As July 7, 1861, dawned, war was in the air in Lexington, Indiana. The county seat of Scott County was abuzz with the latest news of the southern rebellion. The _Madison Daily and Evening Courier_ told of skirmishes between Federal troops and “secesh” forces at Harpers Ferry and Falling Waters, Virginia. Closer to home, word had come that William A. Sanderson had organized a new outfit, the Twenty-Third Indiana, and was recruiting throughout the Second Congressional District for men to join the regiment. Although Scott County had been rife with sympathy and support for the South, answering the call to serve the Union cause from the county were Jacob T. Kimberlin, a twenty-one-year-old farmhand; his older brother, John J.; and his cousins, William H. H. Kimberlin, Benjamin F. Kimberlin, and James Stark. These five young men could not have known at the time that none of them would ever again see their homes. They only knew that the Kimberlins were going to war. This is the story of the Kimberlin family that sent thirty-three fathers and sons, brothers and cousins, to fight for the Union during the Civil War. Ten family members were killed, wounded, or died of battlefield disease, a 30 percent casualty rate that is unmatched in recorded Scott County history. Of the 134 known deaths of Scott County soldiers, ten were members of the Kimberlin clan. Their feelings about the war come from forty letters to and from the battlefield that have survived to this day. The book examines such questions as: Were they fighting to save the Union or to free the slaves? How did they express grief over the loss of a brother? Did they keep up with their business and the women at home? And what did they think about “secesh” neighbors in southern Indiana who tried to undermine the Union?

Excerpt from A Portion of a Life's Voyage: Ambrose C. Fulton's Talk to the Scott County Pioneer Settlers' Association Respecting Some of His Acts and His Experiences During Near a Century Many members of this association have given the people of a new world useful lessons of the distant past, and every speaker has added an interesting line to history, and old Sailor, I, without any more preliminary talk, will give a small portion of the scenes and acts of my past that may add a line to history. We do not assemble here to speak of the performances of others, of General Grant, or the Duke of Wellington, but to tell of the number of acres of land we plowed and the number of Indian scalps we took. At this day, many slumber on downy couches, and feast on rare luxuries, thoughtless of the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, and of the frontier pioneers, who suffered hardships and privations, even unto death, to procure those blessings for a coming people, and enable them to rest at ease and secure beneath the folds of an unsullied flag. The pioneers laid the foundation and created the State, the County and the City laws, through vast work, and built up a finished world in a wilderness, for the profit and comfort of a coming people. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Reprint, with additional material, of the 1950 ed. published in 7 v. by the Waynesburg Republican, Waynesburg, Pa., and in this format in Knightstown, Ind., by Bookmark in 1977.