnt Merchant block.
"Oh, I don't know," says the Captain, "the hardest time I ever experienced in the army was at Moorfield, while crossing the river. It was an awful experience, but nothing personal - no close call. "
"Well, something of your own is what I'm after," said the reporter.
"Let me see then." said Capt. Winters, looking about meditatively a moment. "A little affair up at Trout's Hill, in the early part of the war, made me shiver about as coldly as anything that happened. My Company G. of the 1st Va. Cavalry was sent there with two companies of Col. Zeigler's regiment, the 5th Va. Infantry, to get the public records and care for the county property. We took the town without trouble and stayed there two or three days, gathering what county records we could and holding up the Stars and Stripes in the face of the bushwhackers. We camped in the Courthouse, which was the occasional target for some of Bill Smith's gang. One day I stood in the door, enjoying the sunshine and the starts and stripes, and the boys rollicking on the grass in front, when 'bang' went a rifle from the copse nearby, and zip came a bullet right over my head, so close as to raise the hair, and struck a pillar just back of me. I jumped inside and congratulated myself on my narrow escape. I have thought many times I'd like to go up there and see the mark of that bullet again; but I expect it has long disappeared under the magic hand of time or progress. "
"No, Captain," said we, "it's there yet, or was a year or two ago. We saw it and wondered what history it might tell, never dreaming we would find the hero of that bullet." "Indeed? And it is lodged there yet? Well, well, I must go up and see where the ball that come for me, but didn't find me, has been lodged all this time." "And if you go, " said we, "tell us more about it when you return."
"I will."
Thursday, April 5, 1888 Ironton Register
Reprinted in the KYOWVA Newsletter, Volume XXV, No. 3, Fall 2002 Edition,
p. 6