Welcome to The Camp Nelson Dispatch. I am Capt. Theron Hall, moderator of this blog and quartermaster for Camp Nelson. This is the place to share your Camp Nelson stories, your Camp Nelson connections, and inquire about your Camp Nelson ancestors.
Here’s the capsule version of the Camp Nelson Story. If you want to know more, you can visit the award-winning Camp Nelson website.
The Camp Nelson Story
Camp Nelson was established along the Kentucky River in 1863 by the Union Army; serving first as a 4000 acre supply and training camp for the Army of the Ohio and District of Kentucky. In May of 1864 Camp Nelson became a recruitment point for black soldiers and later a refugee camp for other freed slaves and their families. Today the story continues to be told at the Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park.
Visiting Camp Nelson
Camp Nelson Heritage Park is located along US 27 about 20 miles south of Lexington (6 miles south of Nicholasville.) The Park entrance is on KY 3026, which runs parallel to US 27, one mile north of the Camp Nelson National Cemetery.
White House Tours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Call Alice at 859-881-5716The Heritage Park is open for guided tours Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The Interpretive Trails are open daily from dawn to dusk.
Foundation Meetings
The Camp Nelson Restoration and Preservation Foundation meets the first Monday of every month in the Interpretive Center at the Camp Nelson Heritage Park at 7:00 p.m. The public is welcome to attend the meetings and provide their input.
More Information
For vendor, reenactor, and tourism information contact Mary Kozak at 859-881-9126.
Send newsletter comments or submissions to:
Jeff McDanald
Camp Nelson Dispatch Editor
P.O. Box 1170
Nicholasville, KY 40356
Email: mcdanald1@insightbb.com
Website:
www.campnelson.org
My great grandfather Peter Bruner wrote in his autobiography (A Slave’s Adventures Toward Freedom Not a Fiction, but the True Story of a Struggle) about his experience at Camp Nelson and how he settled down in Ohio after he was mustered out of the army:
“I then came back to Jonas Parks and remained all night, it was about a mile from home. The next morning about five o’clock I got up and started for Camp Nelson, which was forty-one miles from Irvin. And at eleven o’clock I had gone twenty-one miles and had arrived at Richmond. After I had left Richmond I came upon sixteen
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colored fellows who were on their way to Camp Nelson and of course I did not get lonesome. I had plenty of company. Just a half hour before sun down we arrived at Camp Nelson and had come forty-one miles in that day. The officers asked me what I wanted there and I told them that I came there to fight the rebels and that I wanted a gun. When I had run off before and wanted to go in the army and fight they said that they did not want any darkies, that this was a white man’s war. After I had been there about a week they made up a regiment and called it the Twelfth U. S. Heavy Artillery.
I was enrolled on the twenty-fifth day of July in 1864 to serve three years or during the war, but I only remained two years and a half.
We started from Camp Nelson and marched eighteen miles that day and the dust was about four inches and my readers well know what nice walking it is when the dust is so very deep. When we got into the camp two or three dozen men fell out with the blind staggers, and I was in the midst of these unfortunate men.
The next morning we took the train for Louisville. When we arrived at Louisville that night we then took the freight train for Bowling Green and arrived there the next morning at about ten o’clock. A portion of the regiment took charge of Ft. Smith and a portion of Ft. Baker and some took charge of Ft. Vinegar. After we had been in the Camp two hours we than received orders to go to Russelville. We went there and went into stockyards, remained there a couple of days and the rebels were too hot for us, so we returned back and took charge of the Forts at Bowling Green, Ky. When we got back they made out a detail of fifty men to report to headquarters for duty and I was one of that number. When we got there we were given six days’ provisions and eighty rounds of cartridges. In the meantime we had our knapsacks, tents and guns to carry with us.
