Mass Graves Of Black Union Soldiers Are Helping Piece Together A Tragic Civil War Tale
Archaeologists have possibly identified two mass graves of Black Union soldiers in Kentucky. The discovery will help them piece together a tragic Civil War tale.
On January 25, 1865, a company of Black Union soldiers was ambushed in Simpsonville, Kentucky, by Confederate guerrillas.
Technically, Kentucky was neutral during the Civil War, but it was also home to Company E of the United States Colored Cavalry (USCC).
Company E was based at Camp Nelson, a Union Army depot where many enslaved men signed up to fight in order to become free.
The soldiers there had been driving 900 cattle toward Louisville when they were attacked by Confederate guerrillas out of nowhere.
The guerrilla troops were men who did not follow the rules of war. They liked to surprise ambush other soldiers and kill them outside of the confines of the military.
“What followed wasn’t a battle—it was a slaughter,” said Philip Mink, an archaeologist at the University of Kentucky.
“Most of the 22 men were shot in the back while fleeing, despite wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army. Guerrillas definitely targeted them because they were Black.”
At the time, the event was not really covered by local newspapers. Some reports revealed that Simpsonville residents buried the bodies in a trench, but no official record of the burial site was made. The Union burial commission also did not make an effort to locate the bodies after the war.
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Over a century later, a local historian named Jerry Miller was combing through old documents and maps to try to find the mass grave from the Simpsonville massacre.
In 2008, he worked with Mink and his team to investigate an African American cemetery in the area, but they were unsuccessful.
In the fall of 2023, after looking more closely at a map from 1936, a mark indicating the presence of a Civil War burial mound was spotted.
The burial mound is located in what is now a soybean farmer’s field. The farmer confirmed that his father and grandfather had told him about Civil War soldiers buried on the property.
The research team conducted a geophysical study of the land, using a drone-mounted magnetometer to scan beneath the ground for metal objects like belt buckles or bullets.
They narrowed in on an area that was five feet deep, 13 feet wide, and about 65 feet long, which are measurements consistent with the size of a mass grave.
But then, they found a second similar space. According to Mink, it is possible that there were two mass graves. Of the 22 men who were killed, 14 died and were buried right away.
The other soldiers were wounded and died from their injuries later, so they may have been buried in a second grave.
Currently, there is a crop of soybeans growing on the farmland, so the team plans to conduct excavations in the fall.
The Kentucky’s Shelby County Historical Society made headstones with the names of the soldiers who were targeted by the Confederate guerrillas, and the Commonwealth of Kentucky has erected a historical marker to remember the massacre.
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