Tour of John
Hunt Morgan’s Trail, “D” Road, JPG
Part 1 Morgan’s Markers
Ken Knouf: We used to place chicken Wire in this lousy field.
Lee Rogers: Wait
a minute. You mean that the proximity thing would send a signal down to the “Chicken Wire” and it would bounce
back up? Wouldn’t the signal just hit the ground and bounce back up to the projectile.
Ken Knouf: No it
had to be metal. It was my understanding that these shells were designed to explode against metal ships, armor, that sort
of thing.
Lee
Rogers: Oh! I see. I watched a movie the other night about Tibbetts. They
were dropping proximity bombs and had to get them to explode at 1600 feet. Mike will explain that
to you if you really want to know.
Louis Munier: When those bombs exploded did it tear up the “Chicken
Wire”?
Ken
Knouf: Oh! Constantly.
Mike Moore: What road are we on now? Jinestown
road? What is the name of that field over there?
Ken Knouf: Oh I believe that was 3500 West.
Louis Munier: We
are almost to Big Creek. My dad had a 1916 Buick. It did not have much gas in it so he had to back up this
hill.
Mike
Moore: What is the name of this hill, Louis?
Louis Munier: Wingham Hill.
Mike Moore: I always forget. Here we are going
over this iron bridge, weight limit 11 tons.
Ken Knouf: This bridge was built in 1884. It is actually older than the stone arches bridges
here. They installed new decking last year and then some of the cross members are new. They did a nice
job on this bridge. We are crossing over Big Creek right now.
Lee Rogers: It looks like they ought to have painted it a bit.
Mike Moore:
I wonder how long that wood will last in that floor.
Ken Knouf: It is treated. It should last a
good long time.
On our
left is the original road surface that Morgan’s column would have come down. Back in 1863, they would
actually ride north of Big Creek. During the winter you can still see the actual road bed down there if you walk.
Mike Moore: Let
me go get a shot of that.
Ken
Knouf: Not a lot to shoot right now.
Louis Munier: That Chancey Cardinal had a farm about a mile down
there. He was the one that helped put them signs up. (Morgan Markers).
Lynn Rogers: What’s the code on getting
out of the van?
Ken
Knouf: That black button.
Note: Lynn and Mike are out of the van, then get back in and the tour continues.
Ken Knouf: So now we are following the original route that
Morgan’s men would have taken.
Louis Munier. This was the Mayfield farm when Morgan went thru here. On the left. It was
the Mayfield farm then Ed Prenatt owned it when the proving took it.
Mike Moore: This was not where they took the hams was it?
Louis Munier: That
was Dupont.
Ken
Knouf: We have been trying to find out the relationship between this Mayfield here on “D” road
and the Mayfield that owned the smoke house in Dupont where Morgan stole the hams.
Lee Rogers: The Golden Rod is it blooming
already?
Kew
Knouf: Yes it is.
Louis Munier: The house was in these trees, that Prenatt house.
Ken Knouf: You
can still see the foundation, if you go back in the winter.
Mike Moore: Did you ever visit there Louis?
Louis Munier: Oh
Yea. My grandparents lived there on my mother’s side when My Mother and Father got married in 1918. Ed Prenatt owned
the farm, but he was County Clerk and lived in Madison. He rented the farm to them. Their name was Weber,
Charles Weber. Her name was Elizabeth Kepsey Weber.
Note: Ken’s window was almost smashed with a big limb sticking out.
Louis Munier: Now
the old road went down below here. It went down to Big Creek.
Ken Knouf: The road surface went down. It looks like a sunken
road here.
Lee
Rogers: How do they know Morgan took this route:
Mike Moore: You can see the old road bed. He stole a lot of horses
along here and they remembered that for a long time.
Louis Munier: He stole two horses from my grandfather.
Ken Knouf: Morgan’s
Second in Command, Basil duke, wrote a pretty good book about the raid too. It pretty well described the route that they took.
