As long as we're on the subject, does ANYONE have any information on
Fort Clay in Lexington, Kentucky? I can tell you that it was built in
1862, was involved in an unsuccessful shelling of Morgan as he raided
the town in June of 1864, and was briefly used as a prisoner of war camp
in that same year. I know that the 1st Wisconsin Heavy Artillery Battery
"B" was moved to Lexington, Ky., January 4, 1864, for duty at Fort Clay,
Lexington, Ky., and was mustered out on August 30, 1865. I've seen
reference to a map of the fortification in the National Archives and I
know that by 1868 the fort had been replaced with a brickyard, but what
I don't know is when the fort was decommissioned. 
In 1866 a neighborhood composed of recently freed African Americans,
European immigrants, and migrants from eastern Kentucky developed
immediately adjacent to the location of the fort. Since this was not a
time of enlightened multiculturalism, I suspect there was overlap
between the use of the fort by Federal troops and the initial
development of the neighborhood, as the troops would have provided some
level of protection for the people living nearby. Provided, of course,
that the fort was still in use in 1866. Local histories are silent on
the matter and only mention the fort, if at all, in passing reference to
the fort's hurling "projectiles of death" over the town as Morgan raided
the city. 

Thanks,

Daniel B. Davis
Archaeologist Coordinator
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet
Division of Environmental Analysis
200 Mero Street
Frankfort, KY 40622
(502) 564-7250
-----Original Message-----
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Boyer, Jeffrey, DCA
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 7:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Today in history

Today in history: Seven states having seceded from the United States in
January 1861, on April 12, 1861 South Carolina troops fired on Federal
troops at Fort Sumter, beginning the armed hostilities of the War of
Northern Aggression (unarmed hostilities having begun much earlier).



Jeffrey L. Boyer, RPA
Supervisory Archaeologist/Project Director
Office of Archaeological Studies, Museum of New Mexico

  *   mail: P.O. Box 2087, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504
  *   physical: 407 Galisteo Street, Suite B-100, Santa Fe, New Mexico
87501
  *   tel: 505.827.6387 fax: 505.827.3904
  *   e-mail: [log in to unmask]

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." -L.
P. Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953