Land O' Lincoln
By Jeff Hendershott
After finishing my favorite task
this Sunday afternoon (mowing the yard), I was working on my second favorite
task (scrubbing algae from the wall of the swimming pool) when my cell phone
rang. It was my second-born of four daughters, Jeanette (aka Nick).
She had been in eastern
Pennsylvania for a few days for a wedding and called to tell me that they were
stopping at Gettysburg on their way home. We talked for a few moments and
then, Bam! It struck me that I had not been to Gettysburg in almost 10
years! In fact, I have only been to Antietam, Harpers Ferry,
Chancellorsville, Salem Church and in the Williamsburg area three summers ago
since. Has it been THAT long? Yeah, I crashed and burned my Civil
War reenacting "career," but there's still nothing like walking a
battlefield.
So I told Nick to have fun and
tell her friends that her Dad is a big movie star in the movie
"Gettysburg," and made her pledge to call me when she got home to let
me know what she saw.
No wonder, then, that this
coming Labor Day weekend, my wife, my "baby" daughter Johannah (8
years old) and I are going to take a three-day jaunt to Bardstown,
Kentucky. My wife wants to get away, and it fell to me to come up with
something reasonably close - yet cool. I need a fix of historical sites,
and the wife and girls always dug these kinds of places, so off we go.
When my oldest daughters were
very young, we spent a week in Bardstown. So I sort of know the
territory. And although Illinois calls itself "The Land of
Lincoln," and rightfully so, Kentucky - and the Bardstown area - could
also rightfully call itself the same.
Bardstown has a couple of neat
little Western Theatre Civil War museums, "My Old Kentucky Home" of
Stephen Foster fame, a whiskey distillery to tour, and other neat attractions
for history nuts.
However, what's REALLY cool
about Bardstown is that within a half an hour, you’ve got the Perryville
Battlefield (October, 1962) and Abraham Lincoln's birthplace (a National Park
Service site) and a couple other pieces of property to see where Lincoln and
his family lived before migrating north to Indiana and then Illinois.
Lincoln's birthplace is pretty
cool. I'm somewhat of a Lincoln fan. Having by happenstance been to
Ford’s Theatre the year before, I went to Lincoln's birthplace. It's a pretty
moving experience to be exactly where our Civil War president (yeha, I know
there were two Civil War presidents for you Rebs) was born and died. I
highly recommend both!
Anyway, I'm looking forward to a
couple of days at some historical sites. It's about as far as we can go
for a "four day weekend" comfortably. Yet before I die - if I
see nothing else historic - I want to see Andersonville (a desire I've
referenced in other articles).
So I just wanted to pass on this
little tip if you are close enough and want to kill a long weekend. I
always like to plan my travels in an area where you can see multiple historic
places while basing yourself, if you will, within a short drive to several
different spots.
Oh, and I almost forgot!
The unit my great-great grandfather was in during the Civil War encamped very
close to Bardstown while marching south to Tennessee in 1862, I believe.
See, you can still be an old
burned out retired reenactor and still get your kicks out of seeing and living
history - just in a different sort of way…