Lee
Rogers: Well this was probably one of the main roads thru here at that time.
Ken Knouf. It shows up on the 1800’s
maps.
Mike
Moore: There were 2 to 3,000 of Morgan’s troops. They could not spread out single file.
Ken Knouf: The
main column was five miles long. He had out riders on either side up to five miles away to be his eyes
and ears. The column was about two horses abreast riding along at about five miles per hour.
Mike Moore: I have
never seen so much debris on this road.
Lee Rogers: Morgan’s men came up to Indian Kentuck Creek.
Louis Munier: They scattered out by
Ryker’s ridge too.
Mike
Moore: I talked to a lady over by Ryker’s ridge and she said her family hid their horses up the creek.
She said some guys came up claiming to be Morgan’s men, but I guess they could have been outlaws too.
Ken Knouf: They
are in her pruning trees and bushes. The Department of Corrections inmates are her working for the Fish
and Wildlife Services.
Mike
Moore: Louis told me that they were up at Old Timbers Lodge and waxed the floors. Those
folks just love to be up doing stuff. I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t want
to be locked up either.
Ken
Knouf: There are about 10 gals in here working.
Louis Munier: There is Big Creek. Boy it is muddy isn’t
it. Here is the Wilson Dam. The WPA built it around 1936. I watched them work. They
took the rock out of the creek here. That Stone over there in the Big Creek Cemetery. That big boulder.
It came out of the creek here a couple of years before they built the dam. I heard that the stone was working its way down
river and that Wilson wanted to get it out of the creek before it moved off his property. I don’t
think it could have moved very far. All the time it was here, I never saw
Ken Knouf: You can still see the Wilson
Chimney.
Mike
Moore: We are looking to the North off of “D” Road right at the Chimney. It was a big farm
house.
Louis
Munier: It was all frame house, not stone like where I lived.
Lee Rogers: What is that Breeding Bird
Survey?
Ken
Knouf: Well Fish and Wildlife Service send all their people out. They follow the same
route and the same time of the year. They will stop wherever there is a Breeding Bird Survey and they will listen for twenty
minutes or so. If they recognize a bird they will put it on their list. They determine how their bird populations
vary from year to year. They just record what they hear and what they see.
Louis Munier: Here is The Big Creek stone
school was here on the left where I went to school for 8 years.
Mike
Moore: We are now at the Intersection of Morgan Road and D Road now.
Louis Munier: D road and Paper Mill Road.
Ken Knouf: We are
at our first stop.
Mike
Moore: We are now at the closed Bridge over Big Creek, (“D” road and Papermill) Boy that is a small looking GPS
thing. I don’t know that size has anything to do with it, but I am just amazed. This is really strange.
That Bridge has trees growing up thru it. Wonder how that happened. Ken, You think it is safe to
walk on this thing.
Lynn
Rodgers: Why don’t we take turns.
Mike Moore: You mean you don’t think that it will hold both
of us. Both of us together is too much. I just want to see why these trees are growing out of this bridge. I
want to take a picture of this.
Ken: it is not very well attached to the bridge abutment. It was built by an Army Reserve unit, back 40 years
ago. It was an old, old bridge. You can see parts of the old bridge that date back to the 1800’s.
You thin that they tore the old one down and built this one. I often wondered why they used this
aircraft runway planking for the bridge.
Ken: Yeah it was an engineering unit that came in and built it.
Mike Moore: Well
Ken this might be the first picture that I take of you without your glasses on.
Louis Munier: There
is that drift they cleaned out of here. Albert Andress had the store over there when I was going to school.
About a year or two before the Proving Ground was built, Joe Stevenson put a store out there in a shed.
Mike Moore: So
did you ever go to the store here? Did your mom ever send you down here.?
Louis: Mostly we came in the car. Maybe I rode
my bicycle down here. It was a general store. It had several things.
Note: The next 40 seconds of tape has been
captured on Video, and is the subject of a little Video called Big Creek Store, so we will skip that here.