Then we started on our journey from Bowling Green to Nashville, Tennessee, to guard a thousand head of cattle. Everything went well with us until we arrived at
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Franklin, Tennessee, except it rained on us every day. After we had passed into Franklin the next night we went into camp, everything began to go wrong. The food gave out and the rebels fired in on us. The rebels had three men to our one but they did not get any of our men or cattle. All of this occurred after night. We managed the next day to go to the mill to get some flour and when we cam back we made it up with water and put it on a board and held it up before the fire to bake it. We did not have any salt nor any shortening nor anything. That evening we found a hog that had five little pigs just about three days old and cleaned them and made soup of them. About that time that the soup was done the rebels fired in on us and made us go and forget all about our pig soup. So after this we did not have any more trouble until we reached Nashville with all of our cattle safe.
Our first Lieutenant of Company C was a man by the name of Wallace. He was a very brave man. After we went back to Bowling Green they took the same detail of men down to a station or a depot. There we laid on our guns all night and were not even allowed to whisper for the rebels were coming to burn the depot, but they did not come. After that I was detailed out to held on Fort Vinegar I had to help finish the fort and help make magazines. Then we had to go out four or five miles from town to cut timber to go over the magazines. Once or twice while I was out I took the chills and fever and was not able to go back to town, and I would be obliged to crawl into some man’s barn and lay there all night, would not be able to get back to the camp. So one day the boys all stacked arms on the old Captain, his name was Toleman.
On account of not giving them their provisions he would take the food every Saturday and sell it and put the money in his pocket. So one day he sent a detail of one over to Fort Vinegar after me. He said I was the cause of the boys stacking arms, and took me before the Major, and when I arrived there the Major asked me what I knew about it and I informed him that I did not know anything about it for I had not been in camp for two weeks. Then
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the Major said that he would give me half an hour to make up my mind to tell the straight thing about it, and if I did not he would have me court martialed. I told him I did not have any education, that I did not know anything about stacking arms. So he sent me to the guard house, then he sent for me and I told him I did not know any more than I did the first time and that they could do what they wanted with me. So he sent me back to the Fort to where I was working and resumed my work. After that I took sick and had to be taken to the hospital and they looked for me to die every minute. After I got well they made me nurse in the hospital. So many men died, two and and three every night; I could not stand that so I went back to camp.
We camped out in little dog tents all winter. The tents were just large enough for two men to stay in, they were about four feet high. Often when we awakened in the morning we would be covered with snow. It blew into the tents and our blankets would be frozen to the ground so we could hardly get up. We carried our wood about a quarter of a mile.
One day while about eighteen miles from home recruiting we came to two or three large plantations. There were a great many colored people and as soon as they saw us they ran. We started after them and succeeded in capturing about 15 of the men. We started with our men and camped out at the foot of a hill and commenced to get supper when we were fired on by the rebels. This scared the recruits so bad we had gotten that they ran again. After this skirmish with the rebels, we coming out victorious, we caught our recruits and took them to camp. They cried, some of them, like babies and we had to let them go. “They had no time for war.”
Their masters when they found out where they were, came after them. Instead of giving up we would keep them as prisoners and make them carry water. We have often had as high as twenty masters’ prisoners, who came after their slaves (who came to us for protection). At one time we sent away five hundred men, women and
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children to Camp Nelson. Captain Palmer took us out one night. We marched about sixteen miles and about four o’clock the next morning we captured about 40 rebels without firing a gun. They all rode gray horses and wore old gray suits and without a doubt were the dirtiest men I ever saw on duty. Our Captain resigned his office and Lieutenant Wallace took charge of the Company. Our company took the train for Owensboro, Kentucky. When we arrived there the rebel citizens said that we should not remain there. Then a man by the name of John M. Hurd came and took charge of our Company at Owensboro, Kentucky. Once in a while we would go out and get a chicken and divide with our Captain but he did not care where we got them. Lieutenant Wallace would not allow the boys to take anything. He put one of the boys in the guard house for stealing a watermelon. So one day we thought we would go out and get some apples. We took a sack and got it full of apples. When I got back they took my apples and a revolver that cost twenty-five dollars and put me into the guard house, and I remained there, and then I got out and we went from Owensboro to Columbus, Kentucky. There were eight hundred men on the boat and we expected it to sink every minute. While we were at Columbus we did not do anything but drill and have a good time eating various kinds of fish. Then we moved from Columbus to Paducah, Kentucky. After we went up there they all took sick with the Measles in the Barracks, they had caught cold. While I was standing on guard facing the Ohio river on that cold New Year in 1865 my feet froze and they had to carry me off duty. My feet froze so badly that my toe nails came off. So when my feet got well we then took sick with the Smallpox and there were eleven men taken out of our company with this disease. One day I went out and bought some corn-bread from an old woman and she had the Smallpox. I did not know it and I took the Varioloid.
