Bell's Mine - Kentucky
N 37° 30.542 W 088° 01.366
16S E 409607 N 4151834
Bell's Mine located off of Hwy. 365 South of Sturgis,in Crittenden County, Kentucky.
Waymark Code: WM9KRY
Location: Kentucky, United States
Date Posted: 08/30/2010
Views: 9
Bell's Mine was the site of a skirmish between Company C,52nd Kentucky Mounted Infantry (USA) under Lt. Thomas W. Metcalfe and a band of 300 Guerrillas on July 13, 1864. Metcalfe, with 46 men, had left Cloverport,Kentucky on July 5,1864, to patrol the Green River Country. The Patrol was attacked at Bell's Mines by approximately 300 Guerillas. The Company's record's recounted it's losses as 22 horses and "rigging," on man killed, and 11 men captured. The Evansville Daily Journal stated that six of the men had escaped and reached Shawneetown where they reported the action.
Bell's Mines were owned by John Bell from Tennessee. Bell ran for President in 1860 as the candidate of the Constitutional Union Party. Kentucky was one of the three stated he carried.
John Bell was born in Mill Creek, Tennessee on Feb. 18,1796. He graduated from Cumberland College in Nashville in 1814 and in 1816 began the practice of law in Franklin, Tennessee. In 1822 he moved to Nashville. His political career began with his delection to Congress in 1826. He initially supported Andrew Jackson, but broke with Jackson over the United States Bank issue and became a leading southern Whig. He was appointed Secretary of War in the William Henry Harrison administration in 1841, but resigned due to differences with John Tyler who became president when Harrison died. In 1847 he was elected to the United States Senate. Bell was one of a small group of southern Whigs in Congress who worked to defuse the growing tensions between the sections throughout the 1850s and sought to find a compromise that would preserve the Union. In 1860 he was nominated for president by the new Constitutional Union Party and carried Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. In January 1861 he helped delay Tennessee's decision on secession and met with Abraham Lincoln in April before the crisis reached a head at Fort Sumter. After Lincoln's call for volunteers Bell accepted Tennessee's secession but played no active roll, politically or miltarily, in the War. He had acquired extensive iron and coal works through his marriage to Jane Erwin Yeatman in 1835, which were damaged during the War. He spent most of the Civil War in Alabama and Georgia, but returned to Tennessee afterwar to rebuild his coal mins and iron furnaces. Bell died in 1869 at Cumberland Furnace in Dickson County, Tennessee.
Marker Name: Bell's Mine
Marker Location: Roadside
Type of Marker: Other
Marker Number (for official markers): blank
Group(s) Responsible for placing Marker:
The Kentucky Transportaion Cabient, TEA-21 Program
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Visit Instructions:
A picture of the site or anything specific to the text on marker.