Louis: Now that
Claude Wilson lived down there. His brother lived up here on top of the hill , so they owned both sides of the creek. I don’t
know how many acres they owned.
Mike Moore: Hold this tape recorder for a minute. I am going to take a picture of that
flower on the creek bank. . What kind of flower would you make that out to be?
Louis: I think
they call that a Mullen, I think.
Mike: It is really kind of weird. It has a
long shaft that is yellow. The flower is about 3 or 4 feet high and very skinny. I got a shot of it.
I will see what I have here. It looks pretty good.
Well I guess we will head over here to Morgan’s Stone
here. Ken’s talking about the Indiana Bat now. What will we call this marker?
Ken: This would
have been the first marker on the Proving Ground that Morgan would have seen as his troops gone by. If
the marker was there.
Mike:
Okay that is a good way to put it.
Louis: He came thru here in 1863 and they did not put a marker up until about 1930.
Lynn Rogers: This
is the first marker (West) inside the proving Ground.
Lee Rogers: There are three at Dupont.
Ken Knouf: We can
call this section of Morgan’s Trail the missing 5 miles. You know you can follow his trail all thru
Indiana, except thru the Proving Ground where the public is prohibited to go.
Mike Moore: Lets put both Lee and Lynn
in the picture. This is the way you want history to remember you guys.
Lynn Rogers: Well I am not sure about that.
Ken: How long does
it take for that little machine record all the Lat Long and Elevation.
Lynn: It does not record. You have to write
it down.. It takes about a minute to settle down, then you can read the coordinates. You
turn it on and it finds the satellites. There is a time averaging thing. You have to
set still. It depends on how accurate you want it.
Mike Moore: Well we want it down to the nearest inch or two.
Lynn: You gotta
pay somebody to do that.
Ken:
I am glad we get the coordinates. If you give it enough time, the vegetation will grow over these
monuments and no one can find them.
Lynn: The coordinates are NORTH 38 degrees 53.138
minutes Latitude WEST 85 25.519 minutes Longitude.
Mike Moore:
This marker here (Big Creek Store ) This is the marker that Louis and I put up in 1991
to help celebrate JPG’s 50th anniversary. Ken’s going to take our picture.
Ken: It will have caution Radioactive sign
right in the middle.
Mike
Moore: Louis this is our finest hour here. You did a fine job taking that picture.
Louis: That Paper
Mill was about 1500 feet up here.
Ken: There is a walnut beam down in the water. At
low water. Eddie Kidwell, he was real fascinated . He is an expert of gristmills.
We will have to wait til the water is real low to get a photo.
Mike Moore: This is 10:00 Friday the 20th.
We are on tour with Mike Moore, Madison, Ken Knouf, Madison, Louis Munier formerly from D road, Monroe Township, Lee
Rogers from Caanan and his brother Lynn Rogers from Dayton, Ohio. We are going across E road. There is a Bob White trying
to pull us away from the nest.
Lynn Rogers: I know a fellow Frank Boensch who had an ancestor the rode with Morgan.
Frank has actually traversed the entire route with the exception of the Proving Ground. I invited
him down this time and he could not work it in.. Maybe some other time.
Lee Rogers. I am helping Elbert
with the cemeteries, but I thought it was important to get a written location of all of Morgan’s markers.
The Jefferson Historical society put them up. Apparently they are going to try to maintain them. One
of them was knocked over at Dupont and the historical society repaired that one.
Ken: A contractor
named SAIC drilled new wells. They drilled another 10 wells. Some of the wells go down
a 140 150 feet. They are testing ground water to see if there is any migration of the DU.
Lee: I saw two
deer coming in the proving ground and two FEMA trailers going out this morning.
Mike Moore: I saw two FEMA trailers going
out this morning when I came in.
Ken: Probably people are buying them thru Ford. Dean Ford bought like
150 FEMA Trailers. Ford bid on a lot of 150 trailers. He then sells them individually.
He sells them for about $4500 dollars.