After I got well one night some fellows and I started up stairs to a dance and a colored fellow shot at me three times and missed me every time, but who the fellow was I did
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not know. I had never seen him before. So I thought it was about time I was shooting a little and I took my revolver out and shot at him and missed him and he ran. Then we went to Hopkinsville in Elton County and there we run some very narrow risks. We went down here to gather up the Government horses wherever we could find them. Sometimes the people that had them would not want to give them up, and when we had obtained these horses we would have to furnish something for them to eat.
One day I was sent out with a detail of three men to gather up the horses and everywhere that we found a horse with U. S. on it we would take it. So one Sunday we went out to forage some food for the horses. We went to two brothers houses, by the name of Chesnut, to get some hay and corn. One was a Union man and the other was a rebel. The Union man sent me to his brother and said that he had a large quantity, and he said that he did not have any and that his Union brother had some. So he gave us some cold ham and light bread and about a quart of whiskey and when we had disposed of these I told the boys to remain there. Then I went down about two hundred yards from the house and there I found three pens of corn and a large crib full and I rode over the field and there I found a large stack of oats. Then I made a colored fellow hitch up a wagon and yoke of oxen and haul a load of corn. Then I jumped upon the stack of oats and was throwing down oats when old Chesnut came out quarreling and said that he was going to report us to Sherman. I told him that he did not have anything to do with it. He said he did not have any so I just helped myself.
After that we were informed that at that same time there was a colored woman in bed that he had nearly beat to death. If we had known it we would have taken him too but we did not know it. So then we went back to Louisville, Kentucky, and was mustered out. Then I came up to Lexington and five of us hired a rockaway and came to Winchester and arrived there at one o’clock. I was at my mother’s home then and we ate supper and my mother did not recognize me until after supper and then I made myself
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known. She would not believe it was her son. We had a very nice time after I made myself known. She heard that I was dead.
Then I hired a buggy and sent James Daniel up to Irvin to get my sister; she was still working for the white people and old Bruner would not let her come. She went out and made a fire and burnt up all of her bed clothing and put her foot in the road and walked and I never saw her until she came to Ohio. My old master sent word that he wanted to see me but I did not want to see him and I have never seen him since.
After the war I came to Ohio and have remained here ever since. My youngest sister, then living in Winchester, now dead; the other one came to Ohio several years back and died. My mother had not seen me for eighteen years. After I was mustered out of the army in 1866 I came to Oxford, Ohio, and went to live with my aunt and uncle, a family by the name of Brassfields. That winter I donated my money to them that I had made and went to school to Mr. Grennan. While I went to school I commenced getting a declamation and I was all winter getting it. I studied reading, writing, geography and spelling, and have not got it yet.
In the month of March I went out to work at David McDill’s. I remained there until Fall and then my time had expired, so I came in and paid my board and started to school another winter. And then I began to study my piece again, and I never got my piece this winter. But once or twice a week I could spell some one down and get up head of the class. So I found out that that would not do and I was not learning anything so I thought I would quit going to school and get married.
I went to see a girl by the name of Fannie Procton, and finally we became engaged to be married. I went out in the country and cut wood and furnished a house and then we got married in March, 1868, and went out to live in the house which I had furnished. I went to work for a man by the name of Thomas Buck. It was way back in the woods, The farm is situated about 1 1/2 miles east
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of College Corner. After I had furnished my house and got my wife I just had 15 cents left to start on. I went in debt $42. The man I was working for gave me $26 a month.”
Peter Brunner’s omplete autobiography is at
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bruner/bruner.html
Robert Taliaferro
bobtaliaferro@gmail.com