Miss Oldom the Kentucky Heroine

I have no idea if this story is true, but here is one link to some research someone performed on the family name.
http://yesteryearsnews.wordpress.com/tag/cornelia-oldham/

I find it to be an enjoyable little story, from pages 73 and 74 of Sparks from the Campfire: Thrilling Stories of Heroism, Adventure, Daring and Suffering, as Told by the Boys Who Were there, an old book published a couple decades after the Civil War.


A marauding band of rebels in Kentucky, on their way to Mount Sterling, stopped at the house of a Mr. Oldom, and he being absent at the time, plundered him of all his horses, and among them a valuable one belonging to h s daughter Cornelia. She resisted the outrage as long as she could, but finding all her efforts in vain, she sprang upon another horse and started post haste toward the town to give the alarm. Her first animal gave out, when she seized another, and meeting the messenger from Middleton, she sent him as fast as his horse could carry him to convey the necessary warning to Mount Sterling, where he arrived most opportunely. Miss Oldom then retraced her way toward home, taking with her a double-barrelled shot-gun. She found a pair of saddle-bags on the road, belonging to a rebel officer, which contained a pair of revolvers, and soon she came up with the advancing marauders, and ordered them to halt. Perceiving that one of the thieves rode her horse, she ordered him to surrender her horse; this he refused, and finding that persuasion would not gain her ends, she levelled the shot-gun at the rider, commanded him, as Damon did the traveller, "down from his horse" and threatened to fire if he did not comply. Her indomitable spirit at last prevailed, and the robbers, seeing something in her eye that spoke a terrible menace, surrendered her favorite steed. When she had regained his back, and patted him on the neck, he gave a neigh of mingled triumph and recognition, and she turned his head homeward and cantered off as leisurely as if she were taking her morning exercise.