Another Distant Campbell County Connection with Perryville

This should be my final post from the Symposium in the Field at Perryville and the wonderful time I had in those few days. This may be more of a personal interest, relating to my research on Campbell County, Kentucky in the Civil War, but I'll go ahead and post it.

While looking at a battlefield historical marker that I have seen so many times, I realized I could make another tiny connection between the battle and Campbell County. 

As the below advertisement from the September 20, 1861, Cincinnati Daily Commercial shows, an ambitious Campbell County man was recruiting volunteers for a company of Kentucky Cavalry. Despite the newspaper’s spelling, his name was Lewis Wolfley (pictured below in his uniform, the photo from findagrave memorial #9747.)  (Recruits should "loose" not time" - oops. :) )

                                                                                          

He was looking for men to join Colonel James Streshly Jackson’s 1st Kentucky Cavalry regiment, but as happened so often early in the war, plans changed, though only slightly, and Jackson took command of the 3rd Kentucky Cavalry.

Jackson soon left that regiment, for good reason, as he was promoted to Brigadier General of U.S. Volunteers in July of 1862, and commanded the Union’s 10th Division as it met Braxton Bragg’s Confederates at Perryville, while Lewis served as a captain, then major, in the 3rd for the entire war until his discharge in August of 1865. He then lived a long and interesting life. I’m working on a story on him, but an basic internet searches will turn up numerous hits on his name for those interested.

Wolfley had been recruiting for Jackson’s unit in 1861, so it is possible, perhaps likely, that the two had communicated at least by writing, if not in person.

 James S. Jackson, photo from Wikipedia 

Jackson, unfortunately, did not survive the battle in the Chaplin Hills, as a well-aged historical marker on the Open Knob describes.

Author's photo

These two men, one living in Campbell County and the other from Fayette County, Kentucky had originally worked to find men for the same regiment. Both were politicians for brief periods, with Jackson serving in Congress before the war, and Wolfley serving as Arizona’s governor decades after the conflict. Aside from their political experiences and their work for what became the 3rd Kentucky Cavalry, however, the fates of war took their careers and lives in very different directions.