Louis: Do they have any of those wells up there where I lived?
Ken: I don’t
think so, Louis. The Air Guard got about 150 trailers assigned to them. They are setting
up a new Range area, kind of like an Urban target area. So they are going to use those trailers.
Mike Moore: Ken what road did we just come
down?
Ken:
Center Recovery.
We
are at the Intersection of Center Recovery and D road. We are at the second John Hunt Morgan Marker. Three
of his men were captured. This is where a cave and natural spring is located.
Mike Moore: The
last time I went down to that spring, I stepped over a 105mm howitzer round. Every one of these markers
are in the shade when I want to take a picture. Back in the old days, I never could get a good picture.
Ken
Knouf: If it was late in the day, the sun would be over here.
Lee Rogers: What
is that metal thing on the back of the marker?
Ken: Louis can tell you about that.
Louis: One of the Colonels moved this stone down around the administration,
I don’t know what year, but then they made him move it back out here.
Lee Rogers: Did they move all three
of them?
Louis:
No. Just this one.
Mike Moore: I have always wondered why there are words carved into the stone later. That
was not probably carved in at the same time was it.
Louis: Later those Fighting Baxters, I think it was George Baxter that 2nd
Lt.. He was the one that helped capture the three prisoners. Those Baxters wanted that written on the marker.
The prisoners had stopped at the spring
and were drinking water when Baxter and his men rode up and captured them. Baxter was home on leave.
Ken: They took
them to Madison. The locals almost wanted to lynch them. They finally took them to jail in Madison.
They finally ended up at the POW Camp Chase, I think near Columbus, Ohio.
Mike Moore: “
The men were captured by John Mayer 1st Lt. the second George Baxter 2nd Lt. I better
get a better picture of that in case we want to try and read that some day.
Ken: We have a better description back
in the office.
Lee: So the Colonel was forced to bring this marker back to the original site.
Lynn: Ready for the Latitude?
Latitude 38 degrees 53.043 minutes Longitude 85 degrees 24.972
minutes Time is 10:09 am.
Mike Moore: This is number two marker on JPG. This
was where three Confederates were drinking water from a spring and captured by the Federals. The Fish and
Wildlife Service has a data collection point here also. I have a photo of Col Weekley sitting in the cave.
Ken: The data collection point is
to sample the water in Big Creek to see if any DU is in it.
Morgan
Part 2:
Breeding
Bird Survey.
Ken Knouf: The Fish and Wildlife Service will listen for 20 minutes and whatever they hear if,
they recognize the bird, they put it down on their list. It gives them an idea of how their bird
population is doing from year to year.
Lee Rogers: They are not really studying reproduction patterns are they?
Ken Knouf: No they
are just recording what they hear and what they see.
Louis Muiner: Here is where Big Creek Stone School was on our
left, where I went to school for 8 years.
Mike Moore: We are now at the Intersection of Morgan Road and
D Road now.
Louis
Munier: D road and Paper Mill Road.
Ken Knouf: We are at our first stop.
Mike Moore: We are now at the closed Bridge over Big Creek,
Boy that is a small looking GPS thing. I don’t know that size has anything to do with it, but I am
just amazed. This is really strange. That Bridge has trees growing up thru it. Wonder how that happened.
Ken, You think it is safe to walk on this thing.
Lynn Rodegers: Why don’t we take turns.
Mike Moore: You
mean you don’t think that it will hold both of us. Both of us together is too much. I just want to see why these trees
are growing out of this bridge. I want to take a picture of this.
Ken: it is not very well attached to the bridge abutment.
It was built by an Army Reserve unit, back 40 years ago. It was an old old bridge. You can see parts of
the old bridge that date back to the 1800’s. You thin that they tore the old one down and built this
one. I often wondered why they used this aircraft runway planking for the bridge.
Ken: Yeah it was
an engineering unit that came in and built it.
Mike Moore: Well Ken this might be the first picture that I take
of you without your glasses on.
