Historical Marker #192 in Boyle County commemorates a Perryville resident who made great sacrifices during the Civil War.
Henry Bottom was a farmer and justice of the peace whose home was caught in the crossfire of Kentucky's largest battle. After the
Historical Marker #192 in Boyle County commemorates a Perryville resident who made great sacrifices during the Civil War.
Henry Bottom was a farmer and justice of the peace whose home was caught in the crossfire of Kentucky's largest battle. After the fight, Bottom's house became a field hospital. According to William C. McChord, a Springfield resident who toured the battlefield as a twelve year old, a pile of amputated arms and legs, "some with shoes on, others with socks," stood "four or five feet high" in one corner of the yard.
Soldiers also swept his farm clean. Bottom lost 9 cows, 30 sheep, thousands of pounds of pork and bacon, 3,000 bushels of corn, 50 bushels of oats, 2 horses, and 22 tons of hay. For the first time ever, the Bottom family had to buy food to eat.
With hundreds of dead Confederates covering his farm, Bottom, his neighbors, and slaves interred many on a small rise on the northern end of Bottom's farm. The Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site evolved from this cemetery.
Bottom never recovered, economically or psychologically, from the horrors and destruction of the Battle of Perryville. One Perryville resident said that Bottom was "broken in spirit from that time on until he died."