John Clark, 16 Kentucky Veteran Infantry, part 1

Oakland Cemetery, Grant's Lick KY

             

Microfilm records, KY Post, April 27, 1940

This entry is taken from a talk on two local Civil War soldiers I had researched over the last couple of years. This one is likely to be much longer and more thoroughly researched than other entries on this blog (thus I will post it in multiple parts), but this is one of the main reasons I developed such an interest in researching headstones.

John Clark was born in Rock Spring, Bracken County, KY, on May 1, 1843, the son of Englishman William Clark and Kentuckian Elizabeth “Betsie” Frakes. The Clarks were a farming family, though William died while John was very young.

They lived in Bracken County, a rural county in a slave state. Bracken County borders the Ohio River, which was one of the main national dividing lines of slave states from free states. Stops on the Underground Railroad were also scattered throughout the region. The Clarks did not own slaves from what I have found, but in the area in which they lived, their feelings towards that institution are impossible to ascertain.

In October of 1861, John, age 18, enlisted in Company D of the 16^th Kentucky Regiment. At the time, he stood 5 feet 10 inches tall, with dark complexion, black eyes and black hair.

His trip to enlist was the first time he had left Bracken County, according to a 1937 interview. The unit he joined had been formed at Camp Kenton, in Maysville, Kentucky, by Colonel Charles A Marshall, nephew of former Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall.

The 16^th Kentucky fought in its first battle before being officially mustered into service, participating in the fight at Ivy Mountain on November 8, 1861, and then mustering in on January 27, 1862.

At the end of 1861, this unit had 780 volunteers, according to the Official Records and early in 1862 an order from Major-General Don Carlos Buell announced: “The Sixteenth Kentucky Volunteers (Colonel Marshall) is attached to the Eighteenth Brigade, Colonel Garfield…” This “Colonel Garfield” was, of course, the same James A. Garfield who would later become President of the United States.

Throughout the rest of 1862, the 16^th Kentucky remained in its home state, serving in towns and cities like Covington, Louisville, and Bowling Green, among others. From late December to early January 1863 these men campaigned against Confederate General John Hunt Morgan. After this assignment had ended, they remained in the southern and western region of the state, before again campaigning against Morgan, during his famous “Great Raid” in July 1863.

By August, this unit, which now consisted of 870 volunteers, had joined Ambrose Burnside’s campaign to east Tennessee and Knoxville. Late in the year, the Confederates attempted to lay siege to that city, but the Union forces prevailed.