Genealogy of the Bryan and Martin Families

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Henry Oldham Magruder

Male 1840 - 1864  (24 years)


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  • Name Henry Oldham Magruder 
    Birth 8 Feb 1840  Bullitt County, Kentucky, USA Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Gender Male 
    Death 8 Apr 1864  Bullitt County, Kentucky, USA Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Burial Magruder Cemetery, Lebanon Junction, Bullitt County, Kentucky, USA Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Henry Oldham Magruder
    Henry Oldham Magruder
    Siblings 6 brothers and 4 sisters 
    Notes 
    • From the website http://southernmessenger.org/the_gray_ghost_column.htm

      CONFEDERATE MARTYR
      HENRY C. MAGRUDER
      (1843 - 1865)

      Henry C. Magruder, he was born 1843 in Lebanon
      Junction, Bullitt Co., Kentucky, by Amy Magruder.

      Magruder's great-grandfather was the Revolutionary War veteran
      Archibald Magruder. A Brass Placque over his gravestone indicates:
      Pvt, 4th Co., 29th Battalion of the State Militia of Maryland, 1778.
      He is buried in a Magruder cemetery at Bernheim Forest.

      Magruder's grandfather was Ezekiel Magruder (1790 - 1863).

      Joining the Confederate States Army when 17 and serving in General
      Simon B. Buckner's command Magruder took part in the battle of Fort
      Donelson in February, 1862. Fort Donelson on Cumberland River was
      targeted by the Union in an effort to cut the Confederacy in two by moving
      via the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers down the Mississippi River
      to the Gulf.

      Magruder belonged to those 13,000 Confederates captured at Fort
      Donelson by the Union forces of General Ulysses S. Grant.

      Escaping from Fort Donelson he became a member of Confederate
      General Albert Sidney Johnston's bodyguard. Gen. Johnston, born in
      Kentucky but a Republic of Texas war veteran and Secretary of War
      of the Republic, had been assigned command of the Western
      Department by President Jefferson Davis. After the Confederate
      defeats at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson he moved his line of defense
      to the vicinity of Nashville, Tennessee, and later to Corinth, Mississippi.
      He was killed in the Battle of Shiloh on 6 April, 1862, leading his forces.
      Once more Henry C. Magruder had to seek a new Confederate
      command. He joined as a soldier in General John Morgan's command.

      Taking part in General Morgan's Great Ohio raid he escaped capture.
      The raid began when General Morgan with 2,500 men in the beginning
      of July 1863 crossed the Ohio River. The forces struck to the northeast
      across Indiana into Ohio but had to surrender at Salineville, Ohio, in face
      of large Union forces.

      Returning to Kentucky Magruder formed a guerrilla command that was
      active during 1864 in the area south of Louisville.

      In February, 1865, Magruder and other Confederate guerrillas including
      Jerome Clarke (Sue Mundy), a famous Kentucky irregular, were southeast
      of Hawesville, Hancock County, when ambushed by Unionist Home
      Guardsmen. They fired at the guerrillas with .44-caliber Ballard repeaters.
      Magruder charged them on horseback but was hit in the right arm and the
      bullet lodged in his lower chest or abdomen.

      Retreating and riding off toward Cloverport, the guerrilla command was
      ambushed a second time. Now Magruder was wounded by a bullet in
      the right lung. The wounded Magruder with Clarke and Henry Metcalfe,
      a Ohio County guerrilla, managed to avoid Union troops for two weeks.
      Magruder was treated by a doctor in Breckinridge County. Acting on a
      tip of an informer Union soldiers found the guerrillas in a barn near the
      doctor's residence. Surrounded they were captured on March 12, 1865.

      Clarke was tried, sentenced to death and hanged on March 15, while
      Magruder was kept alive by the Federals in a Louisville prison to be
      tried, sentenced to death and executed by hanging on the 20th of October,
      1865, over six months after the surrender at Appomattox. He reached the
      age of 22 years.

      By coincidence Missouri Confederate guerrilla Colonel William C.
      Quantrill for a few weeks came to languish in the same Federal prison
      in Louisville as Magruder. Quantrill, on his final Kentucky raid, was
      captured and mortally wounded on 10th May, 1865, at Wakefield,
      Kentucky, and brought to the military prison hospital at Tenth Street
      and Broadway in Louisville. There Quantrill lay dying until just before
      he expired he was transported to a Catholic Hospital. He passed
      away on June 6th and his last words has been said to be: "Boys, get
      ready, steady". Quantrill was 27 years old.

      The reason the Missourian Quantrill and Marcellus Jerome Clarke
      (alias Sue Mundy) are so well known is that they both had
      newspapermen, who wrote about them, but Magruder had no sponsor
      in the media. As you all know Quantrill was made famous by John
      Edwards, who fought in Jo Shelby's Iron Brigade and then followed
      Shelby to Mexico after the war. Edwards was the historian of this
      unique expedition and chronicler of the activities of Shelby's Iron
      Brigade. In the last twenty years of Edward's life he wrote about
      Quantrill and his men in daily newspapers in Missouri and in 1877
      the book Noted Guerrillas was published.

      In the case of Clarke it was, as you all know, George Prentice,
      editor of the Louisville Daily Journal, that made the Kentucky
      guerrilla captain famous, but for the wrong reasons. He claimed
      Clarke was a female guerrilla named Sue Mundy, and the readers
      were fascinated.

      February 2000 Bertil Haggman©
    Person ID i10398  Bryan-Martin
    Last Modified 10 Nov 1999 

    Father Archibald Magruder,   b. 13 Aug 1800, Bullitt County, Kentucky, USA Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 2 Oct 1849, Bullitt County, Kentucky, USA Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 49 years) 
    Mother Verlinda C. Swearingen,   b. 9 Jun 1806, Shepherdsville, Bullitt County, Kentucky, USA Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 9 Jan 1884, Bullitt County, Kentucky, USA Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 77 years) 
    Marriage 13 May 1824  Shepherdsville, Bullitt County, Kentucky, USA Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Family ID F4130  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  • Event Map
    Link to Google MapsBirth - 8 Feb 1840 - Bullitt County, Kentucky, USA Link to Google Earth
    Link to Google MapsDeath - 8 Apr 1864 - Bullitt County, Kentucky, USA Link to Google Earth
     = Link to Google Earth 
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