Sepia Saturday #80

Sepia Saturday with Alan

Courtesy of Nelson Co. Genealogy Roundtable

of which we are members.

James Henry's story was featured in the Feb. issue of The Nelson County Genealogist.

James Henry Spalding was born Feb. 19, 1841 in a modest log house which still stands in the southernmost reaches of Nelson County, near the community known as Howardstown.

His family was amoung the earliest settlers of our vastly Catholic county.

Very well one of the pillars of families in our area.

He was once a valued officer in the Union's 37th Kentucky Volunteer Mounted Infantry soon becaming a confederate guerrilla, preying on citizens in his own county and surrounding counties.

Spalding's change from Unionist to Confederate guerrilla, to be sure, was a radical transformation but still not all that surprising.

By the end of the war many Unionists were wondering if they had not picked the wrong side. Being a border slave state, in 1861, those Kentuckians that supported the Union cause did so in order to preserve the "Union and Constitution as it was." Their opinion was diametrically opposed to views held by many northerners who went to war as a crusade against the institution of slavery. During Spalding's  subsequent court-martial, George Radcliff, who kept a hotel near the family home was asked, "Do you know that Spalding's family are Southern Sympathizers, except himself?" To which Radcliff replied, "I did not know that they were at the onset, but they got to be afterwards."

His court martial began on March 25th, 1865.

In an agreement to save his life Spalding pleaded guilty to robbery but there was not evidence of murder or treason of his country so he was sentenced to 5 years in Ky State Penitentiary.

James Henry Spalding, from what little is known, led a relatively quiet life after the war but he was never married and died September 24, 1877, at the age of 36.

Yes he is in my family tree and the trees of many, many folks in this area.

Go here for more Sepia Saturday stories.