Louis Munier: There is that drift they cleaned out of here. Albert
Andress had the store over there when I was going to school. About a year or two before the Proving Ground was built, Joe
Stevenson put a store out there in a shed.
Mike Moore: So did you ever go to the store here? Did your mom ever send you down here.?
Louis: Mostly we
came in the car. Maybe I rode my bicycle down here. It was a general store. It had several
things.
Note:
The next 40 seconds of tape has been captured on Video, and is the subject of a little Video called Big Creek Store, so we
will skip that here.
Louis:
Now that Claude Wilson lived down there. His brother lived up here on top of the hill , so they owned both sides of
the creek. I don’t know how many acres they owned.
Mike Moore: Hold this tape recorder for
a minute. I am going to take a picture of that flower on the creek bank. . What kind of flower would you
make that out to be?
Louis: I think they call that a Mullen, I think.
Mike: It is really
kind of weird. It has a long shaft that is yellow. The flower is about 3 or 4 feet high
and very skinny. I got a shot of it. I will see what I have here. It looks pretty good.
Well I guess we will head over here
to Morgan’s Stone here. Ken’s talking about the Indiana Bat now. What will
we call this marker?
Ken:
This would have been the first marker on the Proving Ground that Morgan would have seen as his troops gone by.
If the marker was there.
Mike: Okay that is a good way to put it.
Louis: He came thru here in 1863 and they
did not put a marker up until about 1930.
Lynn Rogers: This is the first marker (West) inside the proving Ground.
Lee Rogers: There
are three at Dupont.
Ken Knouf: We can call this section of Morgan’s Trail the missing 5 miles.
You know you can follow his trail all thru Indiana, except thru the Proving Ground where the public is prohibited to
go.
Mike Moore:
Lets put both Lee and Lynn in the picture. This is the way you want history to remember you guys.
Lynn Rogers: Well
I am not sure about that.
Ken:
How long does it take for that little machine record all the Lat Long and Elevation.
Lynn: It does not record. You
have to write it down.. It takes about a minute to settle down, then you can read the coordinates.
You turn it on and it finds the satellites. There is a time averaging thing. You
have to set still. It depends on how accurate you want it.
Mike Moore: Well we want it down to the
nearest inch or two.
Lynn:
You gotta pay somebody to do that.
Ken: I am glad we get the coordinates. If you give it enough time,
the vegetation will grow over these monuments and no one can find them.
Lynn: The coordinates are NORTH 38 degrees
53.138 minutes Latitude WEST 85 25.519 minutes
Longitude.
Mike
Moore: This marker here (Big Creek Store ) This is the marker
that Louis and I put up in 1991 to help celebrate JPG’s 50th anniversary. Ken’s going to take our picture.
Ken: It will have
caution Radioactive sign right in the middle.
Mike Moore: Louis this is our finest hour here. You did a fine job taking that picture.
Louis: That Paper
Mill was about 1500 feet up here.
Ken: There is a walnut beam down in the water. At
low water. Eddie Kidwell, he was real fascinated. . He is an expert of gristmills.
We will have to wait til the water is real low to get a photo.
Mike Moore: This is 10:00 Friday the 20th.
We are on tour with Mike Moore, Madison, Ken Knouf, Madison, Louis Munier formerly from D road, Monroe Township, Lee
Rogers from Caanan and his brother Lynn Rogers from Dayton, Ohio. We are going across E road. There is a Bob White trying
to pull us away from the nest.
Lynn Rogers: I know a fellow Frank Boensch who had an ancestor the rode with Morgan.
Frank has actually traversed the entire route with the exception of the Proving Ground. I invited
him down this time and he could not work it in. Maybe some other time.
Lee Rogers. I am helping Elbert
with the cemeteries, but I thought it was important to get a written location of all of Morgan’s markers.
The Jefferson Historical society put them up. Apparently they are going to try to maintain them. One
of them was knocked over at Dupont and the historical society repaired that one.
Ken: A contractor
named SAIC drilled new wells. They drilled another 10 wells. Some of the wells go down
a 140 150 feet. They are testing ground water to see if there is any migration of the DU.
Lee: I saw two
deer coming in the proving ground and two FEMA trailers going out this morning.
Mike Moore: I saw two FEMA trailers going
out this morning when I came in.
Ken: Probably people are buying them thru Ford. Dean Ford bought like
150 FEMA Trailers. Ford bid on a lot of 150 trailers. He then sells them individually.
He sells them for about $4500 dollars.
Louis: Do they have any of those wells up there where I lived?
Ken: I don’t
think so, Louis. The Air Guard got about 150 trailers assigned to them. They are setting
up a new Range area, kind of like an Urban target area. So they are going to use those trailers.
Mike Moore: Ken what road did we just come
down?
Ken:
Center Recovery.
We
are at the Intersection of Center Recovery and D road. We are at the second John Hunt Morgan Marker. Three
of his men were captured. This is where a cave and natural spring is located.
Mike Moore: The
last time I went down to that spring, I stepped over a 105mm howitzer round. Every one of these markers
are in the shade when I want to take a picture. Back in the old days, I never could get a good picture.
Ken
Knouf: If it was late in the day, the sun would be over here.
Lee Rogers: What
is that metal thing on the back of the marker?
Ken: Louis can tell you about that.
Louis: One of the Colonels moved this stone down around the administration,
I don’t know what year, but then they made him move it back out here.
Lee Rogers: Did they move all three
of them?
Louis:
No. Just this one.
Mike Moore: I have always wondered why there are words carved into the stone later. That
was not probably carved in at the same time was it.
Louis: Later those Fighting Baxters, I think it was George Baxter that 2nd
Lt.. He was the one that helped capture the three prisoners. Those Baxters wanted that written on the marker.
The prisoners had stopped at the spring
and were drinking water when Baxter and his men rode up and captured them. Baxter was home on leave.
Ken: They took
them to Madison. The locals almost wanted to lynch them. They finally took them to jail in Madison.
They finally ended up at the POW Camp Chase, I think near Columbus, Ohio.
Mike Moore: “
The men were captured by John Mayer 1st Lt. the second George Baxter 2nd Lt. I better
get a better picture of that in case we want to try and read that some day.
Ken: We have a better description back
in the office.
Lee: So the Colonel was forced to bring this marker back to the original site.
Lynn: Ready for the Latitude?
Latitude 38 degrees 53.043 minutes Longitude 85 degrees
24.972 minutes Time is 10:09 am.
Mike Moore: This is number two marker on
JPG. This was where three Confederates were drinking water from a spring and captured by the Federals.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has a data collection point here also. I have a photo of Col Weekley sitting in the cave.
Ken: The data collection point is
to sample the water in Big Creek to see if any DU is in it
.
Part Three: John Hunt Morgan Markers:
Mike Moore: So what are they collecting that water for. They
have a gage there,
Ken
Knouf: They come in for a quarterly sampling of the water to see if there is any evidence of DU.
Louis Munier: Is
there any, do they tell you.
Ken Knouf: Not yet.
Mike Moore: We don’t have to go down there into the cave
I think Louis that you were with us when Col Weekley came out.
Louis: Yes.
I have a picture of the two of us by my house.
Mike Moore, I guess we have to go by Louis’s house.
Ken Knouf: We go up to the bridge and then
we walk over the bridge to Louis’s house.
Mike Moore: I think they should make a data collection point at Louis’s House, looks
like they have a well in front of it.
Ken Knouf: Actually there is a stream meter up on the bridge.
Mike Moore: I told Yvette that I want to
get a photograph of her drawing samples from the wells.
Ken Knouf: Actually we are not the samplers, we are the purge
water people. We take water from the well so that the professional samplers would have fresh water to sample.
Mike Moore:
We are at bridge # 22 commonly called the Munier Bridge.
